When drag racer Ida Zetterström discusses her craft, she describes her racing decisions as a series of thoughtful if/then statements. This is misleading. The time in which she can alter her actions is best measured in tenths of seconds. There’s no time for thinking – it’s all muscle memory perfected over decades in the cockpit. A slight miscalculation can leave her car spinning without traction at the starting line, or worse.
“When it comes to the actual run, I should be 100% wide open [on the gas],” she says. “I should never have to [re-adjust] the throttle or anything like that because, if you do that – first of all, the run is not going to be good. You will never, ever have a good run. Plus, the risk of blowing the engine up is super, super high.”
