If you’ve ever been to the Specialty Equipment Marketing Association show in Las Vegas or the Performance Racing Industry show in Orlando, you’ve likely seen some of your heroes’ drag cars up close and personal. At the racetrack, however, you’re usually kept at arm’s length in the pit areas, as the racers and their crews have work to do. From checking out these videos, it appears that these machines are on their way into an overseas show of some sort. Not only does the team treat the crowd to a burnout, but they also line up and stage the car and perform a launch.

There are a couple of things that we see going on here, though. To simply act on the idea of a Top Fuel demo run in the midst of a huge crowd of people seems like a no-no to us.  And not only that,  it takes them 43 seconds of cranking to get the dragster fired up before making said ‘pass’. We spent the entire 43 seconds just waiting for the blower to explode off the top of the engine in a massive backfire, but sadly, we were disappointed.

On a serious note, you would think the 2007 crowd accident in Tennessee with Troy Critchley driving might have given racers around the world a reason to pause before lighting off their machines in a crowd of people, but maybe they can’t read English over there. I sure can’t read whatever language the local newspaper might be in.

If the first video wasn’t enough, moments later we found another one from the same person, showing a Top Alcohol Funny Car preparing for a “demo” run. Not only are they going to fire this car off down the road through a crowd of people, but not even the driver is wearing any safety gear. Now, we realize that the expectation of injury is low (otherwise why would they be doing these runs to begin with?!?) but what happens if the throttle sticks? Or a backfire? You’d have one crispy driver inside the car and a flock of fans that couldn’t get away quick enough.