The basic premise of drag racing is pretty simple, once you get past all the engine limitations and safety regulations. It’s pretty much point and shoot, but instead of a gun you’ve got a car like the Ford Mustang. All that’s really required of the driver is to face the right direction, keep the car in a straight line, and apply the brakes before hitting the wall. Well in a nutshell at least. (We know there’s more to it than that in the upper echelons of racing).

Alas, not everyone can follow even the simplest directions, which leads to boneheads racing their brand new Mustangs in reverse down the 1/8th mile drag strip. Shall we count the ways this is stupid?

Obviously this is not a safe move, and we doubt it’s covered by whatever waiver the drag strip had the Mustang driver sign. A slightly-twitchy wrist could easily have put this pony car into the wall, or worse, his competitor’s car. There’s also the simple fact that racing in reverse is probably hell on the transmission, whether it be manual or automatic. There’s a reason the Mustang comes with six forward gears, and just one reverse.

Yet even with this misguided owner at the wheel and utilizing just a single gear, the Mustang manages to reverse its way to an 11.7 in the 1/8th mile. Unbelievably, it even manages to win its race, against a Volkswagen Jetta of all cars, not that it really matters. We’d never advocate attempting to replicate a reverse drag run for the reasons outlined above, but kudos to Ford’s engineers for making the Mustang capable of handling this level of idiocy.

Let’s keep our Mustangs pointed in the right direction from now on though, lest we feed the notion that we’re all this stupid.