If you pay any attention to the U.S.-based National Hot Rod Association — better known as the NHRA — you know the name of an Emirati. Which puts you ahead of most of the planet’s people.

That guy who drives one of the two Top Fuel cars for Al Anabi Racing? Khaled Al Balooshi?

An Emirati. A UAE citizen. Born in Dubai. Still calls it home. Even if, for the past two years, Al Balooshi has spent large chunks of time putting the pedal to the metal for the Qatar-backed Al Anabi team.

You may know Al Balooshi’s name … because he’s pretty good.

He won at Reading last year, becoming the first man from the Middle East to win an NHRA Top Fuel event, and only the third non-American to triumph in the sport’s elite division.

This year, he has a couple of semifinal results and is sixth in the Top Fuel standings.

If you don’t already know about him, check out this really nice personality profile our former co-worker Gregg Patton did on him, for The National, when the NHRA was in Pomona, last fall.

The Al Balooshi in that story seems like a good guy, a fun guy, who just likes going fast. (Lots of Americans can relate to that.) And you cannot go faster, without benefit of a jet engine, than in a Top Fuel dragster, which get up to 300 mph without much trouble.

We all know that we Americans, collectively, are not really good with geography. Something about your country being of continental dimensions seems to stunt curiosity about the rest of the planet.

The UAE, remember, is the little country near the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, across the Gulf from Iran. Does that help? And you perhaps have heard of Dubai, home to the world’s tallest building.

Dubai is the biggest city in the UAE. Not the capital — that’s Abu Dhabi, about a 90-minute drive south from Dubai.

The UAE doesn’t have much history because it was lightly populated and desperately poor before they found gobs and gobs of oil, about 60 years ago, and the place became a country only in 1971.

Ask an Emirati to name the most famous Emirati, and the odds are strong he or she will come up with Sheikh Zayed, the first president and something like the George Washington of the UAE.

But ask non-Emiratis to name an Emirati, and unless they live here or someone made an impression on them during a visit … they likely will have trouble coming up with any name at all.

That’s where Khaled Al Balooshi comes in.

The NHRA attracts fairly big crowds. It is on television a lot, at least in the states. And gearheads watching the drags have heard his name often enough they may even have an opinion on him.

This all dawned on me, finally, the other day, and I announced, at the office: “Khaled Al Balooshi has to be the best-known Emirati, in the U.S. … ever.”

It’s ironic. Al Balooshi probably is not particularly well-known in his homeland, because Emiratis do not (yet) follow the NHRA.

But in the states? Talk to 20 people at Wal-Mart, and odds are one of them has heard of this guy, Khaled Al Balooshi. Who is leaving behind a good impression — as well as lots of opponents.