For the most part, the cars doing that came on dedicated racing tires (AKA "drag slicks"). It could shorten the life of street tires to cook them that much. After the burnouts I could hear a sizzling sound from those tires as they bubbled. The Roadster with rear wheel drive, and a strong rear weight bias does rather well at getting power to the track even if the tires haven't been turned to jelly before the run.
It would probably have been more useful to pre-heat the tires if it had been a colder day, or if the track had been freshly cleaned, but in our case the track was already coated with rubber and the ambient temps were rather warm.
but if I correctly understand what I was told by other drivers at the event they have a way to engage ONLY the front breaks, leaving the rear wheels free for tire burnout. Without such a mechanism I think the rear breaks would make it hard to spin the tires even with traction control off. And I was never able to get them to spin or slip during a full-on raw acceleration in any case.
