The 1963 Winternationals could be remembered for many things, among them Top Gas victor Bob Muravez using Floyd Lippencott Jr. as his alias because of his family's disapproval of auto racing or the first trip to the winner's circle for Detroit's famed Ramchargers club. But the single event that sticks out in most everyone's memory is the return of Top Fuel to the NHRA national event scene after an absence that began in 1957; Don Garlits' innovative winged car took the title. Though NHRA returned to a gasoline-only format at the 1963 Nationals, it was nitromethane forever from 1964 on.

Said Garlits, "We were very happy that they decided to try Top Fuel again. We had tried to get NHRA to reinstate Top Fuel for several years. I guess the biggest thing that they were worried about was stopping the cars. We needed about a half-mile to get them stopped just using the brakes, but parachutes had come along by then and solved the problem."

The beginning of Chrysler's long reign in the Stock and Super Stock ranks began with Al Eckstrand's Top Stock victory with the Ramchargers S/SA entry. It also marked the first time that an automatic won a major Stock title.

Not surprisingly, Garlits attracted considerable attention with his winged Swamp Rat V entry. "I had told Bruce Crower before the race that my new car was real light and I had a problem with spinning the tires," Garlits said. "He suggested that we try to push it down with a wing, and we had a local guy in San Diego make one out of fiberglass. [Former NHRA Vice President] Jack Hart first rejected our car in tech but later changed his mind. I told him that before long everyone would have one of these.

"The design was taken from a Piper Cub [single-engine airplane], and I remember one West Coast fan yelling at me to take my Piper Cub and go back to Florida."

Garlits chose to stay, however, and cleared the path for near total domination of the event. Not only did he defeat fellow Florida racer Art Malone in the final with an 8.26, 186.32, but he also set low e.t. at 8.11. Top speed went to hometown heroes Weekly, Rivero, Fox & Holding, a group whose smaller engined A/FD outperformed the bigger AA/FD entries with a 188.66-mph clocking.

"It was a very big win for me," said Garlits, "even though Top Fuel was treated like an experiment and the gas cars still ran for Top Eliminator. But with [NHRA founder] Wally [Parks] still at Hot Rod, whoever won a major NHRA national event automatically got on the cover, and that was tremendous publicity. Not everybody looked inside the magazine, but everyone saw the cover."

Garlits later removed his innovative wing, but he re-employed it eight years later on his first rear-engine car, Swamp Rat XIV. "A few months after Pomona, the wing mount broke, and the wing almost came into the cockpit, so I took it off. I later talked about it to Jim Hall, who raced the winged Chaparrals, and he said that we had the right idea, but the wing was too thick at the chord and not wide enough. When I made the wing for the rear-engine car, I remembered everything he told me, and it worked out a lot better. Now everyone has them, just like I said they would."

As Garlits noted, the Top Gas entries competed for the Top Eliminator title. In the 1963 final, Muravez held off Connie Kalitta's impressive Chrysler mount with John Peters' twin small-block Chevy-powered Freight Train by running an 8.82, 178.21. That was far from Muravez's best performances of the weekend, which included an earlier 8.36 at 185.18 mph. Other contenders at the race were 1961 champion Jack Chrisman; Gordon Collett; Tony Nancy running Wedge, the meet's Best Engineered Car with body design by Steve Swaja; and Danny Ongais in the Dragmaster Dart.

Hugh Tucker's awesome Oldsmobile-powered Chevy AA/SR ran a 10.30, 138.24 in the Junior Eliminator final to defeat Bob Culbert's Mercury-powered A/A.

Though Nancy came up short in Top Eliminator, his 22 Jr. A/Modified roadster prevailed in Comp with times of 8.97 and 164.83 mph. Nancy's ride featured a Kent Fuller chassis and a supercharged Dodge 450-cid wedge engine. Among the prizes that the nationally renowned car upholsterer earned for his victory was a new Ford 427-cid engine.

The legendary Stone-Woods-Cook AA/GS team picked up its only major NHRA national event title, in Middle Eliminator, at this race. After winning class honors with a 10.08, driver Doug Cook pushed the crowdpleasing Oldsmobile-powered Willys to a final-round win over the Dunn-Velasco-Merritt AA/A, driven by Jim Dunn, with a 10.02 at 139.96 mph.

Little Eliminator went to Dick Bourgeois' Chevy-powered A/Gas Willys. Hugh Tucker's impressive blown Oldsmobile-powered Chevy won Junior Eliminator.

Stock Eliminator once again established the growing popularity of the Detroit factory hot rods. Al Eckstrand piloted the Ramchargers S/SA '63 Dodge to a win over one of the largest gatherings of Stock greats ever assembled to date. The victory was a landmark event for the Chrysler racing program because it firmly established the Dodge and Plymouth brands as legitimate contenders in the burgeoning Super Stock ranks and set the tone for their domination of the stock-bodied fields through the early 1970s.

The third running of the successful Pomona national event coincided with Parks' decision to leave his position as editorial director of Petersen Publishing Co. to assume full-time responsibility as NHRA president. Parks had previously divided his duties between NHRA and supervising the publication of Hot Rod, Motor Trend, Car Craft, Sports Car Graphic, and Rod & Custom magazines.