Back in the days when Top Fuel boasted 32-car fields, Hank Westmoreland outlasted the quickest gathering of nitro burners yet assembled for his only career national event triumph at the 1969 Springnationals.

The race, which was the first to be held at Dallas Int'l Motor Speedway, a forerunner of today's supertracks, marked the first time that all 32 Top Fuel participants ran six-second clockings during qualifying. So potent were the racing conditions that the first three alternates ran in the sixes as well.

The clockings ranged from Don Prudhomme's No. 1 qualifying 6.68, low e.t. of the meet, to Larry Brown's 6.98. The incredible performances were attributed to a late Friday thunderstorm that improved track conditions for Saturday's final sessions and caught everyone by surprise.

AA/GS campaigner "Ohio George" Montgomery, winner of three NHRA Nationals titles, added the Springnationals to his list when he defeated Don Enriquez's notorious A/FD in the Super eliminator final, 8.78, 161.00 to 7.79, 195.22.

Dwight Salisbury, for instance, was walking around the pits with his hands in his pocket in the late afternoon when he heard that his 6.99 had been bumped out of the show. Salisbury just barely managed to unload his Smothers Bros./Beach Boys entry in time to record a 16th-best 6.89 to regain a spot in the field.

With virtually every big-name Top Fuel driver in the show, upsets naturally took place in the early rounds with two-time defending world champion Bennie Osborn red-lighting in round one and John Mulligan and Tom McEwen also suffering first-round defeats. Leroy Goldstein and the Ramchargers car lost fire against Westmoreland in round two, and veteran Leland Kolb strapped a 6.88 to 6.72 holeshot on Tom Hoover.

Westmoreland got another break in round three when Kolb wasted a 6.76 on a red-light start. Westmoreland then came back to win a tight semifinal-round contest against Jim Dunn, 6.80 to 6.90. The other race in the semi's was perhaps the best of the event when upstart Kelly Brown surprised Prudhomme, 6.78 to 6.79, for his first win over "the Snake."

In the final, Westmoreland proved himself to be a worthy champion when he jumped to an early lead over Brown and the Foulger's Ford SOHC Hemi entry and held on for the 6.84 to 6.91 win.

Funny Car, by contrast, went closer to form. Heavily favored Danny Ongais drove Mickey Thompson's incredible Mach 1 Mustang to his first of two major triumphs in 1969. After qualifying No. 2 with a 7.47 to teammate Pat Foster's 7.35, Ongais methodically waded his way through the field to meet McEwen in the final. Both drivers had clocked identical 7.57s in the semi's, but Ongais won unchallenged with a 7.63, 191.89 after McEwen's high-gear-only Barracuda shelled a rear end.

Tragedy had struck in the first round of Funny Car eliminations when low qualifier Foster collided at midtrack with Gerry Schwartz, who suffered fatal injuries.

Danny Ongais' starting-line skills paid off handsomely in this 7.64 to 7.65 second-round win over the Candies & Hughes Barracuda. Ongais went on to drive Mickey Thompson's Mustang Mach 1 to a final-round win over Tom McEwen's Barracuda, which suffered a broken rear end on the run.

The Top Gas title went home with 1963 Winternationals and 1967 Springnationals winner Bob Muravez, who drove John Peters' fabled twin-Chevy Freight Train to a 7.54 to 7.68 win over 1965 Nationals winner Phil Hobbs in the final. Muravez at last was able to stand in the winner's circle using his own name instead of the alias Floyd Lippencott Jr., which he had previously used to keep his parents from finding out about his race car driving.

In the last year that Super Stock was in the limelight before the introduction of Pro Stock in 1970, the Sox & Martin team established its dominance of both the category and event, winning its third consecutive Springnationals Super Stock title.

Sox's SS/B Hemi 'Cuda won the handicap-start final over Barrie Poole's SS/J Mustang, 10.63 to 10.88, to become the first NHRA driver to win the same national event in three consecutive years.

Super eliminator winner George Montgomery was another familiar face in the winner's circle, having already won three Nationals titles before going on to win his fourth that year. Driving his feared late-model Mustang-bodied AA/Gas Supercharged entry, Montgomery defeated another drag racing legend, Don Enriquez, and his A/FD, 8.72 to 7.68. Both clockings established national records.

David Majors, like Westmoreland, scored his only major career victory by winning in Comp when he soloed his E/A Bantam roadster to victory after Francis Crider's C/D lost fire on the line.

The Street title went home with "Dyno Don" Nicholson, a last-minute surprise entry with the former A/FX '66 Mustang of Jerry Harvey, which Nicholson switched to A/MP. Nicholson had purchased the car to run on the heads-up Super Stock circuit, which was the forerunner to Pro Stock, and he once again displayed his four-speed wizardry with a national record of 10.49 in the final to defeat the 10.64 of Ralph Smiderle's B/SR, which he campaigned out of C-W Auto Parts in Pomona, Calif.

In Stock, Max Sterling was the third event winner to produce his lone career triumph when he pushed his D/S '62 Pontiac to a 12.24 decision over the 13.33 of Fred Anderson's L/S '57 Chevy.