After the last shots had been fired and the smoke had cleared at the seventh annual Chief Auto Parts Nationals, abused engine parts and race cars littered Texas Motorplex like spent shell casings and wounded gunfighters. Only Ed McCulloch, Cruz Pedregon, and Bob Glidden stood tall, calmly surveying the "race carnage." Not only were they winners of one of the wildest drag races in history, but they were also survivors.

Run after run, NHRA's top racers loaded their bullets and fired their best shots, and many times they were rewarded with career-best performances, but just as often, they headed back to their pits, towing race cars full of busted parts. The super traction of the all-concrete quarter-mile and three days of overcast conditions that racers had dreamt about resulted in big numbers and parts attrition. In many trailers, broken rods, sheared rear-end gears, and burnt pistons were stacked beside career-best e.t. slips.

McCulloch came out on top of a record field to win his third Top Fuel title in four events. Kenny Bernstein led the field with the quickest e.t. in history, a 4.792, just ahead of Joe Amato, who qualified second with a 4.794 and set top speed at 298.90 mph. Behind those two racehorses were 13 other four-second qualifiers and bubblesitter Tommy Johnson Jr., whose 5.027 left the class short of its first all-four-second field.

Cruz Pedregon, far lane, beat John Force in a wild, tire-smoking Funny Car final at the 1992 Chief Auto Parts Nationals. Force hit the wall and was disqualified, handing Pedregon his fifth straight victory. Pedregon and Force both ran in the 5.0s and faster than 290 mph at the record-smashing event.

Typical of the parts attrition was the first round of Top Fuel, which took an hour to complete. Cleanups followed six of the eight races, though a major portion of the downtime was caused by spectacular crashes involving Gene Snow and Doug Herbert. Snow blew a tire in the lights and crashed into both walls while racing and beating Don Prudhomme. He was not injured, nor was Herbert, who flipped his entry in a half-track blowover against Rance McDaniel.

McCulloch benefited from Snow's failure to return in round two and took a solo ride. He then took out Amato in the semi's with a 4.86. Paired in the final with Eddie Hill — who aborted passes and broke parts throughout the event, including a broken connecting rod in his semifinal victory over Shelly Anderson — McCulloch and crew chief Lee Beard turned all the screws the right way and pounded out a 4.795, barely missing the record, after Hill went up in smoke.

As was the case at every Top Fuel race that he won that year, McCulloch's McDonald's teammate, Pedregon, joined him in the winner's circle.

The Funny Car field boasted plenty of personal bests, led by John Force's 5.079 (the third-quickest run in the class' history), followed by Pedregon's 5.101, Chuck Etchells' career-best 5.107, and low-buckers Gary Bolger's and Dale Creasy's 5.117s. Six racers qualified in the teens or better and six in the 5.2s, and the field stretched to Norm Wilding's 5.414 bump, making it the second-quickest Funny Car field in history.

More history was made in round one when Mark Oswald powered the Petosa Brothers Dodge to the best Funny Car speed ever, 293.06, in beating Dale Pulde. Oswald then came within two-thousandths of beating Pedregon in round two. Unfortunately for Oswald, his mount kicked a rod in the lights, setting off a big fire (his second in three years at that race), and he rammed the car head-on into both guardwalls, destroying it. He was not hurt.

The 1992 Dallas stop was filled with race car carnage. With the nearly perfect conditions, teams and drivers pushed their rides to the limits. Mark Oswald piloted the Petosa Brothers Dodge to an all-time-best speed of 293.06 and was within two-thousandths of upsetting eventual race winner Pedregon in the second round, but he broke a connecting rod in the process, which led to a huge fire that destroyed the car.

Pedregon came to life with a 5.09 in the semi's to defeat defending event champ Al Hofmann and set a final-round match against Force, who ran a 5.10 to end Bolger's Cinderella race in the same round.

Force, who had not conceded his championship to Pedregon, was determined to go down swinging. Both cars smoked the tires: Pedregon lit his first, but 100 feet later, Force lost traction, too. Both drivers were in and out of the throttle a half-dozen times, but Pedregon kept his car tracking straight while Force was all over the lane and smacked the guardwall at half-track. Perhaps not aware that he had hit the wall, Force nailed the throttle again and drove into the wall at a 45-degree angle at the 1,000-foot mark. Pedregon smoked by to win with a 7.76 in what easily was the wildest final round of the 1992 season. Pedregon's win, his fifth straight, tied Don Prudhomme's 1976 single-season record.

Pro Stock was tame by comparison. Warren Johnson's 7.109 paced the record field, which featured a then-record 7.216 bump. By earning a berth in the field, Johnson secured his first Winston championship, but he couldn't parlay that success into an event win. Archrival Scott Geoffrion took Johnson out on a huge holeshot in the semifinals, 7.21 to 7.15.

Glidden did not qualify for the field until the last session, where he popped off a career-best 7.14. Geoffrion slapped a monster holeshot on Glidden in the final, .416 to .476, and appeared to be headed to his first win after seven straight runner-ups, but he was denied by a broken transmission and was forced to watch Glidden roar away to his 82nd national event victory.