Dale Pulde, far lane, took on Dave Condit and the L.A. Hooker Mustang at Lions.

My recent mention of upcoming topics brought forth a lot of responses and, as always, some great help.

I’ve been slowly piecing together the story of one of my favorite Funny Cars, Mickey Thompson’s Grand Am – "Thompson’s Torpedo” as some bemusedly labeled it – and have traced its roots from construction of the body in Ron Pellegrini’s Fiberglass Ltd. Shop in Chicago in 1972 to its final rides under the control of Bob Pickett in 1976.

I’ve interviewed its original handler, Dale Pulde, and gotten the story behind the car and interviewed Mike Broome, who was the crew chief for the late Butch Maas, who drove the car in its first official NHRA competition. I’ve interviewed both Larry Arnold – who took over the car from Pulde after his second stint with the car – and Pickett, who took over from Arnold.

I’ve put together a huge collection of images of the car in its different paint schemes (yellow, black, red, U.S. Marines), and I’m pretty much all set to go once I can find the time to piece it all together. Last week, I received great photos from the prolific Bob Snyder of the car when it made its debut – unpainted – at the Last Drag Race at Lions and a bunch of other great photos of the car from Tom Nagy.

I don’t know why this car has fascinated me so – probably because it was different – but I’m looking forward to piecing together all of my notes and completing the puzzle with the scores of photos to choose from.

The mention of a piece on “Capt. Jack” McClure of rocket go-kart fame thrilled Insider regular Gary Crumrine with giddiness.

“Oh boy, I can’t wait. Of all the nutcase daredevils that have lived and sometimes died during my lifetime, I place 'Capt. Jack' right up there with Evel Knievel at the top on my list,” he wrote. “I saw both perform live growing up, with Evel crashing at Kaukauna, Wis., and after tumbling ended up sitting up at the end of the track. Dazed, but alive.

“ 'Capt. Jack' was a trip with the kart. I can’t believe how much the tires grew to where they looked like 45s on wheels. You had to be quick to turn your head or you would miss him going by.”

I’ve actually had my McClure interview in the can since last winter and was stunned to see him give an almost identical interview to another writer (I don’t fault him; he was just telling his story to another eager listener), so I gave myself a six-month moratorium on publishing my version so that no one would think I’d cribbed from the other story.

McClure was full of great stories and had a colorful way of telling them, and I’m also looking forward to piecing that one together this summer. I have about 40 great photos to illustrate it.

After the Norwalk event in about 10 days, I’m done traveling for the summer – until Indy – so that will let me catch up on some of this stuff after attending five of the season’s first eight events.

I hope that being home I’ll also get a chance very soon to see the completed Tom McEwen hauler that Don Prudhomme and his team have lovingly restored. I first reported on it last July right after Prudhomme and company had tracked it down after months of searching, and to compare it to the images of the truck in its 1972 glory, you’d swear you entered a time machine.

As most of you know, Prudhomme’s truck was owned and used by Richard Petty before it became part of the Hot Wheels entourage, and McEwen’s truck is an ex-Sox & Martin machine. Drag racing’s other factoid-flinging Phil – "Flyin’ Phil” Elliott – sent me this great shot he came across while doing other research. “It was so similar to the angle of one you just posted of the nearly completed truck,” he marveled. It shows the famed Sox & Martin Duster on the back of the red truck in the pits, location unknown. It’s a great shot of the way it looked before it was Hot Wheels-ified.

The clamor over the McEwen truck caused reader Gary LeBoeuf to ask, “Is it open season on ramp-truck pictures again?” referring to the months-long ramp-truck thread that pretty much consumed this column last July and August. If you’re a fan of ramp trucks – and who isn’t – use the expandable navigation at right to go back to July 2010 and August 2010. Good stuff there. And, no, Gary, we’re not driving down that road again (I think).

Roger Lee's original model of the M&R Special fittingly posed in a Lions diorama

I heard this week from Roger Lee, whom many of you will recall from the column I did about his 1/16th-scale brass model of Ron "Big Yohns" Johnson's Shubert/Herbert front-engine dragster.

His latest project is of a significantly larger scale: He has been given permission by the families of Sid Masters and Rick Richter to build a re-creation of the famed Masters & Richter Top Fuel dragster, circa 1963. Richter passed away a few years ago at age 91 preceded by Masters and driver “Big Bob” Haines.

Lee, who received approval from Masters’ wife, Edna, and Richter’s daughter Betty Richter Grandt, previously modeled the car in small scale and is excited about making the full-size version.

“To bring back a Top Fueler like the M&R Special has brought back a lot of great stories already from Edna Masters and Betty Richter Grandt, family history,” he said.

Steve Gibbs reminisced, “The Masters & Richter guys were definitely hard-core when they were hitting it. They had a successful trucking business and were not afraid to spend money. When I visited their shop in ’61 or ’62, they had a stockpile of parts like I had never seen in that era. They were considered ‘old guys’ back then and probably were compared to everyone else. I’m guessing they were in their 50s at that time. I’ve been told they would take the car out to Fremont on weekdays and push it as hard as it would go just for the sheer enjoyment of making it go fast.”

Throughout the years, there has been a lot of debate as to whether the original M&R car was used in the film More American Graffiti, the drag racing portions of which were filmed at Fremont. I have not heard the definitive answer on this, although the car shown in the bottom photo certainly looks like the photo of the M&R car at Fremont in 1963.

Digging around for an answer, I came across this page, on the Internet Movie Cars Database, which shows all of the cars used in that film. It’s a pretty cool page. They label the car as “custom-built Fuller,” and, indeed, the original was crafted by Kent Fuller. This version, however, certainly looks like it has a longer wheelbase than the 1963 car. I’m certain that one of you has the answer.

OK, kids, that’s it for today. I’ll see you later this week.
 

Any trip to Englishtown is steeped in history — the names of heroes such as “Jungle Jim” Liberman and Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney are always invoked. The vast majority of the nitro racers who compete annually always tip their hats to the event’s rich tradition and talk about how a win at the event is considered a true feather in the cap. That goes all the way from veterans and students of the sport such as Larry Dixon and Jack Beckman to newcomers on the nitro scene such as Spencer Massey and even native New Jerseyite Paul Lee, the driver of Jim Dunn’s Funny Car, who attended his first E-town in the 7th grade, in 1974, just in time to see “Jungle’s” full-track wheelie. “That hooked me for life,” Lee told me Sunday morning. He won his hometown race in Top Alcohol Funny Car in 2004.

With 42 years of history, the event has been won by some of the sport’s biggest names, including Liberman, Garlits, Muldowney, Don Prudhomme, Tom McEwen, Bill Jenkins, Joe Amato, Kenny Bernstein, Darrell Gwynn, Gary Beck, Dick LaHaie, Gary Ormsby, Raymond Beadle, John Force, Richard Tharp, Dale Armstrong, Bob Glidden, Lee Shepherd, Warren Johnson, Jeg Coughlin Jr., Greg Anderson, Frank Iaconio, Wayne Gapp, Jeb Allen, Don Schumacher, Pete Robinson, Gene Snow, Leroy Goldstein, Dick Landy, Don Nicholson, and many, many more.

The moment that many had been waiting for ... the ramp bed goes on

The nearly completed package ... looks amazing!

McEwen won the only Top Fuel trophy of his NHRA career at this event in 1991 — he had been runner-up to Allen in 1972 and to Prudhomme in Funny Car in 1976 — and I single him out because of the photos here that Skip Allum sent during the weekend showing the progress of the red McEwen Hot Wheels ramp truck hauler that Prudhomme — a six-time E-town winner in Funny Car (plus wins as an owner with Dixon and Tommy Johnson Jr.) — Willie Wolter, and the team are restoring as a matching bookend to the yellow hauler that Prudhomme restored a couple of years ago.

After an end-to-end restoration, repair, and resurrection, the truck is quickly nearing completion. The ramp bed was finally mounted on the Dodge chassis, and it’s really beginning to look like something.

“It’s not totally done yet,” he cautioned. “We still have to put on all the hinges and handles for the storage bays, run the wiring, install the exterior running lights and turn signals, and some other small details.”

Where the yellow truck carries Prudhomme’s famed ’Cuda, the “new” truck will carry the McEwen Duster that Prudhomme already owns — a car that was re-created a few years ago to salute the 35th Hot Wheels anniversary celebration — which will lose its current blue paint in favor of red and will ride piggyback on the red truck.

Although an official debut has not been nailed down, Allum said that there’s an outside chance that it could be completed in time for the L.A. Roadster Show, where Prudhomme will be the grand marshal again this year.

(Above) With the Army Arrow behind him, "Snake" obliges his fans. (Below) Prudhomme and longtime pal Leong soak in the Mopar love.  (Darren Jacobs photos)

I spoke this morning to Prudhomme, who had just gotten back from the Midwest Mopars in the Park national car show in Farmington, Minn., where he and the Army Plymouth Arrow made an appearance. “Snake’s” lifelong good pal and fellow Mopar icon Roland Leong joined him on the trip.

“It was a fun show,” he said. “Since I’ve been retired, there’s all kinds of stuff going on that I never had a chance to do. I find it interesting the amount of people who were Hot Wheels collectors back in the day who remember how I started with Mopar way back then.”

The restoration of the Dodge ramp trucks, obviously, has done nothing but further warm their hearts, and he’s confident that the McEwen truck will be as warmly received as his own.

“It’s been a real fun project that’s about completed, and it’s over the top,” he said enthusiastically. “It was a lot harder than my truck because it was in worse shape, so we had to do a frame-off kind of job and all of the wiring because it really needed it.

“Now that’s it’s almost done and I see the two trucks together, it’s like, ‘What the hell have I done?’ Before, the trucks were just tools to get us back and forth to the races. Now it’s something else; it’s almost too nice to drive.”

So, what’s next on “the Snake’s” list?

“Boy, nothing to this extent,” he said, laughing. “In fact, I don’t really want to grow the collection; I actually want to start weeding it out a little bit.”

And, to that end, later this year, the Skoal Top Fuel dragster that Massey piloted in his rookie of the year campaign will go on the auction block at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Las Vegas Sept. 22-24. Prior to the sale, the dragster will be displayed at the Barrett-Jackson Orange County (Calif.) auction June 24-26.

Being as it’s also the last race car owned or campaigned by Prudhomme during his Hall of Fame career, it certainly could catch the eye of a collector. On the other hand, it’s also a turnkey, ready-to-run race-winning dragster.

“I hope it goes to some collector; I’d hate to see someone race it again,” he said. “You just have to know that whatever collection someone has, this will be the first car everyone will walk up to. It’s so different from everything else, a great big brute of a car with lines and fuel pumps and gauges and flow controls and computers. You don’t realize how unique it is until you walk up to it and see what goes in to making 7,000 horsepower.

“It’s the real deal. I know the guys at Barrett real well, and we thought that because Las Vegas was the last place Spencer won with the car, it’s the perfect place to auction it, exactly the way it came off the track.”

Of course, the car he’d love to get back is the great Army Monza, but that’s definitely not going to happen. It’s still at the National Automobile Museum (The Harrah Collection) in Reno, Nev., with the original KB block in it, and they ain’t giving it back.

“Believe me, I’ve tried several times,” he said, “but they’re not going to let it go.”

Prudhomme, of course, famously traded the car to Harrah’s for a Ferrari 308 GTB that’s long gone. “At the time, I thought I got the best end of the deal. Boy, was I wrong.”

And don’t look for him to have any interest in a repop. “I’m not big on re-creations; I want the real deal,” he said firmly. “That’s what gets me going.”

Us, too. Can’t wait to see the red hauler in person.

Because of my E-town trip and management meetings Thursday and Friday, this will be this week’s lone column. I have some cool stuff in the works, including my long-promised story about the Mickey Thompson Grand Am — I finally was able to get in touch with its last driver, Bob Pickett, who also has an interesting career story that I will share in the future — as well as an in-depth look back at Capt. Jack McClure of rocket go-kart fame, more OCIR home movies, and a lot more, so stay tuned.
 

Quite a few of you applauded my tongue-in-cheek strikethrough "mistake" in referring to the annual event in Englishtown as the Summernationals, which, of course, now is the name of the recently completed event in Topeka. I'd never make such a mistake purposefully, but it opens the door to today's column, in which I'll try to follow the twisting and turning evolution of several eternally entwined events: the Supernationals, Summernationals, and Springnationals.

Attacking this multiheaded history lesson is like going after a hydra … you have to choose where to start, so I guess I’ll do the easiest thing and start at the beginning.

The first Summernationals was held in York, Pa., in 1970.

The first Summernationals was held in 1970, but its debut was not at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park --hereinafter known as OBTRP, which, in fact, originally was known as Madison Township Raceway Park, hereinafter known as MTRP, neither of which is in Englishtown --  but rather at York U.S. 30 in York, Pa. The event moved to its current home the following year and has been there ever since.

OK, stick with me because here's where the story begins coiling around itself. Actually, the Summernationals was not MTRP's first event at all – it hosted the NHRA Springnationals in 1968 after it moved from Bristol and before it moved to Dallas and then to Columbus and then to Houston, where at one time an event called the Supernationals was held in the same year that OBTRP held an event of the same name.

Confused yet? Good.

Looping back, MTRP became OBTRP simply because the town changed its name. According to track owner David Napp (an Insider follower!), in 1975, the town's governing body opted for a more quaint (read: developer friendly) name during the suburbs-building boom, so because Madison Township no longer existed, the track had to change its name to simply Raceway Park and became, the best that I could tell, OBTRP in 1986. And although we refer to the East Coast acceleration shrine as "Englishtown," no part of the track resides in Englishtown, but if you stick your big toe onto Pension Road just outside the east gate, you will be in Englishtown. The track's property line is on the border between the towns of Old Bridge Township and Englishtown, which also is the county line between Middlesex and Monmouth counties. However, because the track is about as geographically distant from the Madison/Old Bridge post office as possible, the track was assigned an Englishtown mailing address, hence the confusion.

OK, so if you’re following this, MTRP had the Springnationals for one year – 1968 – then had to wait until 1971 to get back on to the national event calendar with the Summernationals. All was well and good (and hot and humid) in New Jersey from 1971 until 1993, when the event was moved from sweltering July to May, leapfrogging ahead of the Columbus-based Springnationals. Not willing to face the wrath of Mother Nature for putting her seasons out of order, the event became the Mopar Parts Nationals and stayed that way until 2000, when Matco took over sponsorship of the event. At that point, it became the Matco Spring SuperNationals.

Interestingly enough, by that time, the Springnationals name was on the shelf after Pontiac bought title-rights sponsorship to the Columbus event (which, of course, is not in Columbus but rather Hebron), but even though there wouldn’t have any longer been a summer-before-spring climactic conundrum, summer doesn’t begin until June 21, so the New Jersey race couldn’t have it back.

The Supernationals merged with the World Finals in 1974.

The race became the Spring SuperNationals (capital N, more on that later) because Matco also was the sponsor of another Supernationals, in Houston that same year, but that race was not called the Matco Fall SuperNationals (though the venerable Fallnats name would return soon enough at another venue).

Whew.

The Supernationals, of course, also was a retread in that it initially had been attached to the performance-laced event held at year's end at Ontario Motor Speedway in California from 1970 through 1973 before it merged with the World Finals in 1974 after the Finals moved from Amarillo, Texas, after stops in Dallas (during which time it hosted the Springnationals and Finals, 1969-70) and Tulsa, Okla.

OK, so where was I?

Oh yeah. The Supernationals name lay dormant from 1974 until 1988, when it was resurrected and attached to the new event in Houston, which initially was held in the fall but moved to the spring the next year. All was well and good (and all Texany) in Houston until Slick 50, a new player on the scene with its sponsorship of the Slick 50 300-mph Club, bought title rights to the event and renamed it the Slick 50 Nationals and sent the Supernationals back into mothballs.

When NHRA added a second event to the calendar in Houston and Dallas in 1997, the Supernationals came out of hibernation for the fall event in Houston. The dual-Supernationals issue became moot the following year when the second Texas events (spring in Dallas, fall in Houston) were dropped from the schedule, and the SuperNationals name has remained on the New Jersey event since. To further muddy the issue, the new event logo was designed with a capital N in the middle, and we began referring in print to the event as the SuperNationals, which may have been done to separate it from the original Supernationals. Even though the current logo is in all capital letters, we're still calling it the SuperNationals.

Got it?

In the meantime, the Summernationals name returned to the docket in 2002, now attached to the event in Topeka and changed to two words: Summer Nationals. The following year, Houston gobbled up the Springnationals name (also logo-modified to be Spring Nationals) to return the NHRA calendar to its four-season complement because, starting in 1999, that fall Dallas date had incorporated the Fallnationals into its event name, giving that seasonal name its third home following its 1975-80 run in Seattle and 1985-89 reign in Phoenix. In 2009-10, our fine friends at O'Reilly Auto Parts sponsored all four seasonal events -- the Winternationals, Spring Nationals, Summer Nationals, and Fall Nationals – but now sponsor just the Winters and Springs of those four events.

OK, so now I'm sure you're asking yourself, "Self, if Topeka can have the Summer Nationals in May, why can’t Englishtown have it back now that their event is in June?" Short answer: I don't know. I do know that the track would love to have it back, but, then again, Heartland Park Topeka has been building on the equity of that name with its regional fans for nearly a decade, so it hardly seems fair to take it away. Maybe we have the Midwest Summer Nationals and the Eastern Summernationals?

I know I'm confused (which is a bad thing when you're supposed to jump on an airplane the following day), but I'm looking forward to my trip to the Garden State. I have so many fond memories of the track, especially in the 1980s when it was (out of necessity more than anything, I’d guess) one of the few tracks on the tour with night qualifying.

You don’t have to be a super historian to be able to dash off a long list of amazing things that have happened at the track throughout the years, and I'm SuperCertain that this year will be no exception. We'll have our Interactive live coverage going there as well as our popular new photo blog to keep everyone up to speed, so drop by and see us.

I'll be back here sometime next week with a new column, but it might not be until midweek depending on travel, deadlines, etc. Thanks for following along.
 

At this time next week, I'll be at one of my favorite places in the drag racing world, Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown for the annual Summernationals SuperNationals. (Still struggle with that one, and don't even get me started on SuperNationals.) As usual on my race weekends, due to travel, I'll have only one column next week for you (and because Monday is Memorial Day, it might not be until Wednesday), then head off for the world where "the other side sucks" (no matter which side you’re on), where magically crazy things happen. Jim Liberman won his only NHRA Funny Car title there in 1975, the same year Jim Bucher won Top Fuel with his Chevy Rat motor. Speaking of rats, how about what happened to the swampy one there in 1986? Maybe this year I'll even see the magic rat drive his sleek machine over the Jersey state line. Could happen.

Today's column actually begins officially (now) not with rats but with a snake and a story I forgot to share from Don Prudhomme’s surprise birthday party at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum. It came courtesy of master illustrator/artist Kenny Youngblood, one of those who offered his thoughts to the group after the main roast.

Youngblood, whose paint and airbrush work adorned many a Funny Car in the 1970s, had the honor of creating the now-iconic paint scheme for Prudhomme’s vaunted Army Monza, but he had a dilemma when it came to the famous logo that “the Snake” had been using. The graphic was going on the hood and flanks, and the old snake just didn’t sit right with Youngblood.

“We were working on the car with Bob Kachler; there was only one bone of contention, which was the snake graphic,” he remembered. “On the Hot Wheels car, the snake was powder blue with polka dots. So I came up with this bad-ass Army theme and thinking that I couldn’t put that [polka-dotted] snake on there. So I came up with the stars-and-stripes snake.

“Kachler sent it to Prudhomme, but I never heard back from him. I finally called him and asked if he’d seen it. He said, ‘Yeah, man, but people really like that polka-dotted snake.’ He didn’t want to go for it. I ended up painting the car and lettering it at my house. The last thing was the snake, and I told him, ‘Don, we are going to put this stars-and-stripes snake on the car or I’m done.’ He told me OK, but if nobody liked it, it was my fault. I put it on, and it was a big hit. A couple of years later, we did the Pepsi Challenger car and wanted to update the snake to the flat graphic. I designed it and sent it to him, and he starts off with, ‘I dunno, man,’ then paused and said, ‘Y’know, we had this same conversation a couple of years ago. Just do what you want to do.’ ” So he did.

Kenny Youngblood sent this photo of his injected fueler at Irwindale. Nice piece!

Youngblood is well-known and highly respected for his work in bringing the dragstrip to canvas, but he also drove for a short time and even lined up against Prudhomme one time in 1967 at Fremont Dragstrip.

“In my very short driving career, I actually raced ‘the Snake’ once with my injected dragster,” he told the audience at the Prudhomme party. “It was at Fremont at a PDA race. We were in line, and Lou Baney comes over and says, ‘Hey, Kenny, can we cut in front of you?’ I said sure, so they put the Shelby Super Snake in front of me, and I ended up racing him on a qualifying pass. I’m at Fremont racing ‘the Snake,’ and I’m all pumped up. The light comes on, and I leave on him. ‘God, I just left on “the Snake!” ’ but he didn’t care because it was just a qualifying run. At about 60 feet, it was like the fricking motor fell out of my car as he smokes by me to set low e.t.”

While I was looking for photos to accompany the note on the Prudhomme logos, I came across these pretty funny images on the Web of a fan who took his love of Prudhomme and the Army cars to the nth degree by painting his street car in the very distinctive colors.

It’s a Camaro, of course, which none of “the Snake’s” Army cars were (they were, in order, Vega, Barracuda, Monza, Arrow, and Horizon), but it’s still pretty cool. I couldn’t find the owner’s name (I’m sure he will find me), but he did a great job of mimicking the distinctive paint scheme, a design that I would have no problem arguing is the most distinct and famous in drag racing history.
 

I've also been holding on to these pics for a couple of weeks, waiting for place to show them off. They landed in my email box the Friday I was headed to Atlanta, and even a quick view on the magical iPhone was enough to get my juices flowing.

They are from Dennis Mothershed, who sent them at the request of Austin and Lisa Coil. Funny Car's all-time winningest crew chief has kept a pretty low profile since leaving John Force Racing at the end of last season, but he hasn’t been idle.

What you see at right is the reunification of the fabled trio of John Farkonas, Coil, and Pat Minick, the original Chi-Town Hustler team, who gathered May 4 at a private museum in the Midwest to view their restored P&G-built '69 Dodge Charger. When it was introduced, the offset chassis was one of the most groundbreaking designs of its time. The track-long burnouts and high-win ratio instantly made the team a crowd favorite. The three had not been together since their joint induction into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame at the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing in 1989.

Very cool stuff indeed.

 

The Beebe brothers fielded the Dodge Fever Funny Car in 1970. Dave is behind the wheel; that's Tim at left.

After reporting on the death of Dick Rosberg, I was pleased to hear from David Beebe. No, not Funny Car-driving Dave Beebe, but his nephew David Beebe. Yeah, I know. The younger Beebe had written to ask for more information on Rosberg, who had driven for his other uncle, Tim, in the Fighting Irish Funny Car.

And it turns out that the Beebe Bros. we all know from their wondrous quarter-mile exploits throughout the years aren’t the only Beebe brothers.

Merrill and Francis Beebe begat nine children: sons Tim, Dave, Jerry, Roy, Richard, and James and daughters Ruth, Margaret, and Jeannie. Jerry is the father of the second David.

"Yes, a family of nine children," he said. "As you might imagine, Thanksgiving gatherings were … eventful. We lost my grandparents a few years ago. I’m sure it’s been longer than I think; time flies. Other than that, the whole family is alive and healthy. All of them are natural engineers. They are all very humble, and if you saw them on the street, you would have no clue of the contribution they made to the sport of drag racing in its early days."

He also spoke of the sad feeling we all have about the mounting losses our sport has suffered. "I know more losses are coming," he acknowledged. "They always have the same impact. I rewind all the way back to Lions or Carlsbad or Irwindale or OCIR or Riverside or Pomona or Fremont or Phoenix or Woodburn, where did I see (fill in the name of lost hero) last? I was just a kid, and they almost never remember me, but I sure do remember them."

Earlier this week, we had delved into the origin of the nicknames bestowed upon Rosberg ("Whale Belly") and Tim Beebe ("Chops") and even Tim's then-wife, Suzy ("Zerk"), but I never knew that the senior Dave had a nickname: "King." Now, I know that every single one of you out there is spitting out your coffee or otherwise rolling your eyes and invoking Jerry Ruth's name.

"Dave’s nickname is from pure ego," reported younger Dave. "Dave was 'The King' of everybody! He was well-known for walking through the staging lanes and trying to get into his opponents' head. It wasn’t just racing the track for him. Dave still fields an e.t. car that his son Daniel drives. He has mellowed quite a bit."

Speaking of nicknames, I need to direct you (once again) to the Ewald brothers' We Did It For Love website to view the impressive list of historic driver nicknames that they've assembled. It's definitely very cool: www.wdifl.com/driver-nicknames.html.

OK, that's it. Enjoy your weekend, and take time Monday to remember the heroic and the fallen, even if they never made a pass down the track.