I don't get out as much as I used to in my pre-big-boss days when it wasn't uncommon for me to hit well over half of the stops on the national event tour, but they still do let me out of my cage every now and then. Like every good citizen, I have a camera everywhere I go because it's built right into my cell phone, and I chronicled a few of my journeys and experiences this year. With the season now complete and me deskbound for the next three months, I thought I'd trot out this little collection of small-scale pics to show you how my year went. No cell phones were harmed in the making of this column. Here we go ...

Well, unlike this past weekend, February in Pomona could be described in one word: wet. I have a few other words for it, but let's stick with that one. Thursday's qualifying rained out. Friday's qualifying rained out. We actually got in a session Saturday morning but lost Saturday afternoon to more of Mother Nature's moisture. My parking pass also became quite saturated yet proved an appropriate image for the weekend. 

After a four-hour Sunday morning delay, we actually got in the first rounds of Top Fuel and Funny Car and two of the eight first-round pairings in Pro Stock before rain brought an end to the day's activity. We tried again Monday but got completely rained out, but I did spy the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile on the drive home down Arrow Highway. Hot dog!

We didn't finish the race until Tuesday. We were glad we finally got 'er in the books, but it was only the start of a long season of sitting around watching the rain fall.

A month later, I was in Gainesville after a dizzying series of travel woes (click here and scroll to the third segment), where, despite the staffwide horror stories of the past two decades that have been astutely attributed to "The Curse of the Gators," it actually didn't rain. Maybe Mother Nature had the week off or something. Not only did it not rain, but no one that I knew got a speeding ticket on Highway 301;  I'm not sure which is the bigger accomplishment. As we rolled outta town Monday morning up Speedway 301 – I mean Highway 301 – K-Wade and I even had a chance to stop and shop for trinkets for our kids at the kitschy Florida Souvenir Stand along 301. The kids got Florida playing cards, a grandson got a Nemo-themed Florida T-shirt, and no one (despite much temptation) ended up with a dried alligator-foot paperweight. Maybe next year.

Less than two weeks later, I was off to Houston, where even monsoon-like rain upon our arrival and a rain-shortened day Friday (or even photog Jerry Foss' speeding ticket) couldn't dampen the thrill of our behind-the-scenes tour at NASA, courtesy of longtime e-mail pal and Insider fan Todd Bailey. Bailey has worked for NASA at the Johnson Space Center for 20 years, most lately at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (the NBL, as insiders call it), a ginormous swimming pool (40 feet deep, 202 feet wide, and 101 feet across filled with 6.2 million gallons of water) where astronauts practice spacewalks on full-size mock-ups in full space-suit regalia in the simulated weightlessness.

We got to meet and have our photos taken with space-shuttle veteran Michael Foreman, a Navy captain who was on STS-123 Endeavor in March 2008 and just the other day blasted back into space aboard STS-129 Atlantis. We checked out Rocket Park and took refuge from a driving rain inside the huge building that houses a full-size mock-up of a Saturn V rocket. It's a full 36 stories tall and then some. We visited the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, filled with various hatches, airlocks, and other components for astronauts to train with and, had it not been for a mission currently in space, could have flown one of the space-shuttle simulators. Like I said earlier, there's always next year.

You can read my recap of our space adventure and see a bunch of other outta-this-world pics here.

 
When I finally did hit Chicago six weeks later, racers whom I've known for more than 25 years walked right by me in the pits without even glancing my way. I was the invisible man. It wasn't until some of them were forced to confront me face to face in the media center that I got the double takes and the "What, did you lose a bet?" comments that I so expected. Surprisingly, I didn't get hassled by any security types for the remainder of the year despite my hard-card credential showing that big ol' mustache, and, perhaps even more thankfully, I wasn't detained at any airport security posts nor did I end up on any watch lists. (Maybe next year.)

A week and a half after seeing his new driver, Spencer Massey, win his first Top Fuel crown in Chicago (where -- go figure --  it rained Saturday and Sunday), Don Prudhomme played gracious host to me and Photo Editor Teresa Long for a dream story for this lifelong "Snake" fan. He has accumulated quite a collection of his old race cars and agreed to let T.L. and me come down to his Vista, Calif., shop and roll them out for a photo shoot for National DRAGSTER.

Not only did I get the full guided tour and first-person remembrances of this historic icon, but I also got to help "the Snake" push the cars around the parking lot and actually sit behind the wheel of the fabled white Barracuda. You can read the story of our day here.

The topper to a great day was a ride with "Snake" to lunch in his newly (and lovingly) restored Dodge D-100 ramp truck with the big 'ol yellow Hot Wheels Cuda strapped to its back. You can check out a quick video of that ride above and see what it's like to ride shotgun with Prudhomme.

We landed, absorbed the breaking news that Michael Jackson had suffered a heart attack, and (stop me if you've heard this before) soon found ourselves in the eye of a deluge. We barely made it to the rental car before the skies let loose in a Noah's Ark-worthy blast. The highway was at a near standstill, so we pulled off for a bite and then learned that the King of Pop had left us.

It was a rough week for celebrities. On the way there, we heard that Farrah Fawcett had died and not long after that super pitchman Billy Mays had died, too. Ironically, I had read a profile of Mays on the flight in the American Airlines magazine. I snapped this photo of the magazine on the way home. We'll need some Mighty MendIt to fix the holes in our hearts.

We were treated to great racing as well as one of the trademark Bader family fireworks shows Friday night. They probably spend more money on this end-of-night add-on to the show than some promoters do on their entire advertising budget, but you seldom hear of a fan leaving the Norwalk facility who didn't think he got his money's worth and then some.

It was a heckuva lot better Friday than the one we experienced the year before in Norwalk when water continually seeped up through cracks in the top end and all manner of drainage -- from Top Alcohol Funny Car star Frank Manzo manning a backhoe to Bader Sr. drilling relief holes in the racing surface -- couldn't save the day. (You can relieve that not-so-great day here.)
 
It always seems to rain in Ohio in June -- I remember well that it rained in 1984, postponing my first rides in the Mazi Opel -- and although this year was better than last, we still were betrayed again by Mother Nature.

We fought the rain on and off in Norwalk, including Sunday morning. The forecast looked terrible coming into Sunday, then it miraculously cleared up, and all of the weather Web sites were saying we were fine, even though it was lightly misting during pre-race.

Billy Jr. asked me what I knew about the forecast, and I shared with him what I had heard, which he then shared with a large group of fans bordering the stage while he thanked them for attending the event. I think he said something like, "Don't worry about this mist; I have it on good authority that this will blow through pretty quick, and then we're good for the rest of the day." Of course, within a few minutes, it poured and poured, soaking the track and delaying the start of eliminations by about 90 minutes, and I have the photographic proof below. Sorry, Billy.

Some things never change.

I hit the friendly skies again in September for my 27th straight U.S. Nationals, where, of course, it rained. The wet stuff came down Sunday morning and cost us a qualifying session. I snapped the photo below from the third floor of the Parks Tower, and I don't know if there's a sadder site in all of drag racing than a wet track in Indy. Am I wrong?

Fortunately, the wet stuff was relatively short-lived, and we made history there with Ashley Force Hood's first Funny Car win.

So, it was with great chagrin that I, Waldron, and K-Wade observed this scary-looking set of clouds upon landing – dig that crazy upside-down triangle thing in the middle – that had me feeling like I was in the middle of an episode of Storm Chasers. Unfortunately, instead of a tornado-proof, armored-car-like TIV (tornado intercept vehicle; what a riot that thing is), I was taking my first ride in a lightweight little Toyota hybrid (see photos below), complete with a video-game-like instrument panel and a bird-like appetite for gasoline. Hey, my posse may have been getting laughed at, but we were rolling green and helping reduce our carbon footprint. Either that or they were out of Mustangs; maybe next year.

Other than our Thursday travel day, it didn't rain in Dallas (yeah!).

A traditional highlight for me in Dallas is the opportunity to take in a little other motorsports action, in the form of an annual trip to Cowtown Speedway in Kennedale, about a half-hour ride from the Plex.

Cowtown ("the Fastest Lil' Dirt Track In Texas!") is right across the street from that eighth-mile birthplace of E.T. champions, Texas Raceway, and always seems to have a big show on the same weekend as our Dallas event. This year, it was a full-boat show of everything from winged sprint cars to "bomber" street-type cars and even the small mini sprints, which are powered by 200cc motorcycle engines. Jeromy Hefler, of the legendary Texas drag racing clan, a longtime Division 4 hitter and Texas Raceway mainstay, was racing that night, so it was cool to have someone to root for. He didn't win, but, hey, maybe next year.

 
We caught two days of great action, rooted for our faves as well as the special-edition Shaun Carlson memorial car of Sam Hubinette, and said goodbye to our new friends on that circuit until next year.

And so was this year (despite the rain). Hope you enjoyed the pics. I'll see ya later this week.
 

Because it was so popular and came with a ton of great follow-up from the Insider Nation, I decided to reprint it here, including my original comments in bold and additional information in italic.

Enjoy!

Here's how those early dragsters got their nickname; the driver sat behind the rear tires like a rock in a slingshot.

A couple of engines, four tires, a little extra tubing, a welder, and there's little that early drag racers couldn't -- and didn't -- try.

I looooooooove this shot. The photographer did such a great job of exposing it and allowing you to see every detail, nut, and bolt on the blower. Arthur Trim tells me that this is Connie Kalitta's Logghe-chassised Ford-powered digger, photographed on a chassis dyno in one of Ford's labs.

A few people pointed out that the oil-filler cap on the valve cover of Kalitta's SOHC mill was missing in the shot.

Indy is a place where magical things happen. Look closely, and you can see that "Big John's" battle-scarred 'Cuda has all four tires off the ground.

The great photo of "Big John" Mazmanian's 'Cuda with four-wheel liftoff in Indy was shot by Larry "Max" Maxwell of L&M Photos according to Norman Blake. Also, Bill Burns, in responding to my observation that the car was battle-scarred, wrote, "I’m not positive, but I believe the battle scars are from the famous 'net' at the end of Green Valley Raceway in Texas. There was a big race there the week before Indy one year, and several of the California cars stopped by on their way east. It was the most beautiful Funny Car I had ever seen before its trip over the hill and into the net there."

Not all new ideas were good ones; Exhibit A is Noel Black's two-engine, four-wheel-drive Top Fueler from 1967.

Dan Tuttle dropped me a line to say that Noel Black's twin-engine car actually wasn't a Top Fuel car but that it was a Bonneville Streamliner nicknamed the Rhinoceros, in which he was later killed. "Reportedly, the car was well above 400 when it lost its belly pan," he said. "Apparently, [this photo] was another test."

Fabled quarter-mile photog Steve Reyes, who shot the above pic, tells me the unique-looking car was photographed at Sacramento Raceway.

I found mention of the car in "Landspeed Louise" Noeth's book, Bonneville: The Fastest Place on Earth. Here is a picture of the car with bodywork taken by George Callaway. Noeth says the Rhinoceros name came from the body bumps to accommodate the engines.

Drag racing historian Bret Kepner said that the car was created by Black and partner Bert Peterson at their B&N Automotive shop and was never designed to be a dragster at all. "It was purely a land-speed-record vehicle that because of its bizarre chassis and drivetrain configuration needed extensive testing, and the dragstrip was pretty much the only place to do it," he wrote. "Officially known as Motion 1 but dubbed the Rhinoceros when carrying its full body panels, the car crashed at 382 mph during the SCTA SpeedWeek event at Bonneville in 1970. Black died as a result of the crash."

Call me an astute observer, but I reckon that "Big Jim" Dunn was pretty much done for this run at Lions in the rainbow-hued Dunn & Reath digger.

Who says you need four wheels?

"I'll take Scary Fast Tricycles for $500, Alex."

I got a lot of feedback on the three-wheel dragsters along with solid IDs on both. Cliff Morgan and John Pecora wrote to say that the front-engine car belonged to Kenny Ellis, and Steve Gibbs wrote that the rear-engine car was the Cook Bros., Jahns & Hedges entry driven by Jeff Jahns.

Morgan noted that "Ellis was the most famous with an almost conventional front-motor car, which had a tendency to wheelie down the track, especially in the lights." Added Pecora, "Ken is still at it doing fabrication but is stricken with cancer and is fighting with all he has. This photo, I think, is of the third three-wheeler. I built a complete replica of this car for him and gave it to him and son. His son wants to show it off at various events."

Of the other car, Gibbs reminisced, "One of the things that made the sport so appealing in the '50s and '60s was that you never knew what would show up next. The rules were wide open. [This is ] one of the cars that was nonconforming in just about every aspect. It was a rear-engine sidewinder, three-wheeler, using air jacks (à la Pete Robinson) to launch the car ... all with a fuel-burning small Dodge Hemi. It had a body but was not used much. The car had a short life and crashed at 'the Beach.' Driver Jahns got out of it, but it rearranged his nose. I can't imagine how today's tech guys would react if this car were to show up again."

In the same vein, who says you even need four wheels or three wheels? The famed Leffler-Coburn Iron Mistress coupe had six! In a true example of the sum of the parts not being equal to the whole, Neil Leffler and Bill Coburn each took the fuel-burning Hemis from their competition coupes and paired them for this interesting experiment. It wasn't real fast, but it was spectacular.

We've seen lead weights and tubes filled with lead shot as front-end ballast, but a rock? I kid you not. Clearly, the Red Mountain Boys knew how to rock.

A whole host of people surmised – as I did privately – that the circled fan in this scan of Asher's Garlits explosion photo may have been the fan injured by the shrapnel, some of which keen-eyed readers point out can be seen in the photo. Larry Sutton, who was the starter and who waded into the stands to save the fan's life, confirmed to me that that is the general area where he found the injured spectator, whom Lions historian Don Gillespie indentifies as Tim Ditt.

A previous Insider column on Sutton included his heroic efforts to save Ditt's life, but none could have expected that Sutton and Ditt would be reunited nearly 40 years after this infamous moment, a reunion recounted in this Insider column.

The first rule of running against a jet dragster: Always leave first.

Steve Justice reported that this photo features J.D. Zink in Romeo Palamides' Untouchable going off against Don "Mad Dog" Cook at Fremont.

I did a whole follow-up on the Munstermobile thing here, with some outtake photos of the 1965 "race" at Lions and photos of the coach under construction. A munsterously good read.

The driver's reaction in this photo is classic after his blown Fiat puked all over the Lions starting line.

Bob Nielsen was one of several who wrote to say that the great shot of the exploding Fiat features the Magic Muffler Fiat driven by Jim Miles. "This occurred in 1966," he wrote. "This photo was actually taken by Ron Lahr. What was moderately unique about this photo is the superb timing – parts still coming out the bottom of the engine and the car about to run over the oil pan.

"Jere Alhadeff was positioned a little farther downtrack and caught the same engine explosion milliseconds prior to Ron Lahr’s photo. Alhadeff’s photo shows the car engulfed in the engine explosion flames and the oil pan just starting to depart (it is still immediately under the engine)." I also found that photo on The H.A.M.B. forum, as shown here at right.

The original photo also hit home with a reader named Marty, who used to have the pic plastered on his bedroom wall. "I can't believe you have that photo of the guy runnin' over his own crankshaft in the Fiat," he wrote. "I had that hanging in my room as a kid. It's so cool I just laugh like an idiot at it. Do you know if that photo can be bought in a poster form or where it might be found?"

You can buy the pictures at Dave Wallace's super-swell HotRodNostalgia.com site: direct link.

OK, kids, that's it for the recap. I'm going to tune back in to what's going down in Pomona and the crowning of this year's Full Throttle world champs. It's gonna be a barnburner in Top Fuel!

Sure, Ben and Abe had a 200-plus-year head start on me, though I doubt I could have come up with anything as sage as their words. Although I've been at this drag writing business for three decades, I can’t really say that I've created any new words or phrases to add to drag racing's already significant lexicon or single-handedly did something as cool as give a racer his or her famous nickname, but this column has definitely expanded my audience as I find some of the columns reprinted, verbatim, on other Web sites and message boards (that's a real no-no, for the record) or links to this site (much better).

Most recently, a mass e-mailing of one of my columns from last year, a column originally called Fun with Photos, has been making the rounds of nostalgia-themed message boards and mailing lists, many of which I am on. I find it rather amusing when I receive these e-mails with new introductions added to the column or replacing my original, and also a bit flattering. The photos aren't even from our files-- I harvested them from The H.A.M.B. bulletin board -- and added what I thought were interesting captions to them and of interest to the readers of this column and even those not as intimately familiar with our history.

It was interesting to see heroes like Jim Nicoll among those passing it on to his e-mail friends (me included), but the real kick came Sunday night when I received it again from a well-meaning reader who said, "Thought I would forward this e-mail to you. A friend sent it to me, and there is some pretty cool stuff. You may have a lot of this, but in case you don't, here goes."

That's pretty funny when you think about it.

You can find my original posting here, though the formatting there is a little goofy because it was done on the old NHRA.com template that allowed for wider photos, and the photos stick out into the ads now. Clearly, there is a great interest in these photos and the sentiments I attached to them, so I find it worth reprinting. Those who didn't see it the first time through should enjoy it, and those who have or are looking at the e-mails will now have the stories and details that accompany the pics.

In the interest of a better presentation and reclaiming the work, I redid the layout a little bit and added to it because, in the true nature of this column, I received a lot of follow-up information about many of the pics that I ran in subsequent columns. My original caption will be in bold and the additional info (if any) in italic.

There's a lot to take in, so I'll split this into two halves; look for the second part Friday.

Enjoy!

Back in the day, anything was possible. How about an Offy with a side-mounted blower on Ed Donovan's dragster?

Paul Schwan of Cincinnati dropped me a line about Ed Donovan's side-mounted blower, noting, "The 6-71 blower that was originally used was indeed mounted on the side of a 6-71 Detroit Diesel, or before it was Detroit, it was a GM diesel, or affectionately known as a 'Jimmy Diesel.'

"In either a right- or left-hand 6-71, the side of the engine on which the blower was mounted determined either rotation or direction of the engine; therefore, that mount on the Offy was closer to 'stock' than most people realized."

One thing you can safely say about Ed Donovan is that the man was never boring or without a million thoughts racing through his mind.

Nothing says drag racing like way too big of an engine stuffed into too little car; reminds me of the models I used to imagineer as a kid.

Fred Fischbach had no problem ID-ing the owner of the blown Austin Healey as his old friend Norm Cowdrey. "This is from the mid- to late '60s," he wrote. "Norm had the chassis built in San Fernando by a sprint car chassis builder by the name of Rip Erickson. It was powered by a blown small-block, but I don't remember the cubes. The car was an instant NHRA record setter, and as you can see by the picture, a real crowd-pleaser. It was painted at a body shop in the southwest corner of Tony Nancy's complex where Tony lived and had his upholstery shop. The car was a beautiful lime green with large gold metal flake that had been shot up in the air and allowed to settle on it, then clear-coated. The whole package was totally awesome.

"Sometimes when there was no race for Norm to go to, he would unbolt the blower and put it on his Corvette – underdriven, of course -- and we'd go tooling around the Valley; no big deal today, but then -- big deal.Too much fun."

Bill Holland added, "Cowdrey normally did well in one of the eliminator categories at San Fernando Dragway, where the photo was taken. Norm went on to campaign the Blue Fox Camaro Funny Car. He later was involved in a few TAFC deals, one of which was driven to a Wally win at Las Vegas by Rod Alexander ("Wild Bill's" son). Today, Norm plays with vintage road race cars. I chatted with him a few months ago at the races on Coronado Island, where he ran well with an ex-Paul Newman McKee Can-Am car."

Rear slicks churning, front tires grabbing air, and an acrobatic flagman.

Uhhh, dude? I don't think you asked for a big enough head start.

 
"I was all for it," recalled Ivo, "as I running much better than him and also because I used to do all kinds of things like that all the time. I would give stockers big head starts and run them down on the big end – or even bicycles, anything to take the ho-hum out of single runs -- but I would always make sure we put a good enough spread on the handicap to make sure I didn't get beat by mistake! How bad would that be, getting beat by a bicycle? Although this incident ended up to be even worse than that. 

"The rocket engine had a heart attack before we could have the race, so the guy with the kart still really wanted to get a picture with me racing him. Soooooooo, he suggested to just set him on the starting line next to me and get the picture when I took off. It wasn't a movie, so who would know if he were running or not? 'OK, that will work,' I said! But then once again, old Cecil B. De Ivo had to not leave well enough alone. Attempting to make a good idea better (as I always do), I suggested that they put the kart out about 25 feet or so; therefore, I could get up a good plume of smoke behind me to make the picture more dramatic. Wrong!! Here's the shot they were 'supposed' to get!

"I was a victim of my own stupidity, it would seem (again), BUT -- and here comes that 'but' again -- I was right; it did make a great shot, didn't it?"

A wheelstander with everything but the kitchen sink.

Being able to ID a car is one thing, but being able to figure out at which track a photo was taken always requires some skill. Bill Carrell was "99.9 percent sure" that the Shower Power photo was taken at Thompson Drag Raceway in Thompson, Ohio, because of "the trees and their proximity to the track; the signage with roads identified in that area, specifically Ridge Road and Mayfield; I worked there and can tell a shot of that track from almost any angle; and where else but Ohio?"

Dawn Mazi-Hovsepian, Ohio's secondmost famous female Ohioan (behind The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde and probably just ahead of Rona Veney) not only confirmed for me that it was taken at Thompson but also provided the year (1970) and the photographer (Charles Gilchrist). Said Dawn, "Gilchrist notes: 'The engine, a stout fuel-injected small-block Chevy, was turned around in the chassis and ran through a transfer case to the differential. The driver (Randy Davis) sat in the fiberglass tub (no water). This bathtub was quick, made full passes on the rear wheels at ease, and people loved it.' "

Who said snakes can't fly? Prudhomme gets air in the lights in Seattle.

Al Kean, who shared his Seattle memories here not long ago, gets credit for this memorable shot of Don Prudhomme's Hot Wheels 'Cuda on fire and flying through the lights in Seattle at the second annual Hot Wheels Northwest National Open in Seattle in 1971. Prudhomme was racing Dave Condit in the L.A. Hooker Maverick in the final race of the day.

"I was watching everything through my camera’s viewfinder," wrote Kean. "The cars staged and launched. I was following the cars, and I thought I saw flames coming out of 'the Snake’s' windows as he neared the finish line. I remember thinking that it must just be glare off something – he couldn’t really be on fire, could he? I kept following the cars and clicked the shutter when they crossed the finish line. I then took the camera away from my face and looked downtrack to see Prudhomme’s car, with NO body on it, still in a wheelstand. It was at least 300 feet after the finish line before the car’s front wheels returned to earth.

"I had no idea what I had gotten in the photo. I had to wait several days for the color slides to get developed after we got home. It was pretty exciting to finally see the photo that I had taken. It was also exciting getting all the attention afterwards. The photo was published in Hot Rod magazine, Funny Car Pictorial, SIR programs, etc. Then track manager Bill Donor gave me a photo pass the next year, etc. The photo has also been mentioned in TV shows, over SIR’s PA, etc."

Hard to believe that today's Top Fuelers evolved from this; from its whitewall tires to its Rat Fink-like shifter placement, I really dig this car.

Bob Post, author of High Performance, the unofficial bible of drag racing historians everywhere, said he believes this is Bill Martin of Palatka, Fla., shown running on the beach in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1953. "One of three slingshots I know of that pre-dated [Mickey Thompson's]," he noted. "Martin later became quite a well-known boat designer."

In looking at this picture, reader Cliff Morgan added that the body was probably one of the many that came from a fuel tank from an airplane. "Lots of guys used those tanks to create cars for the dry lakes after World War II, both front- and rear-engined versions, and some found their way to the drags. This car used the front section, and I can see the bottom of the car under the engine. Interesting design, and the car looked 'high tech' for its time, probably 1953-54."

I love this shot, taken in the pits at Lions. No, not the neat old flip-top panel wagon -- the lady, dressed in skirt and heels. Priceless.

Steve Gibbs had the ID on this great old photo. "This is the gasser of Dale (he) and Al (her) Kersh, of Modjeska Canyon, Calif. Both are now gone. They were fixtures at SoCal tracks for many years, competing in various brackets, and were truly great people. The interesting thing is that Al was never -- EVER -- dressed any differently. She always looked like she just came from an upscale social event -- classy and in heels."

Byron Stack of Gasser Madness confirmed that this is the Kersh Family A/Gasser. "Memory tells me it was powered by a Mopar wedge motor with homebuilt injection," he wrote. "It was a very cool piece and fun to watch."

Again, it's the people who make this shot. The clown, second from left, doing his "Take the picture already" pose and the other guy still slipping on (or off?) his coat, who's clearly not ready for the shot. And that dragster? Not much traction in those rear meats.

Steve Justice says that the great in-car camera shot was done at Riverside Raceway.

(Above) This is a great shot, too, taken from the cockpit of one of Scotty Fenn's legendary Chassis Research chassis that revolutionized the sport. I took some Photoshop liberties with the original to blur the background as the El Camino tow vehicle was a distraction. Love that steering wheel and big ol' brake handle. (Below) This is Fenn's workshop. That's Fenn at far left overseeing work on some of his K-88 and TE-448 chassis.

Another vintage chassis on this cool twin. Always amazing to me to see how primitive the early driver-protection devices were.

Neal Larson of Walla Walla, Wash., worked with early drag racing hero Jack Moss from Amarillo, Texas, so he knew all about this car, the famed Two Much entry.

"The picture was taken around 1961 or 1962," he wrote. "The car's last race was in Hobbs, N.M. We lost one of the engines, so we pulled one out and made a run with it, but the throttle stuck and rolled over; all was well with Jack, but the dragster was a total mess. The roll cage did its job.

"Jack was a member of the Barons Racing team from Amarillo. Find a Hot Rod magazine from September 1957 and look and see the first Two Much and the rest of the team."

So, today, I'm alone in the Publications building, not to be a martyr or anything but to take advantage of the peace and quiet of a dark and empty office to catch up on some stuff. Project No. 1 is to complete a bunch of writing for the special Web site we'll be launching in the next few weeks in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the Winternationals. As I may have mentioned here, we're also producing a wonderful book to memorialize the special event, chock-full of great old photos, features, and a year-by-year recap of every Winternationals. It should be available before Christmas (stocking stuffer!).

To avoid duplicating the contents of the book on the Web, most notably the recaps and the scores of great photos, the Web site will have a different feel and original content. One of the key elements will be to take advantage of the multimedia potential of the Internet by showcasing a large number of historic Winternationals video clips. It's going to be pretty cool but a lot of work, so I'd better get cracking.

Although I have a full plate, I didn’t want to leave y'all with nothing today (another reason I came in), and I wanted to share what has become a pretty typical thing with this column, and one of the things of which I am most proud. In Tuesday's Fan Fotos edition from Mark Collins, we had a shot of Bennie "the Wizard" Osborn, and Mark wondered what had become of Osborn. Naturally, the Insider Nation was all over it.

One of the first e-mails I got was from Bennie's son, Tony, who assured me that his dad was still very much around and kicking and even enclosed these photos.

"I'm very proud to inform you that my father is doing just fine," he wrote. "He still lives in Sand Springs, Okla., and continues to do mechanic work at his own pace. We have been reliving the past a lot here lately. The championship car that you mentioned for sale was purchased by a gentleman from Tulsa and had it delivered to Dad's shop for a complete AUTHENTIC restoration. Plans are to have the car ready for Bakersfield March 2010 Cacklefest. The WIZARD was at the Hot Rod Reunion in Bakersfield a couple of weeks ago and actually cackled Raymond Godman's Tennessee Bo-Weevil car."

The top photo shows "the Wizard," in the blue and gray striped shirt, with the championship car at a car show on Halloween put on by The Hot Rod Shop in honor of The Tulsa Timing Association. I hope to have a more in-depth look at "the Wizard's" career in a future column.

Our good friend Glenn Menard, president of Texas Motorplex who also maintains the www.division4halloffame.com Web site – Osborn, naturally, is a member of that Hall of Fame -- sent me a link to some great Osborn photos that the man himself had submitted for that site. You can find them here.

Gary Osborn (no relation to Bennie), whose dad ran blown gas dragsters in the 1960s before he partnered with the Sewells and won the 1980 Cajun Nationals with A.J. Seruntine driving, dropped me a note and this photo, which shows Osborn at the Holley NHRA National Hot Rod Reunion in Bowling Green, Ky. Gary was there with Dick Venables, whose front-engine dragster had been restored and is now owned by Rip Wiley. In the photo, from left, are Wiley, Venables, Osborn, and Dick's son, current Al-Anabi Funny Car tuner Dickie.

Tulsan Brian Vermillion, who has an interesting history with Osborn, shared his "Wizard" tale in an e-mail: "Bennie Osborn is alive and well, still living in Sand Springs, in the same house he lived in 40 years ago. He gave up racing in the mid- '70s after his second rear-engine dragster crash and opened up a successful transmission-repair business in his old dragster shop in his backyard.

"I got to interview Bennie at his house over 40 years ago for an eighth-grade speech-class project. Since he was my hero back then, I chose him. He was finishing up his brand-new car for the 1969 season -- I believe it was a Woody Gilmore car -- and I got to sit in it and check things out. For a 14-year-old kid who was ate up with drag racing, it was definitely the thrill of a lifetime. A friend of mine, who is close friends with Bennie, told him this story of me interviewing him, and he remembered me. He even autographed the PR handout that he gave me over 40 years ago, and it still thrilled me today to get it.

National DRAGSTER has a great photo file on the two-time champ, but I especially like this 1970 photo of "the Wizard" enjoying some fine reading material.

"You spoke of the 1967 World Finals. I remember being there with my dad that weekend. I had just turned 12, and the drags were my birthday present. The final AA/FD round almost didn't get run. The skies were as black as I had ever seen them, and it just started to sprinkle as they were beginning to stage. Tree goes green, Bennie gets a slight holeshot and carried it through to the lights. But what I remember was that as soon as the chutes were out (they hadn't even got to the turnoff yet), the skies opened up, and the most godforsaken downpour hit, flooding the track, parking lot (which was a dirt field before the rain), and everything else. But hell, when you are 12, who cares!"

Added Barry Lester, "I live about 20 miles away and pass there almost every weekend and always look over and think I should go see him but never have. I picked up the phone and called him and told him that people were wanting to know where he was. We had a great visit, told him in 1967 he came to Amarillo to race 'Big Daddy.' My buddy and I were staying in the Cowboy motel on Saturday night and going to the races on Sunday. When they pulled that AA/FD in the motel on a flatbed trailer, I almost died! I was over there in a second and was lucky enough to be able to help the mechanic pull the panels off and drop the pan and change oil, which was milky; bored a little to close to the jacket water, he said.
 
"I asked Bennie if it was OK for me to e-mail you; he said, 'Tell them not to send flowers, I am still alive and in the same place.' "

One other quick note on the Texas Fan Fotos: I got a phone call from Gary Clark and an e-mail from Vince Long, who ID'd the car being push-started at Green Valley as belonging to the famed Oklahoma City-based Smith Bros., Frank and Charlie. Charlie drove the famed Plain Vanilla roadster that swept all national event honors in 1964 by winning both the Winternationals and U.S. Nationals, so this probably was Frank in the car, which had a T roadster rather than a Bantam.

Enjoy your weekend; I'll see you next week.
 

Welcome back to Fan Fotos, shots from the private collections of fans everywhere. We're not talking pretty photos taken from the guardrail, but rather those gritty, lightpole-in-the-way, some-guy's-head-in-the-shot images that somehow better reflect our regular treks to the digs.

Today, we reach deep into the heart o' Texas for 10 great shots from Mark Collins of Dallas. Mark started going to the drags in 1964 while in high school. His older brother, Eddie, had been going to the drags at Green Valley Raceway, north of Fort Worth, with his buddies.

"I had been reading all the hot rod magazines and wanted to go check out drag racing, but being the little brother, it was a while before I was allowed to tag along with big brother and his buddies," he said. "That first Saturday night at Green Valley, I was hooked. Thereafter, I must have been at Green Valley Raceway every time they opened the gates. I could not get enough drag racing. The smells, the sounds, the competition, all of it, captured my imagination. I began taking pictures at the races with a six-dollar camera I had had since elementary school. As soon as I could get the film developed, I shared the pictures with my amazed friends at school.

"When I witnessed my first Top Fuel dragster, I thought that nitromethane was the most insane thing I had ever witnessed. The visual and visceral experience was astounding. The fact that the fans could walk right up to the cars and drivers in the pits had great appeal to me. It was easy to rub shoulders with the heroes I watched on the track. It didn't matter if it was a guy from the local gas station or 'Big' himself. Of course, I never really did talk to Garlits because he was too famous. I felt certain he would not be enlightened by a geeky high school kid. Even so, I had a strong desire to get into the driver's seat someday."

In the 1970s, Mark began driving a '23-T Ford roadster with a flathead V-8 built by his friend Ralph Lewis. "Those 12-second e.t.s weren't Top Fueler-type runs, but I was finally burnin' up the strip. We subsequently built a C/D for Competition eliminator and a AA/DA competing in Pro Comp with moderate success. I will always remember the first time we drove into the participant's entrance under the 1974 Winternationals banner. It was hallowed drag racing ground. I felt like I was participating in something special. There we were, just some unknown guys from Texas with a desire to compete on the national level. I'm sure that was the case with many of the other racers, too. Win or lose, I always loved going to the races. I'm still hooked even though I'm only spectating these days."

Here are Mark's 10 favorite Fan Fotos.
 
According to Mark, this cool image of Shirley Muldowney's Funny Car on a ramp truck was taken at Dallas Int'l Motor Speedway (DIMS) during the Springnationals, which would make it late 1971.

Although Muldowney ran almost exclusively in Mustang-bodied floppers (due, no doubt, to crew chief Connie Kalitta's long-running association with Ford), she ran this Plymouth Barracuda at the end of the season after burning up her Bounty Huntress Mustang in a fire at Dragway 42 in Ohio. The car was a loaner from Don Schumacher, one of his former Stardust entries. I couldn't find out which car it was -- whether it was one "the Shoe" himself drove or one of his team cars -- but Muldowney proudly claims that she got it to run both quicker and faster than it did for the Schumacher team.

When I first opened the image at right from Mark's e-mail, I was thoroughly puzzled. This didn't look like any kind of drag racing shot I'd ever seen, fan or otherwise. Mark calls this somewhat humorous photo "Duck," and once he explained it to me, it made sense. "This image was taken in April 1973 at a Top Fuel meet at DIMS. The point of view is from the hot-car push-start lanes at about the 1,000-foot mark of the track. A Top Fuel car had just detonated uptrack, out of sight of the camera. We could see parts in the air, so everybody was ducking for cover. In the seconds following, little pieces rained down, luckily with no injuries. I think the guy pictured worked at the track." Been there, done that.

More than 25 years after Mark snapped this early-1970s photo, Chris "the Golden Greek" Karamesines is still racing. Mark captured the legendary Top Fuel driver checking the spark plugs between rounds, which, in the era before onboard data computers, was part of how these cars were tuned. And, of course, in the days when the teams weren't working in a narrow valley created by a pair of tractor trailers, you could walk right up and snap a great photo like this.

"That full head of hair was still dark in those days," noted Mark. "I remember taking a few photos and getting the evil eye from 'the Greek.' I suppose he didn't like his photo taken. Take note of height and size of the rear wing. No shade, no awnings, and no power tools. And no teardown between rounds. If the plugs look OK, just pour some more nitro in the tank and go again."

Here's another photo from that same May 1965 meet at Green Valley. "This was a Top Fuel meet with a 32-car field," he recalled. "In those days, 32- and even 64-car Top Fuel fields were not unusual. This is the intimidating Vance Hunt fueler. Hunt was a great tuner who always had excellent drivers, Watus Simpson among them. It appears that tiny pressure tank in front wouldn't hold enough fuel for a warm-up in modern fuelers. I recently spoke to Vance at the O'Reilly Fall Nationals at Ennis. He amazed me with the wealth of information he possessed about the current Top Fuel scene. It's always great to see some of the legendary figures of drag racing."

In addition to the aforementioned Simpson, Hunt employed the likes of Ted Arnold, Gary Bailey, Jerry Ellis, J.L. Payne, and some guy you've probably heard of, a young Texan named Kenny Bernstein, who I understand went on to a fair degree of success after his 1966 stint with Hunt. If DragList is correct, this would have been Ellis' ride, which was a Don Garlits chassis.

Mark snapped this photo in April 1973 at DIMS as Bennie "the Wizard" Osborn was climbing into his new rear-engine Top Fueler in the staging lanes. In his slingshot, the Sand Springs, Okla., racer won back-to-back NHRA world championships in 1967 and 1968 at his hometrack in Tulsa, back when the Finals winner was crowned the season champ. Osborn, who never won an NHRA national event away from Tulsa, put it to the big boys in the final at both of those races, beating none other than Don Prudhomme in 1976 and John Mulligan in 1968, denying both what would have been their first world titles.

"Bennie was testing his first rear-engined Top Fueler he built over the winter," recalled Mark. "He simultaneously built the front-engined C/Dragster for my partner Ralph Lewis, which I drove. In fact, he delivered the chassis on this trip, strapping it on the top of his enclosed trailer for the trip from Oklahoma to Texas. I think it was early the following year that 'the Wizard' went on his head in this car in a blowover close to the finish line, and the roll cage kept him from injury. Note the absence of a rear wing. I don't remember why he only had a front-axle wing. Does anyone out there know his status? I do recall that Bennie never cursed that I know of. When someone made him angry, he would call them a 'stinker.' He was always a real gentleman."

I don't know what has become of Osborn, but I know that his championship-winning Top Fueler is still out there; Prudhomme called me a few weeks ago to verify the results of that 1967 Finals because he had somebody trying to sell him the car. Funny, he didn't remember losing that final round. I guess when you've been in as many finals as "the Snake," it's hard to remember any one of them, especially one 42 years ago. Anyone know what became of "the Wizard"?

"Obviously one of the most unique dragsters in history, the Herm Petersen streamliner," noted Mark. "This image is at the 1974 Winternationals. This was my first national event as a participant. Although I didn't qualify in Competition eliminator, I did get to see many of the stars of the sport I had never seen and checked out the California culture."

This great-looking Can Am-inspired Top Fueler of Petersen and partner Sam Fitz made its debut in Pomona that year; the Woody Gilmore-built piece featured a swing-open back deck for easy access to the engine, but, more important, it marked Petersen's return to the cockpit after a horrible crash and fire at Orange County Int’l Raceway the previous July. Petersen was terribly burned – he had second- and third-degree burns over more than 50 percent of his body -- after an axle broke and his dragster overturned. Petersen spent three months in the hospital and almost died twice, but he persevered through the pain and skin-graft operations to bravely return to the cockpit in Pomona. Close friend Denny Bale was quoted in the Kitsap Sun newspaper a few years ago: "We had to lift him in and out of the car. His fingers were all fused. He couldn't hang on to things it hurt him so bad. At the end of a run, he'd have tears in his eyes, the pain was so bad."

Petersen is still out there, a fixture at nostalgia events and the coordinator of a decibel-busting cacklefest contest.

The Kuhl & Olson Da Revell Fast Guys model was the first large-scale (1/16th) Revell model I ever built (it even came with a Carl Olson figure!), so this photo of Mark's, which he says is from Amarillo in 1974, was special to me, too.

"The K&O team were hard runners and had a state-of-the-art trailer," remembered Mark. "It looks downright spartan compared to the pit layouts of today's Pro teams. Just having an onboard water tank was high tech in those days. Mike Kuhl could make it run fast, and Carl Olson was quick and straight down the strip. Take note of the spare engine door above the trailer fender."

I had the pleasure of working with C.O. for many years here at NHRA, and we have stayed in touch. He's a fan of the column (even the ones that don't include him) and a true hero.

And finally, this rather … um … unusually composed (and self-congratulatory!) photo shows driver Joe Monden and the Lewis-owned Foolish Pleasure Alcohol Dragster on which Mark worked in the pit area at the onetime home of the NHRA Cajun Nationals. "I took this photo when we won the Winston Championship Series race in Baton Rouge [La.] in 1976," reported Mark. "Joe is currently a very successful chassis builder and Top Alcohol crew chief working out of Gainesville, Texas. There are quite a lot of Monden chassis running in the Lucas Oil Series."

This car is sometimes incorrectly listed as Fuelish Pleasure, which was actually an A/Fuel Dragster out of Dallas owned by Charles Tunnell; looking at the full-sized pic, it's obvious this is with two o's. The Fuelish Pleasure moniker also was used by Washington state Alcohol Funny Car racer John Hughes and, more famously, by Gary Clapshaw on his strong-running nitro Funny Cars in the 1990s.

"We used the name Foolish Pleasure, which was the name of a famous race horse in the news in those years," Mark explained.

OK, race fans, that's another healthy dose of fan-tastic fotos. Thanks to Mark for playing; he'll receive the home version of our game (well, not really) and our undying thanks (really). I've really been overwhelmed by the response from y'all (keeping in the Texas theme of today's column), and I have plenty more where these came from. I've mentioned it before, but these types of photos, locked away in attics and dusty old photo albums for decades, might well be the last treasure trove from those golden days of racing, and I can tell you that the faithful out here would love to see yours.

See ya later this week.

In anticipation of tomorrow's All Hallows' Eve, today's DRAGSTER Insider offers a mixed bag o' tricks … my treat to you. It's a mix of fond memories and a dash of this and that. And away we go ...

If there's one thing other than death and taxes that one can count on in this world, it's that everyone loves an underdog. For many of us who have been around this sport for a while, Tom Baum was loved. I've rooted passionately for other underdogs in my day – Rodney Flournoy, for example – but "the Bomber" was someone you couldn't not root for.

The Midwest dragster veteran passed away Tuesday, of congestive heart failure at the age of 67, and there'has been a touching outpouring of sentimentality about his loss that outstrips that of other, brighter lights who have preceded him to that Great Dragstrip in the sky.

I first found out about his passing from his nephew, Bill, who summed up his uncle this way: "Not a lot of success on the track but had more friends than anyone else I knew."

While it's debatable that he didn’t have a lot of success on the track – he was a regular in the UDRA top 10 and won the Olympics of Drag Racing in 1988 over a pretty good field -- there doesn’t seem to be any debating his second point.

"The Bomber," at his home away from home: Great Lakes Dragaway

I first met Tom Baum at the 1983 SPORTSnationals at Indy, where he was driving the Lloyd & Co. dragster. It was my first on-the-road race working for National DRAGSTER, and he obliged me with this nice wheelstand. Thanks, Tom!

Mark Bruederle sent me these five pics; Kepner says that MB has the world's largest collection of Tom Baum photos. I believe him!

Our ol' pal Bret Kepner, one of the Midwest's most notorious drag denizens, shared his thoughts, and probably the thoughts of many who knew "the Bomber," in this tribute.

It's a sad day for fans of the underdogs in the sport. As much as he was a determined drag racer, he was a true character. His personality always shown through even when things were worst. He was excited to wake up every morning as long as there was a race car in his garage. He could be hilarious, intense, or nearly nuts, but he was always a friend to anybody ... including those who'd never met him. 
 
"The Bomber" was one of the only individuals who made a living racing on the UDRA circuit through the 1970s and 1980s. He pushed his homebuilt engines to the absolute limit on nearly every run and, by his own admission, he blew up a lot of stuff. Still, when he'd saved up enough money, he would hit the road for the nearest AHRA, IHRA, or NHRA national event and give it a shot. He was a fixture at NHRA WCS events in Divisions 3 and 5 and booked himself for match races against anything including jets, Funny Cars, and fuelers.
 
Routinely, he would finish in the top 10 point standings in UDRA competition. At one time, he was the quickest driver in history at the wheel of a cast-iron Chevy blown Alcohol Dragster. His greatest moment, however, came when he won the overall TAD title in the grueling Olympics of Drag Racing at Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wis., in 1988. He considered "the Grove" his home track and had a truly massive following there. Track owner "Broadway Bob" Metzler had a special place in his heart for Baum, who once crashed his first front-engined dragster off Metzler's property in 1960.
 
The Olympics featured category-specific competition for the first two of its four days but always deteriorated into a free-for-all for its last two days. In those final 48 hours, any and all pairings occurred, but the racers still battled for points to determine the overall championship. On the final day of the '88 event, "the Bomber" beat UDRA and Olympics kingpin Tony Zizzo, multi-time UDRA world champ Hal Canode, NHRA national champion Al DaPozzo, and the short-wheelbased Top Fueler of "Diamond Dave" Miller to win his biggest title. It was one of the few times "the Bomber" was ever publicly overcome by emotion.
 
During the 1991 Olympics at "the Grove," Baum barrel-rolled his Fel-Pro Gaskets Xecutioner four times on the first day of the event. He was battered and bruised but loaded the remains of the car into his ancient homemade trailer and headed back to his garage. Twenty-four hours later, he returned to the track and unloaded the same car, rebuilt by Baum alone, and continued to compete in the event.
 
It seemed everybody in drag racing knew him. He was a phenomenal promoter of his own racing team and often displayed his car for charitable organizations free of charge, feeling the "good karma" would come back to him someday. He was the kind of guy you couldn't dislike, even if he had just oiled the left lane from starting line to turnoff with an engine even he knew shouldn't have even been able to fire. He raced hard, drove all night to make an event the next day in another state, unloaded, and raced hard again. He laughed when he lost in the first round and was still smiling when he headed out the gate for an all-night drive home. He was as hard core as they will ever come. Tom Baum was one of a kind.

Jody Schmeisser, a fellow Illini of Baum and a longtime Super-class racer and owner of Pit Pal Products, shared his thoughts with me as well.

Anybody who had an opportunity to ever cross Tom Baum’s path would forever remember Tom as a great-spirited, warmhearted individual. He was known nationwide in the motorsports industry for his support and his character. If you ever had the time to talk to Tom, you would acknowledge that Tom was very intelligent and on top of current affairs. Tom had a sense of humor that can never be replaced; he could one-line you and clearly stop you for a minute because you were in pain from laughing so hard.

Tom spent his entire life in the drag racing community and was known and respected throughout the United States. Tom raced several different types of cars through his racing career. One of Tom’s biggest accomplishments was the first Chevrolet steel-block Alcohol Dragster to break the 200-mph barrier at the inaugural Joliet national event in his hometown Chicago with his famous Xecutioner race car. From the late '70s to late '80s, Tom was in charge of the NHRA display booth that was part of the major showcase in the famous Chicago new-car automobile show that would bring close to a million people in attendance. Tom would carefully pick some of the nation's top drag race cars (including his own) to display for fans and attendees to appreciate. Tom would prepare for months to attend these events and spend 14- to 18-hour days just trying to answer any questions to the best of his knowledge at these shows. He was always a true gentlemen and fun guy to communicate with. He always could bring the best out of anybody. Tom had a special way to always find out how you were doing and really listen. Tom had been a very special person to many people in his life to always help with no obligations in return. Tom will be well-missed forever.

As sad as we are to mourn Baum's passing, his nephew did assure me that "a lot of my schtick is based on 'the Bomber,' so in a small way, he will live on." Good news!

Hey, if you're a fan of good ol' Orange County Int'l Raceway (and who isn't?), if you're on Facebook (and who isn't?), a cool new group has been created that allows racers and fans to share their precious memories (and, best of all, their photos) from "the County."

The Memories of O.C.I.R. group has nearly 200 fans already and about 100 photos of varying quality and content (including some sweet pics from Auto Imagery's Rick Shute). Naturally, there are some fine photos of nitro cars, but also a lot of the bracket and other door cars that made their home there, including many early Pro Gassers. It's great stuff.

You'll see some pretty familiar names among the group's fans, including Roland Leong ("Good, bad and wild times but what memories. Crashed some cars but also won some races."), Roger Gustin, "Jungle Pam" Hardy, Gordie Bonin, Don Moody, Dean Skuza, Della Woods, Vic Edelbrock, Jon Lundberg, and many others. Come join the fun!
 

Former Funny Car owner and driver Jim Wemett, whose cars have been featured in past columns here, passed along this great shot of a current-day him, behind the wheel of his latest ride (a boat), which he's dry-docking for the winter. "Took boat out of the water today," he wrote me. "40 degrees in N.Y."

And how do ex-racers stay warm in those cool climes? Wemett dug out the jacket from his 1980s firesuit, of course. "My kids got a kick out of it," he said. "I knew it was the warmest thing I had."

Fans mostly know of Wemett as a car owner, most memorably of the Wombat Mercury LN-7 driven by Tom Anderson in the early 1980s. That car was an early star of the performance-rich 1982 U.S. Nationals, where Anderson booted it to the first 5.7-second pass by a flopper, a 5.79.at 236.22 on Friday. Don Prudhomme, of course, made that – and every run for several years after – look like last year's news when he rocked Indy with a 5.63 a day later. Wemett, though, also was a driver, wheeling his own cars from 1970 through 1975 before turning the wheel over to George Johnson from1976 to 1979 and Anderson beginning in 1980.

Watching the World Series, I've been intrigued by the Fox Trax stats, which measure a pitch's velocity leaving the hurler's arm and when it arrives at the plate (typically a five-mph decrease), but the stat that got my attention was the time it takes to leave the pitcher's hand and travel the 60.5 feet to the plate. The number, on a 90-mph fastball, was down around .41-second.

Being the drag racing geek that I am, two things immediately came to mind. First, four-tenths of a second in the time between the amber light and the green on our Christmas Tree and a driver's reaction to that accounts for our reaction time stat (which used to express .400 as a perfect light but today is flagged as .000). I know the mechanics of a drag racing reaction tie but wondered what goes on in that four-tenths of a second from a batter's perspective, so I asked the only real ballplayer I know on a first-name basis, former future big-leaguer Bob Wilber, team manager for Tim Wilkerson, who came thisclose to making the bigs. Wilber, as usual, was not at a loss for words.

From everything I hear from Funny Car drivers, I think the act of hitting and act of driving the car are similar in one key way: You make a ton of decisions in a short amount of time, but nearly all of them are learned and instinctive, because you don't have time to think things out.

Basically, those four-tenths of a second it takes a pitch to leave the pitcher's hand and then cross the hitting zone can be broken into two halves. The first two-tenths are all about recognition. You're watching arm angle, arm speed, the way the ball comes out of the pitcher's hand (slightly upward for a breaking ball, and downward for a fastball), and finally spin. The ball might be halfway to the plate before your eyes pick up the spin and your brain processes that into useful information.

The next two-tenths are the execution phase. Your brain has already registered "fastball, outside, good velocity," so now your hips, arms, hands, and eyes all have to coordinate to bring the bat through that exact spot, at precisely the right moment in time, to make contact with the ball. Deception is the pitcher's best tool, so he's trying to make you miss at least one of the judgments you made during the first two-tenths. That's why a good change-up is a brilliant pitch. All the indicators I just mentioned tell your brain "fastball" but the grip is different, and that alone takes 8-10 mph off the pitch. You swing for that fastball, but the ball's not there yet.

Great velocity will also change the methodology. Once you get up into the 96-100-mph range, the pitch is coming so fast you don't have time to see it, register what it is, and then start your swing. You have to start your swing before you've finished the analysis, and then you have to try to adjust as you go. Rule of thumb at the plate: Think fastball, adjust to the curve. If only it was that easy.

All of that happens in four-tenths, and then you have to take that wooden cylinder and make perfect contact with a round ball. Hard enough, even in batting practice, but in the game, there are nine bad guys out there (including the catcher) who are trying to catch what you hit, no matter how perfectly you hit it. No wonder a 70 percent failure rate will earn you a ticket to Cooperstown! Just talking about it, I wonder how I ever got any hits...

For the record, "Bloggin' Bob" spent six years in professional baseball, first as a player in the Detroit Tigers and Oakland A's organizations, and then as both a minor-league coach and a scouting supervisor for the Toronto Blue Jays, so he knows of which he speaks.

On to part two: The 60-foot thing obviously caught my eye as it's a common place for us to measure acceleration. Seeing as how a good Top Fuel 60-foot time is in the .82 range, can someone please explain to me how it's possible for a baseball to cover 60 feet in .4-second, which is less than half the time it takes a 7,000-horsepower Top Fueler to do the same? I was very much offended. So I did some digging.

Simple math tells us a slightly different story:

An object traveling 90 mph will travel 7,920 feet (1.5 miles!) in 60 seconds. Therefore

7920/60 = 60.5/x
x = .458

So, mathematically at least, it would take an object traveling a constant 90 mph .458-second to travel 60 feet, 6 inches.

Of course, however, no pitcher releases the ball right above the rubber. With their follow-through, the ball probably leaves his hand about five feet closer to the plate. Advantage baseball. Also, although the ball is not constantly at 90 mph, it starts being clocked when it's at its highest velocity (the pitcher's arm is in full motion before the release), and a dragster is going from a dead stop. Advantage baseball. Also, drag racers have to accelerate a 2,250-pound hunk of metal. A baseball weighs about five ounces. Advantage baseball. Still, why does this fact bother me?

And, finally, also in the notable losses column, we join our good pal Billy Meyer in mourning the loss of his dad, the can-do Paul Meyer, who passed away from cancer Monday. He was 81.

Paul was a longtime Waco civic leader, international businessman, and philanthropist, but race fans will recognize the name of one of his endeavors, the  Success Motivation Institute, which was branded on some of Billy Meyer's cars in the 1970s. It was the company that his father founded that instilled a basic mantra (if memory serves me) of "Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass."

I'm sure that his son, a successful businessman in his own right, used those guiding philosophies to get to where he is in life, including giving drag racing fans, among other things, the lasting gift that is the Texas Motorplex, featuring a concrete surface that no one had ever built.

According to an online bio, Paul Meyer  also  adopted these words of theologian John Wesley for his own and lived them fully: "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." Man, I really like that.

He is survived by his wife, Jane, and five children -- Jim, Larry, Billy, Janna, and Leslie -- brother Carl Meyer, and 15 grandchildren. Paul Meyer's life will be celebrated at a memorial service this morning at the arena previously named in his honor at the Baylor University Ferrell Center.
 

For many NHRA fans, Jay Howell may be among the most unsung drag racing heroes they never knew about. Regular readers of this column may be familiar with him from occasional mentions, but those old-time racers we all know and love certainly all knew and respected Howell for his ability to both build and drive race cars during a heady career in the 1960s.

Not only did he build or have a hand in building some of the most famous vehicles to traverse the quarter-mile on two or four wheels, but he also drove some of them. He's also one of very few trusted by Don Prudhomme to drive one of "the Snake's" cars in his early racing days, which says a lot about how people felt about Howell.

Howell was born in Detroit in 1942, and he and his brother, Jim, were raised by their paternal grandparents after their parents died. Howell found his calling early, cruising Detroit’s legendary Woodward Avenue as a teen, stoking his hot rod dreams.

Howell's first race car was a Buick Special that he bought new in 1962 from Carl Fischer's dealership, where he worked as a mechanic and which sponsored the car. He ran in D/Stock and the following year with a blower in C/GS. After General Motors dropped its factory support that season, Fischer's gave Howell all the engines and spare parts, and he used them to build a lightweight Buick-powered roadster that competed in Middle eliminator at Detroit and Motor City Dragways.

Jay Howell's early blown roadster at Detroit Dragway

He was introduced to drag racing in 1960 by Jim, who was driving Pete Seaton’s Seaton’s Shaker 1960 Pontiac Super Stocker. Howell and Seaton became good friends and later partners in Automotive Engineering, which Howell opened in 1966.
 
Prior to striking out on his own, though, Howell worked for Dick Branstner at Branstner Enterprises in Troy, Mich. Branstner and driver Roger Lindamood had just won Top Stock at the 1964 Nationals with their Color Me Gone Dodge, and Branstner hired Howell to run the operation, which built engines and did chassis work for Super Stock and A/FX cars.

Among the company's major contributions to drag racing lore was the refinement of the Little Red Wagon wheelstander, which didn’t actually begin life as a wheelstander; Howell's contribution is that he took it on one of its groundbreaking "flights."

"The Little Red Wagon was conceived and built by two engineers at Dodge Truck, Jim Schaeffer and John Collins," recalled Howell. "It was powered by a 426 Hemi on gas and carburetors, with a rigid rear suspension. We were playing around doing neutral starts -- transmission in neutral, go to wide open throttle, and punch the Drive button! -- and it would pick the front wheels up maybe a foot or two. Spectators loved it. The truck was more or less being passed around to various teams, and it ended up at Branstner's after the rear suspension had been improved. It was assigned to me for some 'development work.' I ordered a roll cage to be installed and replaced the stock 426 engine with an injected engine on nitromethane.

Howell at the wheel of the Little Red Wagon

"It was late '64, and we were at Motor City Dragway outside of Detroit. I pulled up to the starting line to make a pass, and in the right lane was my friend Tony Knieper in his GTO. The injected nitro motor didn’t require a neutral start to pick the wheels up, but this time, it went up and kept going! The truck always had a tendency to drift right, and, true to form, it proceeded to do its thing. I’m now on the tailgate, and somewhere underneath the front wheels is my buddy Tony. I stayed in it until I saw him drive out from underneath me. I lifted, and it came down like a ton of bricks. It was quite a day. Dodge PR had a photographer there, and one of the local TV stations got it all on film. It made the 11 o’clock news. The rest is history -- well, almost."

According to Howell, the truck was funded by Dodge PR, and Frank Wylie assigned the truck to Bill "Maverick" Golden to campaign nationally.

Continued Howell, " 'Maverick' arrived in town for 'driving lessons' about the time I finished the install of a nitro-fueled, supercharged 426. It was late fall when we all returned to Motor City, and it was cold. I made a couple passes but couldn’t get it anywhere near hooking up. Late in the day, I made a pretty good pass and mentioned to Branstner, 'I think it’s carrying the front end in the lights.' We had a rather vigorous discussion, which I concluded by saying something stupid like, 'Fine, I won’t lift, and we’ll see who’s right!' Next pass, straight up, 147 in the lights. 'Maverick' opted not to drive it that day. I reinstalled the injected engine, and 'Maverick' went on his way.
 
"I have to give Frank Wylie a lot of credit for being a man of his word. He knew I was less than pleased over his giving the Little Red Wagon to 'Maverick.' He came to the shop during the reassignment and took me aside and said something like, 'Don’t worry; I’ll make it up to you.' Did he ever!"

Wylie arranged a meeting with Branstner and Howell and asked Howell to describe the dream car he would like to build and drive. His answer became the Dart Charger, a mid-engine blown, injected nitro Funny Car.

"It was the first Funny Car I built," Howell recalled fondly. "Dick confided to me that the contract was the first million-dollar deal ever for drag racing by Dodge. We match raced it some and took it to Indy in '65 and set low e.t. and top speed with a 9.02 at 164 mph."

The mid-engine Cotton Picker was one of the many memorable cars that Howell built while working with Dick Branstner.

While working for Branstner, Howell also built a car shown previously in this column, the Cotton Picker mid-engine Dodge wagon, for stock-car heroes Cotton Owens and David Pearson, and several altered-wheelbase cars, including Bill Flynn’s memorable Yankee Peddler.

Howell left Branstner later that year to open Automotive Engineering. The Dart Charger was given to Don Garlits, who tabbed Emory Cook to drive. According to Howell, Cook turned the car overbackward in the lights at Detroit Dragway, totaling the car, but walked away unharmed.

Howell's successes with Branstner did not go unnoticed, and when Bill Shrewsberry went looking for someone to build the first L.A. Dart wheelstander, Howell's experience with the Wagon paid off in spades. The car was quickly built and on the way into drag racing annals. The staff at Automotive Engineering, including Howell's brother, Jim, turned out a number of highly memorable, successful, and innovative Funny Cars, including Don Gay’s Infinity GTO, the Ramchargers “Skinny Dart,” and the Seaton’s Shaker Corvair, which Howell even drove for a while and with which he set the speed record at Detroit Dragway in 1967 at 179 mph.

Business was booming for Howell, forcing him to move to a larger shop in 1967. His reputation and success caught the eyes of the famous chassis-building Logghe brothers, Gene and Ron, who – during one boys' night out over skeet (and bull) shooting at Ted’s Blue Rock Gun Club in Warren, Mich. -- offered to buy Automotive Engineering and hire Howell to run the combined operation. Howell agreed.

"It was one of the best decisions I ever made," he said. "They were very talented guys, and I thoroughly enjoyed knowing and working with them. We were turning out Funny Cars at an unbelievable rate, not to mention Top Fuel dragsters, altereds, street rods, and more."

The Prock & Howell F Troop Willys was one of Howell's most popular cars.

One of the Logghes' customers was Tom Prock, who had a '33 Willys A/GS machine. Howell quickly teamed with Prock, and, using a basic Stage I Logghe Funny Car chassis, built a tube-chassis Willys. Howell shortened and narrowed the chassis to fit a B&N fiberglass body, and Al Bergler did the tinwork. With a flip-top body (with one opening door) and a full roll cage, it was the envy of every team but wouldn't pass NHRA tech inspection.

"We took it to the NHRA Regional at Indy, and they wouldn’t let it run," Howell recalled. "Something about the framerails not being original or something like that. Car Craft magazine did a nice feature story on it, which included a cutaway drawing. We ran the car some in '68 and put it in the attic at Logghes that winter. The Hill brothers, Pete and Bill, contacted us about forming a four-car outlaw Nitro Gasser circuit featuring their Willys, our car, Jim Shore's Anglia, and Chuck Finders in another Anglia. We agreed to join, and I replaced the 427 Chevrolet with a 426 Chrysler, and the fun began.

"The circuit, many times, resembled a traveling circus. I was the only one of the group who had a full-time job. Getting back to work on Mondays was always a challenge. We also learned that '33 Willys want to fly from the rear at speeds above 165. That made for some very interesting rides. Picture being sideways in the lights, left rear off the ground, then Bill Simpson’s crossform would hit, and all was well again. The Logghes came up with the solution. A pair of small wings were fabricated and installed on the rear fenders. Tom and I showed up out East for a race. We rolled the Willys out of the trailer, and the Hill brothers and group crack up, pointing and laughing and then dubbing them 'Mickey Mouse ears.' First pass I laid down was a 178! Next week, they all had 'em! The car pretty much dominated the circuit, running consistent 8.0s and 185 plus while pedaling it.

This Logghe shop Funny Car served as a rolling test bed. Photo by Ted Pappacena/www.dragracingimagery.com

That winter, Howell, Prock, and the Logghes decided to build and compete a rolling test lab in the form of a Mustang Funny Car. Prock and Howell sold the Willys ("A mistake," admitted Howell) and transplanted the Willys' drivetrain into the new Funny Car, dubbed Warhorse. With Howell driving and Prock wrenching, they finished fourth in the AHRA series, highlighted by winning all three days of the Summer Nationals in Detroit against a field that included Prudhomme, Tom McEwen, Gene Snow, the Ramchargers, and more. The Drag News headline read “Howell all the way at Detroit!” There's a pretty cool video clip of the car (and others) in action at New York National Speedway here.

Howell decided to retire from racing at the end of 1970, calling it a season even before the U.S. Nationals, but fate had other plans.

(Above) Howell had the honor of running Don Prudhomme's Hot Wheels Barracuda Funny Car in Indy in 1970. (Below) He was part of the first side-by-side six-second Funny Car pass there, running alongside the Candies & Hughes team.

"I was planning a Labor Day vacation with my wife and kids," recalled Howell. "Prudhomme approached me about Tom and me racing his Hot Wheels Funny Car for him while he would race his Top Fuel dragster. I think he offered us something like $250. I told him I’d pass and take the vacation option. We compromised and agreed on a better number (for us).

"He showed up with a brand-new Keith Black stroker motor in it. It was stout! No one had ever run in the sixes at a national event, and Tom and I wanted to be the first. The first pass, it launched, wheels up, right for the guardrail. I shut it off, coasted through, and we put it right back in the staging lanes. Next pass, we were paired up against Candies & Hughes. They were experimenting with a B&M/Crowerglide, and they laid down a 6.83 against my shutting-off 6.99. I had the dubious honor of being the first driver to make a six-second pass and lose!

"Our next qualifying run nearly got us thrown out of the race. Fire burnouts, once very popular, had been banned from NHRA events. We fired up for our final qualifying pass, and Tom’s got that baby hopped up. I pull into the bleach box, and Tom pours down the liquid traction compound on the right side. Normally (remember we’re talking about Tom here with 'normal' in the same sentence), he would come around and pour the left tire and then guide me forward into the liquid. This time, he never shows up on the left side. Next thing I realize, my butt’s burning. Tom has set the friggin' bleach box on fire! I hammer the throttle and did this giant fire burnout. When the smoke clears, Buster Couch is standing in front of the car, and he is pissed! Fortunately, 'Snake' was there and assured him it was an accident. Tom later told me that the engine was hittin’ so hard his ears couldn’t stand the pain, so he just threw the traction bottle at the left rear, and it splashed on the headers, lighting the box."

Howell qualified No. 5 and easily defeated Cliff Zink in round one but fell to eventual winner Don Schumacher in the second frame.

" 'Snake' came by and chatted with us and then went back to the dragster area to tend to his ride. When we fired the car for round two, it sounded like crap! No throttle response and would barely do a burnout. We were done! A month or so later, I asked 'Snake' what he found. He said there were TWO jets, one on top of the other, in the injector. I still don’t agree with Tom and 'the Snake’s' theory as to what happened."

Prudhomme, of course, freed of the distraction of running the Funny Car, won Top Fuel for the second straight time and third overall in Indy, defeating Jim Nicoll in that memorable final round that ended with the front half of Nicoll's digger sliding downtrack in front of Prudhomme after a massive clutch explosion.

Howell did retire at the end of the 1970 season and accepted an offer from the Ramchargers to launch its speed-shop endeavor. He worked there for four or five years before moving his family to northern Michigan.

A few years ago, Howell got a call from Dan Hix, who had come into possession of the F Troop Willys. The car had changed hands quite a few times and had even been raced in Hawaii before returning to the States. Hix found it for sale at a flea market in Wisconsin.

"Pictures were sent, and I was sick," said Howell. "It had been so hacked up! Dan was determined to bring it back to its glory days, and he really did. Steve Timoszyk of Belleville, Mich., is the owner. Steve invited me to attend the Bowling Green Hot Rod Reunion in 2005 to drive it in the Cacklefest. I hadn’t seen her for 35 years! It was a very nice reunion.

"In November 2008, I was honored with induction into the Michigan Motorsports Hall of Fame. It was, to say the least, a pretty humbling experience."

Howell operated a Goodyear tire service center and car wash in Gaylord, Mich., for 13 years and later became a certified financial planner. He retired in 2006, and he and his wife, Diane, sold their house, cars, hot rod, and most all of their stuff and moved aboard his sailboat.

"We’ve sailed the eastern Atlantic from Maine to the southern Bahamas," he said proudly. "If the world situation ever settles down in my lifetime, we'd like to sail to Europe and spend a few years there. Keep your eyes open for a 40-foot sloop that answers to 'Far Niente,' which is Italian for 'Without a care.' Hail us on the VHF and stop by for a painkiller. I’m still racing along, just a little slower now. About 7 knots."
 

Welcome back, race fans, to another installment of Fan Fotos. We're going to take you back a few more years than past installments today, thanks to reader Joe Kerr, who sent me a bunch of photos from his late-1960s Southern California race-going days, primarily at fabled Lions Drag Strip. The photos, true fan photos based on their location behind fences and poles, are cool; I don't think I've ever seen this exact view of Lions, and it gives a great overall look at the facility and how close the fans were to the action.

"The [Lions] pictures are from the 1966 East vs. West Championship. It was a match race weekend event. I don't remember who won the event, but do recall 'Dyno Don' was giving all the racers a workout. I shot the photos from the pitside bleachers, first row, using a 135mm camera, and I believe it was a Yachika. It was an accordion-type camera that pulled out. Nothing fancy; I just panned the camera as the cars were moving, though some were stopped after doing the burnouts.

"Oh boy, what can you not like about going to the drags in the '60s?" he added. "At Lions, you were just about sitting on the strip from the pit side, so you could smell the fuel and rubber from burnouts, and the tingle in your ears from the vibration would make you shudder. The race was close and personal. Back then, racing was not as commercial as it is today. Though I still attend and recently completed a B/FX '65 Mustang Fastback to run the nostalgia events, it's hard to replicate the era and racers of that day. I have been involved with drag racing since 1965 and at 65 will continue to enjoy the sport."

A lot of more recent fans know Richard Schroeder from his popular Smokey Red and Emergency West wheelstanders or as a quality race announcer, but the big guy, who left us in August 2007, was a pretty good "real" racer back in the early '60s with a series of early Funny Cars like the all-steel Emerald Chevrolet-backed Bad Bossa Nova. The near-stock 427 ran 40 percent nitro and mid-nines.

Man, that was a fun trip back to the '60s; thanks, Joe, for giving us a reminder of how it all started for the fiberglass fantastics!
 

Former Funny Car racer Bobby Rowe, who died late last week at age 64, left behind not just a legacy as one of the many great Funny Car drivers to come out of the early 1970s, but also a story of hard work and perseverance. Many know him as the national-record-setting driver of Ed Willis' Mr. Ed Satellite, but he didn’t get there overnight.

Rowe didn't start out in a nitro Funny Car like so many in those formative days of the class, but once he got there, he certainly showed that he belonged. Rowe was Robert Hight before Hight was born, learning the ropes on the crew side of the sport, earning a reputation as a hard worker before getting his shot at nitro glory.

Rowe began drag racing before he had a driver's license. In 1959, at age 14, he registered 14-second times at Lakeland Drag Strip near Memphis with his C/Gas '50 Chevy and campaigned the car for several years. In the early 1960s, the Memphis native was hired by former Division 2 Director Buster Couch to work on the Division 2 certification team at national and divisional events. Rowe performed a variety of duties, everything from working the starting line to tech inspection and fuel check.

After spending four years as part of "Buster's Rebels," Rowe went to work for camshaft wizard Joe Lunati, grinding cams at the business and helping on Lunati's A/Modified Sports entry while fielding a pair of Studebaker M/Stockers, with which he set multiple national records.

His racing career was interrupted in the mid-1960s while he served his country for two years in the Vietnam War, but once Stateside, he returned to the quarter-mile with a P/S '55 Chevrolet, and he and Sportsman legend Dave Boertman traded the national record back and forth.

But the big circus was calling, and Rowe answered. He left Lunati to hit the match race trail, doing engine and transmission work for Bill Taylor's Super 'Cuda and Larry Coleman's Super Ford and for Roland Leong's Hawaiian team.

"I always liked Funny Cars," Rowe told National DRAGSTER in 1994. "I got a chance to crew for Coleman & Taylor's Super 'Cuda, and I just couldn't pass it up. I remember one time I had the ramp truck parked in my driveway, and my mother saw the car. I told her I wanted to drive one someday, and she said the thing looked like a coffin. I said maybe it does, but if I get killed in one, you'll know I died happy."

Bobby Rowe's first Funny Car ride was in Bill Taylor's Super Duster.

Rowe was tremendously successful on the match race scene in Don Schumacher's second Stardust 'Cuda.

Rowe set national records and almost won the 1973 NHRA world championship in Ed Willis' Mr. Ed Satellite. He crashed heavily in this car in Ontario later that year and suffered a broken back.

Rowe's final Funny Car ride was the Rowe-Henderson-Smallwood Vega.

Rowe knew Funny Cars from A to Z, which eventually landed him the ride in Taylor's Super Duster the next year when Larry Reyes left the team to drive for Leong. It wasn't an easy apprenticeship – he almost fulfilled his mother's fear when the car exploded the blower in a ball of fire on his first pass at Lakeland Drag Strip – but within a year, Rowe had reached his first final round at the 1971 Gatornationals, where he was runner-up to Leroy Goldstein and the Ramchargers.

When Hawaiian pilot Butch Maas suffered severe burns in a match race fire in the spring of 1971, old pal Leong came calling, and Rowe took over the wheel of the famed blue and white Dodge and later moved on to drive Don Schumacher's second Stardust Barracuda. The car was a big-time match race winner; Rowe estimated that he won 89 percent of all the Coca-Cola Cavalcade of Stars Funny Car circuit events in 1972. Rowe clinched the series title easily, set 26 track records, and posted the first 6.3-second Funny Car clocking, a 6.38.

In 1973, Rowe moved into the saddle of the car for which most remember him, the Fresno, Calif.-based Mr. Ed Satellite, in which he set the national speed record with a 232.55-mph blast at the U. S. Nationals, which he bettered at the World Finals with a 232.99 while setting the national e.t. record at 6.29. After winning the Division 7 championship, he just missed winning the world championship when he suffered a final-round loss to Frank Hall in Jim Green's Green Elephant Vega.

The year ended horribly, though, as a huge fireball in the car at the NHRA Supernationals carried him into the Ontario Motor Speedway retaining wall, and the impact broke his back.

During his recuperation, and despite still wearing a back brace, Rowe drove Jeg Coughlin's Ford Pinto Pro Stocker at the 1974 Winternationals. The day after the race, the star-crossed Rowe crashed his motorcycle near Ed Pink's shop in Van Nuys, Calif., breaking his leg so severely that he wore a cast for more than a year.

Rowe made his return to Funny Car racing in 1975, partnering with Gary Henderson and T.B. Smallwood on the Rowe-Henderson-Smallwood Hillbillies Vega Funny Car, first on nitro then on alcohol, but soon after hung up his driving gloves.

Although he was no longer driving, he remained in the high-performance industry. He formed a partnership with NFL quarterback – and soon-to-be Top Fuel racer – Dan Pastorini to race drag boats for a few successful seasons. They were blown fuel jet champions in the Southern Drag Boat Association in 1976 and in 1983 won Competition Hydro in the World Series of Drag Boat Racing.

In 1979, Rowe opened Crankshaft Specialties and ran it until selling to his brother, Doug, in 1985 to briefly reunite with Pastorini on the Quarterback Sneak Top Fueler. Although Pastorini won in Atlanta in 1986, Rowe never won a Wally as a driver.

"I would have liked to have won one of the big NHRA races," Rowe said, "but it didn't happen. Still, I can say I've driven a lot of cars, everything from M/ and P/Stockers to Pro Stocks and Funny Cars. I have no regrets about anything. Well, now that I think about it, I'd like to have avoided that wall at Ontario 20 years ago."

A funny line for sure, but there's nothing funny about losing another of our heroes.

Rowe is survived by his children, Jerene Rowe and Robert Rowe Jr.; granddaughter, Brielle; and siblings Jerene Sykes, Tina Dugan, and Doug Rowe.
 

Former NHRA Pro Stock and Sport Compact racer Shaun Carlson was lovingly remembered at the Formula Drift season finale – ironically dubbed Judgment Day – at Irwindale Speedway over the weekend. Carlson, who had transferred his copious talents into the drifting world as a car owner and builder after NHRA's Sport Compact program ended, had died two weeks earlier.

In Irwindale, Carlson's car, driven by Sam Hubinette, was wrapped with special red camo graphics featuring images of Carlson and his trademark Mohawk haircut on its flanks and on the hood.

Before the start of Saturday's action, a moment of silence was observed for Carlson, and a video tribute played. Hubinette's dream of a win to salute his friend ended in the round of eight, and the team finished fourth in the standings.

"I felt we got some extra strength from Shaun above," said Hubinette, who with Carlson won the Formula Drift championship in 2004 and 2006. "We wanted to win for him, and I'm bummed we didn't, but we made the Great 8, which I think is remarkable given all the things the team has been through. I'm so proud of the NuFormz team, and I know Shaun would have been, too."

The team's crew chief, Scott Stanwood, known to most simply as "Chip," added, "Shaun Carlson meant the world to me and this team. We nicknamed him ‘Dad' because he looked over us; he was our mentor. He was so iconic to the drifting and sport compact racing worlds; you can't even put words to it. Shaun would have never wanted us to miss a race. We pushed ahead and made a good representation of the team. We gave Shaun a front-row seat with this paint scheme is how I see it."

Top honors did, however, go to another NHRA connection as another former Sport Compact hero, Gary Gardella, whose front-wheel-drive Cobalt terrorized the Pro FWD ranks, got his second win of the season with driver Ryan Tuerck; they just barely missed winning the season championship with their Mobil 1-sponsored Pontiac Solstice.

Another team of former NHRA stars, Pro FWD world champs Ed and Ron Bergenholtz, also shined at the event as their driver, Justin Pawlak, was the runaway No. 1 qualifier after a near-perfect run in the brothers' Mazda RX8. "JTP" racked up a stunning score of 96.8 out of 100. Tuerck qualified No. 2 with 88.5 points.

That's it for today; see ya later this week.

The First Fifty Years, originally produced for NHRA’s 50th anniversary in 2001, was a forgotten piece of work until it was rediscovered recently. It is an interesting compendium of footage that highlights some of the major stars and accomplishments in the sport since NHRA’s founding in 1951 and serves as the introduction to NHRA’s new line of 15 productions to be rereleased on DVD.

Hosted by motorsports veteran Bill Stephens from the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum presented by the Automobile Club of Southern California, the DVD doesn’t so much trace the roots of the sport as it celebrates the major performance milestones of the last 20 years while interweaving those narratives with features on some of the sport’s legendary stars.

Bob Glidden’s Pro Stock dominance is explored as Stephens discusses what made him tick, Don Garlits is explained largely through his breakthrough efforts, most notably Swamp Rat 14, the sport’s first truly successful rear-engine Top Fueler, and Shirley Muldowney is introduced via a discussion of the changing front of NHRA brought on by the emergence of female competitors.

The DVD features plenty of nice vintage footage of all three from the 1970s and early ‘80s to accompany the pieces as well as comments from their peers. Of particular note is Don Prudhomme’s candid comments about the first time that he and his peers heard about Garlits’ rear-engine wonder. Many had tried the approach, few successfully, so you can understand Prudhomme’s sentiment when he explained, “We weren’t going to laugh at it, but we were very close to it.” History has shown that “Big Daddy” had the last laugh.

Stephens proves a talented wordsmith, veering from obvious commentary and showing his verbal horsepower on occasion, such as calling the museum “a Smithsonian of straight-line speed.” My favorite line, if for nothing but its un-PC delivery, recalls the feisty Muldowney’s “snarky one-liners and pugnacious disposition.”

Also included is great in-car footage of both historic and modern nature, the former, of course, true rarities in the days before miniaturized cameras were routinely fitted in many cars.

A wonderful segment on flag starters allows newer fans to get an idea of some of the unique gyrations and gymnastics that they employed before the advent of the Christmas Tree. That electronic marvel is introduced via a nice and funny interview with the man whose NHRA career transcended both eras, the late great NHRA Chief Starter Buster Couch. For those us who knew him, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see and hear him again, to hear him spin a tale of the nefarious anti-Tree sentiment that pervaded those first years, in his distinct Southern accent.

The production explores in detail the breaking of the 300-mph barrier in Top Fuel and the four-second and 300-mph barriers in Funny Car and, via an introduction to the father-son team of Warren and Kurt Johnson, discusses the breaking of the 200-mph and six-second barriers in Pro Stock. A lot of this footage has been seen, but it’s still cool to marvel at, especially the in-car footage of Kenney Bernstein’s launch on the first 300-mph pass in Gainesville in 1992.

Two of the sport’s most loved and colorful characters, Gary Scelzi and John Force, also are featured, the latter in a hilarious montage of “What the heck did he say?” top-end interviews described by Stephens as “witty, incoherent, and sometimes mischievous.”

With a running time of 40 minutes, the DVD can’t really explore a topic in-depth, and fans looking for tons of vintage footage from the 1960s and 1970s will be left wanting a bit more. Other than the segments on the Tree and milestones noted by the achievements of Garlits and Muldowney, there’s no real tracing of the evolution of the sport, but then that’s probably not the purpose of the piece. It's a great addition to your library and is one of those DVDs you can pull out for your neophyte friends to give them a pocket history of the sport and the gains in performance.
 

The first official release is a dandy and a fine kickoff to the series. You probably couldn't pick a better year than 1986, which provided so many memorable moments, and Drag Racing '86 packs a lot into its two-hour season recap.

Hosted by the late, great Steve Evans and longtime partner and announcing legend Dave McClelland, it's a straightforward event-by-event romp. I was still relatively new to the DRAGSTER staff back then -- it was just my fourth full season on the staff -- but I witnessed a lot of these moments firsthand, and it's a treat to see them again.

By the time you get through the first three events -- the Winternationals, Gatornationals, and Southern Nationals -- you're already out of breath. Pomona, Shirley Muldowney's comeback event from her 1984 Montreal crash, featured her explosive first-round match with "Big Daddy" Don Garlits; the unforgettable body-popping blower explosion by Gary Ormsby's Castrol GTX streamliner; Dave Uyehara rear-ending Ron Correnti on a Funny Car qualifying pass; Ed McCulloch's body-shredding blower explosion in the red Miller High Life Olds Funny Car; and John Force, in his Coca-Cola Corvette, losing the Funny Car final to Tim Grose, his sixth straight of what would be nine bridesmaid finishes.

The Gatornationals, of course, was highlighted by the debut of Garlits' revolutionary Swamp Rat XXX streamliner -- "the design of the future," he calls it -- and Don Campanello's upset win in Pro Stock.

For anyone who was there -- and I was -- the Atlanta event left an indelible impression thanks to Bob Glidden's stunning series of top-end barrel rolls in the semifinals. Seeing Glidden's wife, Etta, horrified at the sight and being consoled by Arlene Johnson, it takes me right back to that day, standing on the starting line, hearing her cries and wondering if we'd lost another Pro Stock champ. We didn't, and, of course, Glidden did the unthinkable by stopping to cover his top-secret intake manifold with his fire jacket, an unforgettable episode in drag racing lore.

Aussie Funny Car racer Gary Phillips' wild ride off the end of the Columbus, Ohio, track also brought back memories for me; comparing my photo sequence to the film footage, they're almost identical. Ditto for Muldowney's scary top-end tire explosion in Montreal, two years to the weekend where she had her near-career-ending accident. I remember watching in horror then -- as I had in 1984 -- as things went wrong, but if you watch the video of this 1986 run, you can truly appreciate Muldowney's superior car-handling skills.

One of the most striking things about watching 23-year footage is how far the race cars have come, not only in technological sophistication, but also in safety. We no longer have blowers leaving the manifolds in a fiery explosion, and even the look of the cars, especially the roll-cage area and wings of the Top Fuelers, seems so long ago. It's also interesting to see some of the tracks we had back then and how devoid they were of things like massive towers and sky-high grandstands.

The most unforgettable moment of 1986 -- perhaps in all of drag racing history -- was Garlits' blowover in Englishtown, and it's captured from numerous angles. I've seen this footage dozens of times, and it never gets old.

As wild as that was, what follows from the Brainerd event is one of the wildest yet mostly unsung incidents of the season, which McClelland calls one of the most exciting moments of the season. Funny Car racer Norm Day lit up his Funny Car in big fashion, then slid off the track and barrel-rolled once, which jammed shut the escape hatch. Grose, who was in the other lane, joined the NHRA Safety Safari in trying to extricate Day, memorably trying to kick in the side of the body. Day got out with only some burns to his hand; the footage is truly amazing.

Indy has the legendary Top Fuel battle between Garlits and Darrell "the Wolf" Gwynn, Billy Meyer's devastating blower explosion, and Mike Dunn's big win. Current fans of the ESPN2 show will get a kick out of seeing a much younger Dunn actually doing what he so eloquently comments on each race weekend.

The recap shows just how dominant Garlits and Glidden were this season as well as the tight battles and different winners in Funny Car before Kenny Bernstein eventually grabbed the fuel coupe title. As the season wraps up, each of the season champs is featured in a nice spotlight with historic footage from their careers.

As Garlits himself said after clinching the season title, "It's been a great year; '86 was great."

And so is this DVD.

To order either of these DVDs, log on to NHRAdvd.com.
 

You would have thought it was Christmas around the National DRAGSTER office yesterday when the week's new issue arrived from the printer. Staffers were running around to one another's offices and cubicles like little kids with a new present.

The cause of celebration is the new-look National DRAGSTER that rolled off the presses this weekend at Conley Publishing in good ol' Beaver Dam, Wis.

I'll admit, after seeing more than 1,300 issues go to print, I might be a bit more jaded than the average staffer or reader. By the time each new issue lands on my desk each Monday, I'm more than intimately familiar with its contents, having been a major part of the planning and proofreading of most of the editorial pages. When the new issue arrives, I usually skim through it to see how some features actually look once they're printed, then I'll size up the overall presentation of the issue, then file it in my bookshelf.

But this one … this one had me – and everyone else -- on pins and needles.

Externally, you might not notice the difference unless you had last week's issue in your hands; it's about an inch shorter and an inch less across the striking image of Memphis Funny Car winner Jeff Arend's burnout and the photo of him and team owner Connie Kalitta celebrating what truly will be remembered as one of this year's most memorable moments.

But, like most things in life, it's what's inside that counts. For the first time in 50 years – we're talking 2,340 issues -- the entire inside of the magazine is not only presented on glossy, magazine-like stock, but it's full color throughout. It's a milestone day for our publication.

NHRA national event Sportsman coverage ... in living color. [View PDF]

Even the Summit Series E.T. Finals are in color! [View PDF]

Yep, that's right. Sportsman stories from the national events? In glorious color! Summit Series Finals coverage? Yep. Member-track stories? You bet. Even the back-page column – by me this week – has a color headshot now. As we opened our issues for the first time, we each seemed to race to different sections and were yelling out and holding open our magazines to different pages … "Hey, look at this. Awesome!"

You might ask what the big deal is; most car magazines have been full color for years. Sure, but National DRAGSTER is not some monthly magazine that comes to you two to three months after it's printed -- that's no knock on those glossy print publications; just the way that business is – it's your weekly guide to your favorite sport.

No one – either in print or on the Internet – shows the love to the NHRA Sportsman racer the way National DRAGSTER does, and we're proud of that. Ask any of our writers, and they'll tell you that their post-event interviews with the Sportsman winners are often the highlight of their weeks. And now to be able to tell their stories and show off their cars in color is a huge home run for us.

Pro coverage, too, which was trimmed back earlier this year to a mix of color and black and white, has returned to its full glory. Even the Joni's Race Shop and Performance Directory ads are now full-color capable!

I've seen a lot of iterations of National DRAGSTER in my 27 years on the staff, 23 of them with me at the top of the masthead, and a lot of improvements, but I have to say that this week's issue has everyone on the staff all revved up – and it's just the beginning.

We'll finish the publishing year – nine more issues – at this size and with the features already in place, then we'll get hard to work not only redesigning the look inside but also in many ways reinventing National DRAGSTER and launching it as an exciting – and in some ways different – magazine in 2010. It's what we need to do and what you deserve.

It's no secret that print publications are struggling in this economy as advertisers and circulation drop off, and it's also no secret that through-the-mail publications such as ours no longer can be on the cutting edge of news the way that television and the Internet can be. By the time that National DRAGSTER is produced and delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, a week or more may have elapsed since the event was held or the story written. Today, that's not good enough. By then, you've seen the race on TV or read the news on NHRA.com.

For the last several months, the leaders of the individual National DRAGSTER departments have been meeting to help create the road map, following tried-and-true business methods. We painstakingly (and, in some cases, painfully) created a SWOT analysis, honestly and openly chronicling our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (no, it did not involve uniformed men with silenced MP5s breaching the conference-room door, and no flashbangs were used in this exercise ... pity). We crafted a new mission statement and new goals and action items.

One of the clear things to come out of all of this was the need to change the way we do something. Because we already have a breaking-news vehicle – this Web site – to deliver important, accurate, interesting, and timely information to the NHRA membership, NHRA fans, and NHRA's other customers, there's no need for National DRAGSTER to compete with it as it has, on occasion, since its launch in 1995.

Everything you've come to enjoy and expect in National DRAGSTER will still be there -- behind-the-scenes coverage and awesome photos from the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series national events, in-depth interviews with the stars of our sport, tech, Lucas Oil and local track results, and all of your favorite columns – but we plan to make some changes – some subtle, some not-so subtle – to the way they're presented.

I don’t have a lot of details to share right now, just a million ideas running around my head that we'll put to paper in the coming weeks. I do know that I want to complete National DRAGSTER's metamorphosis from a newspaper to a magazine while having the best that both formats have to offer. What I think that means is more feature material, more thought-provoking stories, and more special features and regular columns. This column eventually probably will become part of that mix; it also will remain online, but I'm not sure in what form.

We have some very talented writers on our staff, each with his or her own style, and I plan not only to give them the freedom to use that voice in National DRAGSTER, but also plan to encourage it. I think we'll get a very interesting publication, written by people who know and love drag racing as much as anyone on this planet.

It would certainly be easier to keep doing what National DRAGSTER has done so well in the last 50 years, but what we want to create is not just a publication that you receive for being an NHRA member, but a publication that you want, period.

Sure, there will be growing pains as we stretch our editorial legs, and there may be tweaks and tune-ups along the way. I'm as excited as I am nervous about the changes, but I know full well that the time is now for National DRAGSTER to in many ways reinvent itself and reinvigorate its current and potential future audiences. A lot of exciting things are coming down the road that I hope will encourage current members to stay with us, former subscribers to give us another fresh look, and new readers to hop on the bandwagon.

As is always my style, whether online or in print, I would love to hear from all three types of readers. If you’re with us now, what do you like or dislike; what do we need more or less of? If you're looking at rejoining us, what made you stop reading us, and what kinds of things will bring you back? If you've never subscribed to National DRAGSTER and have been looking for the right reason, tell me what things will get you over the hump on that decision.

Drop me a line here; I'd love to hear from you. If you're already convinced, you can get yourself a subscription right here.

Senior Editor Kevin McKenna and I attended the memorial service for Shaun Carlson yesterday in nearby Chino. It was held at Shaun's regular place of worship and drew several hundred people whom he had touched in some way in his short 35 years.

There were a ton of his fellow former NHRA sport compact friends, his new drifting pals, and people for whom he had done work over the years. It was a great ceremony, filled with music – sung by his aunts and his two adorable nieces – poetry, and heartfelt remembrances.

His brother Trevor chronicled Shaun's life from start to finish, talking about how when Shaun got into Freestyle MX, he didn’t just go buy a bicycle like everyone else, he built his own (much to the detriment of Trevor's bike, which "donated" some parts). Same thing for skateboards. All of that eventually moved into mechanized mayhem, and the Carlson family garage quickly became "Shaun's shop" and a 24/7 hangout for some of the most car-crazy kids in the region. Tales were told about spare body parts cluttering the family living room, cars being painted in the backyard, and much more.

Many people spoke, including fellow racer John Mihovetz, for whom Carlson had fabricated a special manifold that helped his turbocharged Cougar crack the six-second and 200-mph barriers, and the guy known to most simply as Chip, who ran the NuFormz fabrication business with Carlson.

What came out through all of their words was Shaun's dedication to hard work and perfection in everything he did. No project was too tough, no deadline too tight, nothing impossible. He was a guy who would give anything to anyone, would help anyone, and was loved by everyone. As Kevin said to me on the ride home, spookily reading my mind, "Man, I wish I had known him better."

The service (which was followed by a reception at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum presented by Automobile Club of Southern California) concluded with a touching moment and the release of several white doves by family members. Sport compact racer Abel Ibarra – one of the first guys to befriend me and teach me the ropes and the players when I started covering the class for National DRAGSTER in 2001 – raises roller pigeons for relaxation and through a buddy got the doves to bring to the service. I watched Shaun's family cradle the doves lovingly, even planting small kisses on their heads, before releasing them to the skies. It was pretty special.
 

The response to my Fan Fotos offer has been overwhelmingly positive, and I already have a good stock of photos that, combined with other subjects I am working on and the culmination of the Misc. Files (thought I'd forgotten, did ya?), will easily see us through to the end of the year.

I'm really enjoying seeing everyone's submissions because, as I have mentioned, it's where I come from. I was a kid in the stands who fancied himself a future Leslie Lovett or Steve Reyes … if only I had a chance to shoot from the guardrail, dammit! Well, most of you never will (I was lucky!), but that doesn't mean that there aren’t some dynamite shots to be grabbed from the seats and the fences, as we've already seen. And, unlike looking at someone's home movies or vacation slides, they’re actually something we all love: race cars!

Steve Scott is today's guest photographer. A former resident of that current drag racing hotbed known as Brownsburg, Ind. – which would explain his many U.S. Nationals photos -- Steve and his wife have lived in Fort Worth since 2001.

"I saw my first Nationals in '69 and was absolutely hooked," he said. "Nothing like a nitro car to set its claws into you, and never let go. I traveled to races as much as finances would allow in those days, which wasn't nearly often enough. I always made the Nats, up to Byron once for the Funny Car championship deal, Springs in Columbus for many years, and Martin 131 for the Pop Rod Meets; even made it to Edgewater a couple of times, and US 30 once. Since moving down South, I've been to the Dallas race a few times, including this year. Went up to the Fuel Altered, Jr. Fuel race in Denton just the other night. Guess you could say I'm just a drag racing junkie, like so many others.
 
"In addition to drag racing, I always had fascination with photography, and it was a big day when I could finally afford that Minolta SRT101 and a 200mm lens. Man, I'm cookin' now! I can be just like Reyes, Blake, Lovett, Asher, Brady, et al. Those guys were my heroes in drag photography and still are to this day. So I shot the best I could from the stands for the on-track stuff. Even back then, the starting line was beginning to get real cluttered with all the 'real' photogs, vehicles, ladders, gear bags etc., and it was very difficult to get good clean burnout shots. After panning for the downtrack stuff, eventually it all started to look the same to me. I still tried to get some good pit shots, though. While still attending races, I just got tired of lugging around my camera equipment for results that were very similar to past efforts. And the drag racing photo stuff just stopped.
 
"I recently upgraded to the digital age with a Nikon D60 and a couple of lenses. Met Chris Graves of Max Cackle Photography, and he's been very helpful in learning this new camera and giving tips on racing shots. Maybe I can finally get as good at this deal as my old photo heroes are/were, even though I'm just an amateur."

I'd say he's well on his way. Here are Steve Scott's 10 favorite Fan Fotos, along with my background material and comments  ...

The Custom Body Enterprises name had a deep history in drag racing from the late 1960s, from original shoe/owner Phil Castronovo through drivers like Rick Johnson, Tom Anderson, Tim Grose, Bobby Hilton, Al Segrini, and Denny Savage, but other than Castronovo himself, no driver is more closely aligned with memories of the Custom Body cars than Tom Prock. Prock drove it for five seasons – from 1972 through 1976 (when Castronovo again briefly drove it before putting Segrini in the car). Steve captured Prock in mid-burnout at the 1976 U.S. Nationals in perhaps the team's most successful car, this Dodge Dart. It was in this car that Prock, who never was fortunate enough to win an NHRA national event, was runner-up to Don Prudhomme three times – at the 1975 and 1976 Grandnational in Canada (which preceded Indy on the schedule) and at the 1975 Gatornationals. Longtime fans may remember the wacky outcome of that Gainesville final round, where Prudhomme was shut off on the starting line with an oil leak, affording Prock what looked like an easy solo run to his first win ... until the Custom Body car shelled the rear end on its dry hop. Both teams were given time to repair, but Prock couldn't make it back in time. Prock also owns the distinction of being the guy in the other lane in the final at the 1975 Summernationals when "Jungle Jim" Liberman won his only NHRA title. A lot of people know Prock today because of his son, Jimmy, who tunes Robert Hight's Automobile Club of Southern California Mustang for John Force Racing, but the senior Prock – who first came to fame driving the Prock & Howell Willys and later was known for his own hard-running car, the Detroit Tiger Monza – made plenty of headlines on his own.

Joe Pisano and driver/partner Sush Matsubara had a lot of good-looking Funny Cars, and this was always one of my favorites, even though Matsubara was not driving. Behind the wheel, again in 1976 in Indy, is Texan Jake Johnston, who took over the butterfly when Matsubara retired from driving in 1975. Although Joe P later became known for his high-speed Oldsmobiles in the 1980s, his early cars were all Chevys, including this Monza, which Johnson drove under the P&M name through the late 1970s, by which time Matsubara's name had disappeared from its flanks, and it became a Trans Am, then an Arrow (a replica of which Cruz Pedregon will drive at the California Hot Rod Reunion next week), an Omni, and a Daytona before that first Olds Firenza, driven by Mike Dunn, in 1987.

This great shot is from 1975 in Columbus, Ohio, at the annual Springnationals. The one thing about shooting from the stands is it's much easier to get these great "pan blur" shots than it is up close. No, that's not "the Snowman," Gene Snow, behind the wheel, or even the aforementioned Jake Johnston, who used to drive for Snow. The driver is a Texan (despite the 306 permanent number on this Vega), and it's fearless fuel-altered hero Dale "the Snail" Emery. Emery, who wheeled  the notorious Pure Hell fuel altered in the late 1960s, drove a slew of early Funny Cars in the 1970s, including Jeg Coughlin's Ohio-based flopper (hence the Division 3 number), which was the subject of that famous body-tossing blower explosion photo from Ontario in 1974 where the fuel tank lid came uncapped (helping create the rule for locking fuel caps). Emery drove for a quite a few car owners around this time before landing in what would be his final ride, Mike Burkhart's Camaro, which spectacularly went on its head (after a giant nose grind) in Indy in 1977, leaving him with a broken arm. From there, Emery went on to fame as one of Raymond Beadle's key crew guys on the vaunted Blue Max.

Steve calls this photo "Fiberglass Forest" in a riff from one of Steve Evans' great radio commercials ("Man, I miss Steve Evans," he lamented; we all do), and this photo, too, was snapped at the 1975 Columbus event. Obviously (if you read the info above), that's Emery/Snow at front left, next to the Fireball Vega of Harland Thompson. Behind them are Tom "the Mongoose" McEwen's English Leather/Navy Duster, Shirl Greer's Mustang, Jim Nicoll's Good Times Vega, and barely visible, the Blue Max. Looks as if everyone is heading to the staging lanes; how much would you give to be in the stands getting ready for this?

Two great pit shots from the bicentennial-year 1976 Springnationals; at left is the legend himself, "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, checking the nitro percentage before another haul-ass run in his Swamp Rat. At right is a pretty historic photo as it shows Shirley Muldowney cradling her first NHRA Wally trophy after her initial Top Fuel victory. She shared the winner's circle with another legendary Don, "the Snake" hiss-self, as well as Pro Stock winner Wally Booth, who scored one of AMC's rare Pro Stock wins with his and Dick Arons' Hornet, and Miss Winston Mary Larson, who seems downright giddy about the outcome.

Looks as if Dale Funk is about to be wingin' it without the wing on the English, Frakes & Funk Kentucky Moonshiner digger in this fine shot from the 1976 Nationals. This actually was Funk's last race as he had announced his retirement beforehand, and it may have been a timely decision. Things got even scarier for Funk in round one when a massive engine explosion sent him through the lights sideways and on three wheels (as depicted in our recent Wild Rides photo greats book) while losing to Lee Weller. Talk about going out with a bang! By the way, that's former Insider profile subject Bill Pryor in the near lane in the Pryor & Narramore entry.

Steve says this Billy Meyer photo is from the Popular Hot Rodding Meet in Martin, Mich., in 1976 or 1977, but I'm thinking it's more like 1976 based on the Mustang II body. Meyer ran a Camaro in at least part of 1976 and 1977 as I recall – the 1977 one got melted down in a big way in Montreal – which was followed by an Arrow and then the first of those pretty ugly Chevy Citation bodies. Based on the primered portions of the body, it's obvious from this photo that Meyer's Mustang was coming off some sort of nasty incident at a previous race.

Also from U.S. 131 Dragway is longtime Top Alcohol Funny Car standout Bob Gottschalk. Gottschalk had been racing Funny Cars since the early 1970s – first an injected car then blown alcohol cars – before jumping into an ill-fated stint in the nitroburners in the early 1980s. He returned to his alky roots later that decade and raced throughout the 1990s before a career-ending crash in Ohio in 2000.

And, finally, there's this amazing shot. The subject is, of course, "Jungle Pam" Hardy, the comely sidekick of master Funny Car showman "Jungle Jim" Liberman, who became as much a part of his popular act as his long burnouts, fast backups, and never-lift mentality. I've seen a lot of great "Jungle Pam" photos over the years, but I have to say that this one really stopped me for its candid nature and the amazing way in which it's composed, either intentionally or unintentionally. There's JP, surrounded, as usual, by adoring fans, dressed in her trademark halter top (this one from Trick Titanium), and it appears as if she's looking right past and through the multitudes to smile at our photographer, one of those great one-on-one eye-contact moments that we've all had (or at least imagined we were having) with drag racing superstars we can meet freely in the pits.

Okay, that's Steve Scott's super 10. (You can see more of Steve's pics here or visit his Facebook page here, where there also are a lot of photos.) I'm glad he shared them with us even though he admitted, "Getting specific on the details of these photos is a difficult deal, as they were shot 30-some years ago, and I never thought of cataloging or indexing, in some fashion. Like many other fans who took photos of that era, after the initial viewing, the photos/slides were tossed into shoeboxes and languished in a closet for years."

Which is exactly why it's time for YOU to drag out your old Kodachrome slides and FotoMat prints, scan them up, and send them to me here. These homegrown memories are the last great treasures of those golden days that we'll probably see unearthed, and everyone is just dying to see them.

Start sending, guys. I'll see you next week.
 

For as long as I can remember, "Low e.t. can cure cancer" has been a popular saying in the pits, but after yesterday's Miracle Monday in Memphis, I wonder if a win can cure a broken heart.

Jeff Arend's Funny Car win was truly inspiring stuff even if you don't know the guys behind the story like we do. Sixteen months after we lost our great champion Scott Kalitta, the guy who was tapped to follow him into the cockpit of his car – and let there be no mistake that it still is Scott's car, and notice that I did not use the world "replace" because Scott is irreplaceable – overcame a season and a half of heartache and bad luck to score an emotional victory that not only warmed the heart on a chilly day at Memphis Motorsports Park, but also went a long way toward healing all of those broken on that sad June day last year.

Although the DHL Toyota had turned the performance corner a few races ago, no one really expected the team to win a race this year; heck, while the other teams are embroiled in the Countdown to 1, they've been joking with Jerry Toliver about their "battle for 13th place."

From left, crew chief Nicky Boninfante, Arend, Connie Kalitta, team manager Rachel Brunner, and crew chief Jon Oberhofer celebrate in the winner's circle. (Dani Cox photo)

The Kalitta team has won championships and the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals presented by Lucas Oil, so when crew chief Jon Oberhofer proclaimed this victory "the biggest race in the history of this team," that's really saying something. But, you know, I don't think he's wrong.

In Englishtown this season, the one-year anniversary of Scott's passing, the team held a private party in its pit area to remember their fallen brother. They hoped it would offer some closure and that they could at last put aside their grieving and get back to winning. It probably helped a lot for them to focus on the future, but I'd wager a fair sum that they didn't have full closure until Arend tripped the final-round win light in Memphis and the Kalitta name was back in the Funny Car winner's circle.

Todd Myers does the PR for Kalitta Motorsports, and he's a close and dear friend. We've collaborated on a lot of work throughout the years, including the design of the old NHRA,com and many specialty NHRA Web sites – he's also designing the upcoming 50th Kragen O'Reilly NHRA Winternationals Web site for us – and he's a great guy with a heart of gold. That's his photo at the top of this blog. Although he's not in there with wrenches flying, he's still a huge part of the team, and, by that, also one of those whose heart was broken. Among his contributions to aid our grieving was designing the memorial decal after the loss of Scott, allowing us to wear the T-shirts and display the decals proclaiming our love for Scott, and helping deal with the crush of people wanting to talk to Connie and the team.

(Dani Cox photo)

We talked at length last night – me in California and Todd in the Kalitta pit area, where, in Scott's honor, everyone was smoking Swisher Sweets and drinking Coors Light – about what this win meant to the team.

"In all my years in drag racing, I've never seen a team this excited about a win," he said. "After Scotty died, we didn’t know if it was a good idea to bring that car out, but that's what Conrad wanted, so that's what we did. I think we all had our hesitations, and this team has struggled so hard the last year. Most of the crew guys were there when Scott was killed, and just to see them happy again is amazing. Everyone is just so ecstatic that we won, and it was all for Scott."

The team won the race in style. Arend did his job behind the wheel, outpedaling Jack Beckman in round one, then Jon O and Nicky Boninfante tuned the car to two 4.10s and a 4.09 and, in the final, the fourth-fastest speed in the 1,000-foot era.

"Scott's biggest complaint was that the driver couldn't control the car with the way it was set up," said Jon O. "We worked on a lot of things from front to back and reached out to a lot of people in the class. Now, Jeff says the car is much easier to drive than when he got here. You know that Scott is looking down from heaven, telling Eric, Blaine, and Darrell, 'See? Those [expletives] finally listened to me!' Scott and Connie always wanted a competitive Funny Car more than anything. Winning is great, but it means so much more to do it the way we did it."

It was a day that Myers won't soon forget.

"Mondays are always surreal anyway because the pits are half empty," he said. "Then we had to sit through that mess this morning [the rain delay and the cleanup after Daniel Wilkerson's crash], and it's like, 'Are we ever gonna get through this? Come on!' When we finally get to racing, Jeff blows the tires off first round, and I'm like, 'Oh, crap.' He pedals, Beckman pedals, and we finally got some luck. Since Scott died, there's been this aura around the team that we had no luck. I asked Jon O and Nicky what they were going to do for second round, and they told me, 'We're fine; we feel really good about the car because it made some great early numbers, and we know what to do to back it down and make it not only go down the track, but down the track really, really quick.'

Celebration time. You think Todd Myers, far left, is happy? Recalls Jim Oberhofer, "Everyone on the starting line was emotional. I went up to Connie, who was looking at the scoreboard. In typical Connie fashion, he said, 'How the hell did that thing run so fast? Did it fall out of a tree?' " (Auto Imagery photo)

"Second round, it runs a 4.10, the quickest e.t. of the round, and does it again the next round, and suddenly, it's like, 'Hey, we have a shot at winning this thing.' Normally I'll stay in the pressroom, but I had to be down on the line for this one. As we're getting ready to run, I turned around, and I don’t think I've ever seen that many different representatives of teams standing behind us watching. Not really close, but they were all up there, and they were standing behind our car because they wanted us to win.

"When I saw Tony [Pedregon] shut off in the final, I was just praying, 'Please go down the track. Stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. Stay in your lane.' Even knowing that Tony was dead in the water, it's all building, and it was amazing."

If you've ever seen Kalitta starting-line celebrations, you know they can be a bit rowdy, and this one certainly was, but that's more because it was a huge release of emotion and energy and heartache and hope and hurt and tears pent up in the last year and a half. What followed was just as magical.

"You have to tow through the pits to get back to the winner's circle," said Myers, "and as we passed all the pit areas, the teams were clapping and cheering and yelling; they were all so happy we won the race. Jeff handed the trophy to Connie and said, 'This is for Scott.' Connie took it smiled and said, 'Yeah, this is for Scott,' and then he handed it right back to Jeff and said, 'But you deserve this too.'

(Dani Cox photo)

"Conrad had told us before the final, 'Win or lose, I'm going home; I'm not gonna stick around for all this crap,' because that's just the way he is. Getting that e.t. slip that says 'I won' means the most to Conrad. Getting the trophy and getting his picture taken means nothing to him. But Doug [Kalitta] talked him into staying, and he did winner's circle and all the hat pictures, and you could tell he was happy, and I'm glad Doug talked him into staying. It was a great moment."

It had to be a special moment for Arend, too, who was honored to get the unenviable task of trying to keep the Kalitta legacy alive in Funny Car -- I mean, hey, no pressure, right? -- only to have the team struggle for the last year and a half. It's been a long time between wins for Arend – I was there in Reading in 1996 when he scored his only other win, ironically, in the same chassis with which Scott had won in Houston in 1989 -- and a lot of water has passed under his bridge since.

"Everyone is talking about how we did this as a team. Jeff stepped up, all the crew guys did their part, the crew chiefs did their job, and it was just awesome," said Myers. "Scotty would have loved it."

(Dani Cox photo)

“This is one of the best days of my life,” said Arend. “To get this win for Scott and Connie and everyone at Kalitta Motorsports is amazing. It’s surreal, and it definitely hasn’t all soaked in yet. I can’t explain what this win means to me and everyone on our team who has struggled so hard to get this Wally for Connie and for Scott. We turned a big corner today, and we're going to bring that trophy to Scott, that's for sure."

And Scott will get a chance to enjoy it, too. The team plans to take the Wally trophy – the actual trophy, not a duplicate – and epoxy it to Scott's grave in Florida.

Our own Brad Littlefield, who was closer to Scott than anyone on the staff, and who was there that fateful day in Englishtown, was there last night, hugging and crying with the team. He told me that Jon O called Scott's sons, Corey and Colin, right after the win and how Scott's widow called Jeff to tell him what a good job he did driving, which got him choked up. Like all of us.

A Kalitta Funny Car is back in the winner's circle, and so it seems like it's all come full circle. The world isn’t any more whole for the Kalitta team than it was before the win, but it's a little happier place for them, and for all of us.

Yesterday sure turned out better than it started, which was with the unconfirmed news that Shaun Carlson had died. Even though most people didn't know him but from his brief season a few years ago on the NHRA Pro tour, I'd known Shaun well before that from the five years that I covered NHRA's Sport Compact series for National DRAGSTER and the NHRAsportcompact.com Web site that I ran.

We all knew that Shaun had been sick the last couple of years. He'd been diagnosed with Brugada syndrome, which causes abnormal heartbeats and can lead to sudden cardiac death, which is why it's also known as Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome (SUDS). He took a turn for the worse in February when he had a trio of heart episodes, but he remained firmly involved with professional drifting, in which he was the car owner for former champ Sam "the Crazy Swede" Hübinette and their bad-ass Dodge Viper. Darren Jacobs, my pal at Mopar, had gotten my son and I tickets for the Formula Drift opener in Long Beach, Calif., in April, and I went hoping to see Shaun, but he was back in the hospital again the first day and not that well when he came out for the final day, when Hübinette finished second. I never got a chance to see him and missed him when we also attended the drift event in Sonoma two months ago. I wish I had tried harder.

When I got the news yesterday, I guess I wasn't totally surprised. It took a while for me to confirm his passing – still hoping it wasn't true, I called his fabrication business, NuFormz, and my call went to voice mail, which was full, which did not fill me with hope – but Darren finally got me in touch with his right-hand man, Brad Manka, who gave me the sad confirmation that we'd lost him at the too-early age of 35. I won’t share the details of his passing, but it does sound as if he was stricken suddenly in the night, which points a finger at SUDS.

After leaving drag racing, Carlson was the owner of this Dodge Viper drift machine, driven by Sam Hubinette.

Even though Mopar dropped its support of drifting a few months ago, Darren sent me a great bio on Shaun so that I could write his obituary. Those of you who know me or have followed this column know that I pour a lot of heart into any final farewell story; it's my final tribute to people who have made my life better and more interesting, and even though Shaun wasn't as well-known to many of you, I felt a home-page tribute was definitely in order. It was the right move and meant a lot to a lot of people.

Shaun's brother, Trevor, whom I have never met, dropped me a nice note to thank me for the story, and Rachel Kaizoji, who used to work here at NHRA, passed along this great message, which she said I could share. Before she worked at NHRA, she worked with Toyo on its sport compact program and met and got to know Carlson, who shared garage space with Toyo-backed racer Stephan Papadakis. She couldn't have been happier when he came to our biggest stage.

"I met him at the SEMA Show I think in 2000, but I already knew who he was since he was such a huge star in the sport compact world," she wrote. "I was there to congratulate him and line him up the first time he qualified with the Pros and walked through the POWERade doors [during pre-race introductions]. I was really proud of him. What a loss, but he sure accomplished a lot. He was a pioneer in drag racing even though he was such a young guy, and I know he was really important to so many, especially all those sport compact racers and followers who were happy to see one of their own make it to the Pros."

Shaun first hit my radar screen with a wild winged Ford Focus that he was campaigning before that, a tube-framed wonder that he built as a follow-up to his groundbreaking work of Papadakis' all-conquering Honda Civic. What makes these cars so amazing is that they were front-wheel-drive machines that ran, at the time, in the eight-second zone but later reached deep into the sevens and beyond. If you've ever nailed the gas on a front-wheel-drive of any kind – be it even a rental car – you know that they accelerate very differently than a rear driver, and you're fighting torque steer every inch of the way. Take that and multiply it by 10, and you might get an idea of the kind of skills that drivers like Carlson, Papadakis, Lisa Kubo, Ed Bergenholtz, Gary Gardella, Marty Ladwig, Nelson Hoyos, and other front-wheel-drive stars of the series had under their right feet.

Carlson's Mopar-backed SRT4 Pro FWD car was a winner in NHRA Sport Compact competitiion and set the national record.

Carlson qualified just once in the 2006 Pro Stock season and later took on an engineering role with the Don Schumacher Racing team.

He later built a screaming Dodge SRT4 that set the national record in NHRA's Pro FWD class and carried him to a few wins and some top-five finishes. His partnership with Mopar is what ultimately led him to subbing for Mopar ace Darrell Alderman at the 2004 Winternationals, and he showed his natural skill by winning a round, and two years later, he was a full-time driver for Don Schumacher Racing when "the Don" incorporated Pro Stock into his burgeoning program. He won the job over more than 20 others who applied, sealing the deal with a one-on-one audition in Las Vegas against Mike Corvo during the preseason.

I remember it being an interesting combination, with mohawked and earring-wearing Carlson going to work with then crew chief Bob Glidden, who's about as old school as they get. There were definitely growing pains between the two, and the car never ran as it should have – not sure if it was the driver or the car or both – and Shaun was later given a role in engineering with the team instead.

The message boards lit up with comments and wonder and diatribes about why and how he had gotten the job, but Shaun took it all in stride.

“Yeah, I read a lot of that stuff, and I’m not afraid to admit that some of it hurt,” he told ND Senior Editor Kevin McKenna then. “The fact is that there are a lot of people out there who don’t have respect for sport compact racers. Maybe they don’t like the way we look or the music we listen to or they don’t appreciate the technology that goes into our cars. I’m not really sure where it comes from, but it’s out there. There is a flip side, though. There are also a lot of sport compact racers who have a very negative view of the [NHRA POWERade] series. It swings both ways.

“[I hope] I can help alleviate some of that narrow-minded thinking. I want to be successful because of the faith that Don and Bob have shown in me, but I also want to win over here so people will realize that [sport compact and POWERade Series racers] aren’t that different. We all have a passion for the same thing; we just work in different venues.

“Don has never said anything about my piercings or my hair, and the only thing Bob has said was, ‘As long as you can drive that race car, I don’t care how many holes you’ve got in your head.’ I’m sure Bob’s first impression of me probably wasn’t too favorable, but now that he’s gotten to know me a little, he told me, ‘You seem like a really good kid.’ That’s good because I don’t plan on changing.”

Shaun was an original, and he'll be missed.
 

As the calendar switches from September to October, it's time to clear out the backlog of intriguing stuff that I've accumulated in the last month. Enjoy!

I sent Shirley Muldowney a copy of Steve Heuer's photo of her in the cockpit of her ill-fated Satellite Funny Car (see column below), noting the early-model firesuit shown in the pic, and asked her how much racing had changed over the years. I found her reply both interesting and informative and, from someone with her vast experience and cred, spot on.

"They were so different that to draw a comparison between the two is kinda ridiculous, but I'll give it a shot," she said. "Now the cars don't seem to hike the front end up (both wheels; on a good run; the 1970 cars ran on three wheels to the 1,000-foot mark); drivers' hands don't have to leave the steering wheel to shift into another gear at half-track; drivers doesn't straddle a Lenco; we didn't have throttle stops to regulate the burnout rpm; smart drivers relied on an oil-pressure gauge only; and fire bottles have grown considerably larger in size."

And she was just getting warmed up …
 
Shirley also offered this then versus now list:

• Real firesuits versus "Reynolds Wrap"  
• Full-face helmets  
• Coaches with radio headsets  
• Superior track lighting  
• Prepared track surfaces  
• Super speedways (surface, length, width)  
• Extended runouts versus cornfields  
• Longer wheelbase  
• State-of-the-art engine and running gear components  
• Fuel pumps that live longer than two runs  
• Front and rear wheel brakes  
• Larger dual Kevlar parachutes  
• Guardwall versus guardrail (or none at all)  
• Testing  
• 90 percent nitro versus 100 percent 
• Bathrooms and showers  
• Hotels instead of sleepers  
• Airplanes reservations versus toll booths  
• Kenworths versus Dodge duallies  
• Alan Johnson versus Freddie DeName

"I rest my case," she concluded.

It's amazing sometimes how far we have come and how soon we forget the types of equipment that the pioneers of our sport used. We, the jury of the Insider Nation, find for Ms. Muldowney in the case of Then versus Now. 
 

Speaking of Shirleys, Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum presented by Automobile Club of Southern California curator and historian Greg Sharp (who, with Bret Kepner, always keeps me honest here) passed along a copy of a nice article on Shirley Shahan in the Visalia (Calif.) Times Delta newspaper. Shahan (now Shirley Bridges) had been officially named to the Visalia Riverway Sports Park Pillars of Fame in a unanimous vote by the Visalia Parks and Recreation Commission. The Pillars of Fame is the Visalia version of a sports Hall of Fame. That's Bridges, center, with husband Ken and close friend Marian Cote.

The article noted that she often is confused with another Shirley. "Yes, for the umpteenth time, I am not Shirley Muldowney," said Bridges, whose career largely did not intersect with Muldowney's as she retired in 1972, just as Muldowney was beginning her rise to greatness. (You can read my past column on Shahan's exploits -- parts of which were noted in the newspaper article -- here).
 

My recent Four-wide mania column drew a lot of fond remembrances and thank-yous from those fortunate enough to have witnessed those spectacles firsthand. Dan Lemons dropped me a line to fess up to being the soul brave enough to be the starter at Fontana Drag City when they ran the four jet dragsters side by side.

"I was the foolhardy guy standing in front of the four flamethrowers with a flag in my hand," he admitted. "Even with the firesuit on, I got burned on the back of my neck and ankles, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world. All us old guys have left are the memories." Indeed!

Lemons now owns Lemons Headers in Paso Robles, Calif. I checked out his Web site and found it functional yet lacking a little pizzazz, so to thank him for his contribution to today's column, I propose he adopt one of the following slogans for his business: "Get Some Sour Power!" or "Lemons Headers: We'll squeeze more power from your engine" or "Lemon-aid for your horsepower woes" or, my favorite, "Be the top e-lemon-ator with Lemons Headers!" Dan: Contact me to discuss the terms of licensing these wonderful sayings <g>.
 

Insider reader Jack "J.R." Hodson wanted to know the identity of the four Funny Cars shown in the pic at right, which I had found cruising some bulletin boards, but the photo was so small I couldn’t really help him. "Looks like an Opel Kadett farthest from the camera, then a somewhat-looking Candies & Hughes 'Cuda, a somewhat-looking USA 1 Camaro, and then a Buick Skylark or possibly Nova closest to the camera," he offered. I told him not to fret, that I was sure that the Insider Nation soon would give us the answer, and, sure enough, they did.

Not only did I get the answer, but I got it from one of those involved, Ron Pellegrini. "It was 1968, and the four cars were Jack Ditmars with the Mini Brute, Pat Minick with the Chi-Town Hustler, the Out of Sight Camaro (cannot remember the driver), and myself with my Beware Buick. I remember the day well as I crashed on a later run … slow roll and 173 on the roof through the lights, but that's another story."

"Hey do I get a Dewey button or a brownie point for getting the four manufacturers correct?" inquired Hodson (obviously showing his age) after I passed along Pellegrini's response.

Old pal Chase Knight also responded with more details about four-wide racing in Florida that helped round out the picture down South. "The Miami-Hollywood track did have four actual racing lanes in its final incarnation," he wrote. "The original push-down road to the west (left) of the original dragstrip was widened to accommodate two proper lanes and had its own Tree and timers. The 'new' track had about 1,000 feet less shutoff than the primary track and was used for the slower cars. All the lanes were used at the same time, but not usually with any attempt to start all four vehicles together."

Mike Korpi sent this sad photo of the former Gary Clapshaw Spirit of Las Vegas Top Fueler in a heap Down Under. Korpi was one of the original crewmembers who helped Lonnie Strode build this car in 1999 for Clapshaw. This car holds a couple of places in history as it not only was the car that Clapshaw drove to a stunning U.S. Nationals runner-up in 2000 but also was the car that "Big Daddy" Don Garlits drove in Indy the following year when he ran his first four-second and 300-mph passes. This accident apparently took place a year ago at Western Sydney Dragway.

"I found these pics surfing the other day, and I am sick at what has happened to it," wrote Korpi. "I had more than 60 hours in just polishing the roll cage. What a waste. I am devastated. I am still crying."

Turns out that the car was owned by Aussie favorite Steve "Pommie" Read, who had the throttle hang open on his final qualifying pass. "I slid my foot out of the pedal to try and pull the throttle off, but no hope; by this time, I knew I wasn't going to stop," he posted on his Web site. "The car was on full throttle for 7.35 seconds, and on overlaying the data we recovered on our fastest run, we saw it was quicker than the at pass. At 300 mph, you travel at over 450 feet per second; after the finish line, you have about four seconds at that speed before the track ends and you are in the sand. Approaching the end of the track and still having to use two hands on the wheel, I thought, 'This is going to be BIG!' When suddenly the fuel ran out, the throttle unjammed, and I got the chutes out; by this time, I was almost in the kitty litter. I concentrated on keeping the car dead straight so as to go in head first, with approximately 15 feet of car in front of me to act as a crumple zone, I had to hope that was enough. At the last second, I pulled my hands off the wheel, and then a mighty WHOOMP, and the car stopped dead. My first thought was, 'That was not too bad,' and then the fuel tank exploded, and the fire came into the cockpit. I had no pain apart from my left hand, so with it getting a little hot in the car, I got out over the front of the car and trod straight into a tyre full of water. By this time, the rescuers had arrived, and they were all falling about in the tyres as well, which I thought was quite funny!"
 

Speaking of cars in pieces, good friend Dave Wallace Jr., responding to Steve and John Bell's impressive collection of drag racing flotsam and jetsam in an earlier column, passed along this funny photo of him and his pals at the 1988 U.S. Nationals, where Brad Tuttle had vaporized the body of his Nitro Brandt Thunderbird in the lights.

"The nose fit so nicely onto this rent-a-rocket that I was able to drive it back to my Indy hotel from the track," he noted.

From left are veteran lensman and Lions Dragstrip historian Don Gillespie, Dave Wallace Sr. and Jr., and Jeff Burk (pre-Drag Racing Online). Dave Jr.'s brother, Sky, shot the photo and also "subsequently chopped the nose into five suitcase-friendly souvenirs with his always-handy Dremel tool," noted his proud brother. Sweet!
 

Speaking of second generations, on a little more modern note, former National DRAGSTER Editor and frequent Insider contributor Bill Holland passed along this photo he took recently of current ND Associate Editor Brad Littlefield, left,, and former ND Associate Editor Todd Veney, with the subject line Sons of the Old Pioneers.

"Nope, not the old country western singing group," Holland noted. "I snapped this picture of Brad Littlefield and the Toddster chatting at Indy. Obviously, they are sons of two prominent Alcohol Funny Car pioneers."

Brad's father, of course, is Mert Littlefield, of Littlefield Superchargers fame and and a longtime alcohol and nitro Funny Car driver. Todd's dad is the talented Ken Veney, cylinder-head wizard and a former nitro and alcohol flopper ace. Both of their sons have followed them into the cockpits, Brad licensing impressively in Dad's car and Todd boldly starting his own operation from the ground up and driving for others in a promising career that netted a divisional win in Columbus, where he left on and beat Frank Manzo (not that he has the photo of that final round as his desktop wallpaper on his laptop or anything), as well as three national event runner-ups.

Much to their dismay, neither has a ride, which might explain Veney's reaction to the photo that I forwarded to him: "From the look on our faces, I'd say it was from when Brad and I were discussing whether either one of us will ever drive a race car again."

We all brag to our friends who favor other motorsports about how great drag racing is and how the drivers are so accessible, right? Well Jim Pedley, writing for Sporting News, really nailed it with this article. Check it out here.

Hey, who doesn't love a good road trip, right? I mean, you, the open road, some good tunes, and your favorite hot rod. For many of us, it's heaven. But I doubt that any of us would have dared embark on the road trip that Dave Schaub took recently. He set out in his his Roy Brizio-built '32 Ford Model A roadster to see if he could visit all 49 states in the continental United States in nine days to raise money for Ronald McDonald House to help terminally ill children. It was an ambitious plan that would have him cover 9,800 miles in 216 hours.

He launched from Needles, Calif., Sept. 8, headed for Tulsa, Okla., then to the deep South until the Florida panhandle, then up the Eastern seaboard to Buffalo, N.Y., then back west. His biggest day notched 12 states, and even when he reached the West Coast again and Washington, his journey wasn't over. He had to head up north through British Columbia to reach the small town of Hyder in southeast Alaska.

Schaub kept a time-stamped receipt for gasoline and other items in each state he visited and used a GPS satellite device to allow Internet users to track his progress in real time on Google Maps through his Web site, www.49in9.com. He even made it to Hyder ahead of schedule, completing the trip in 8 days, 16 hours, and 48 minutes. I am certifiably impressed.
 

And finally, there's this. I received an e-mail from Amy Caetta bragging about her big win at the Wiener Nationals. Yes, Wiener, not Winter.

Apparently, the fast-food chain Wienerschnitzel, with a sly nod of the hat to our own fabled Winternationals, hosts a little drag race for dachshunds, and her little guy, Presley, a 2-year-old brown dachshund, turned out to be the top dog, the Fastest Wiener in the West. The race was held last month at the Los Alamitos horse racing track here in Southern California to raise funds for the Seal Beach Animal Care Center. The 2009 Wiener Nationals featured 98 wiener dogs from across Southern California competing in a record 13 races, the most in the 14-year history of the event.

This month, Presley will be in the city of Placentia's parade, and in late December, she will be racing other wieners from around the nation in San Diego (Holiday Bowl Parade) to compete for the title Top Dog and the chance to ride on top of the Wienerschnitzel float. The win was featured in local newspapers.

Check out the video at right to see the hot dog run and then jump into Amy's happy arms.

Doggone, that was a fun column. I hope you enjoyed it. See ya next week!

Welcome to Fan Fotos, the sequel! Steve Heuer – and quite a few others -- took advantage of my offer two weeks ago to display their 10 best fan photos, and here they are. Again, the purpose of this is to show off your fan-type photos – which means no pro-shot stuff from the guardrails (unless you snuck up there when the officials weren't looking; then you get bonus points), and I don't care if there's a telephone pole or fellow spectator's head in your way, and, of course, they must be photos shot by you. I'll be running more of the submissions throughout the weeks ahead, but Steve-o is up first.

Steve has been going to the drags for a long time. The photo at right is of him (and, obviously, not taken by him; although it's a clear violation of my rules, I'll let it slide) at age 12, at his first drag race at New England Dragway in 1972, standing next to Tim Kushi's car. Like so many of us, it was dear ol' dad who gave him his first in-person introduction to the sport (many of us had long been rabid magazine buyers before we ever got to the digs for the first time, saving up allowance for a copy of Drag Racing USA or Super Stock).

The rest of Steve's photos are also from the 1970s, a great period for Funny Cars, which make up the bulk of his submission.

"Maybe these are not the 10 best, but a representative synopsis of some great memories!" he added.

I couldn’t agree more. If you have 10 Fan Fotos you'd like to submit, pass them along to me at pburgess@nhra.com. These must be photos taken by you and not pro-shot kinds of images; I want those down-and-dirty fan photos. Please include as much info as you have for dates and locations and what's going on in the photos.

That's it for today; I'll see you later this week.
 

Sunday's four-abreast extravaganza at zMax Dragway was a sight to behold, even on TV, my vantage point for the weekend. National DRAGSTER Associate Editor Candida Benson, who was covering the event for us for NHRA.com and has been around the drag races long enough to see plenty, texted me, "OMG coolest thing ever!!!!!!" (yes, six exclamation points).

The eight drivers who took part in the two pairings – one each for Top Fuel and Funny Car – were equally as enthusiastic, especially the two winners, Spencer Massey and Mike Neff. Both won their four-car matches on a holeshot, and in fact, Massey's great light helped him reach the finish line ahead of Antron Brown and Brandon Bernstein, both of whom had better elapsed times. I bet that Massey, who had a better reaction time than all three, would like to have that triple play added to his reaction time stats as well as the three "round-wins."

As could be expected, all eight drivers were exicted and honored to be in on the history-making exhibition, using such descriptions as "exciting" and "honored" <g> ... except, of course, for John Force, who related it to something about charging the cheerleaders shower in high school that's better left unexplored. Then again, if you were the quarterback of a team that didn't win a single game, it's understandable why your highlight took place off the gridiron.

Long before zMax was finished, I wrote a couple of columns about four-wide drag racing in the past, and it seems like a good time to share that information again, but with some new info and new pics.

Though a lot of the four-car racing was done at Byron/Rockford Dragways in Illinois and in Budd's Creek, Md., it was a widespread phenomenon from coast to coast. I've received e-mails from both coasts with tales of four-car bashes of various types, including all manners of race vehicles. (I even found a reference in Hot Rod magazine that back in the 1930s, the SCTA class finals runoffs on the dry lakes at Muroc sometimes featured up to a dozen cars[!], which obviously was a lot easier on the lake's wide-open spaces and with a flag starter and human win judges than what would have been required for computerized timing.)

(Above and below) Top Fuelers versus Super Stockers? You betcha.

Rico Paris, near lane, took on three other fuelers at Rockford (Ill.).

Four-wide jets in Fontana, Calif.

Four-wide floppers!

Four-across door cars in York, Pa., in 1969 with the cars of Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins, "Dyno Don" Nicholson,"Jungle Jim" Liberman, and Sox & Martin.

(Above and below) The four-car race in Fresno, Calif.; from left are Jim Herbert driving the Lizard, Berry Bros.-Stark, Raitt-Hyatt Syndicate II with Dwight Salisbury driving, and Gotelli-Safford.

Veteran Mark Pieri, Top Gas winner at the 1966 Springnationals and a three-time Division 3 Top Gas champ (and multi-time UDRA champ) who also competed in Top Fuel as well as Top Alcohol Funny Car and Dragster, took part in one of the craziest four-car bashes ever in October 1964 in Byron, Ill., pitting two fuel dragsters against two Super Stockers.

Pieri is in the far left lane in the Chicago-based Guzzler entry of Bud Roache and Don Mattson; the late Ron Correnti, another grizzled fuel-racing veteran, was in the stocker next to him. Next to Correnti is the famous "Greek," Chris Karamesines, and Pieri said he thinks that Ed Reshanski was in the far right lane.

“If memory serves me right, the door cars were staged 50 or 75 feet behind the starting line," recalled Pieri. "The flagman waved one flag for them to start, and when they reached the starting line, he waved the other flag for ‘the Greek’ and I to give chase. It was an exciting race. We only did this one weekend, a two-out-of-three-type deal, and, fortunately, we didn't have any problems.”

Domenic Paris, son of former Top Fuel racer Rico Paris, also passed on a pic, which he believes is from the same weekend at Rockford Dragway as Pieri’s pic.  “I was maybe 6 or 7 when this photo was taken, but I remember it like it was yesterday,” he wrote. “My father is in lane one.”

Chuck Rearick raced a Jr. Fuel dragster at Rockford and Great Lakes Dragway in the 1960s when they were mixed with the Top Gas cars. With four cars hitting the starting line at the same time, confusion sometimes reigned. “With push-start cars from the big end, it always got interesting with four cars trying to make the turnaround in the staging area,” he recalled. “What made it more fun is we did not have reversers, so the crew had to pull us back and forth to get us lined up. You also had to keep in mind that it was a four-lane racetrack, because if you forgot and kept it in the center of a two-lane track, you took out the lights … which Ron Leek tried to charge us for.”

Stephen Justice sent me a newspaper article from a May 7, 1967, four-car match in Fresno, Calif., at the track’s inaugural Golden Nationals that featured a unique team format. Gotelli & Safford were teamed with the Syndicate II team while Jim Herbert was paired with the Berry Bros. and Claude Stark. The format awarded points for first- through fourth-place finishes in three rounds, with first place getting four points, second three points, third two points, and fourth a single marker. Safford-Gotelli won the first round, ahead of Berry, Herbert, and the Syndicate, which broke the rear end and was replaced in round two by Dwight Salisbury at the wheel of the Armenian dragster. The results were identical in the second round, so the teams were tied at 10 points apiece. Herbert won the third round, ahead of Stark, Safford, and Salisbury. The final score was 17-13 for the Herbert and Berry Bros./Stark team.

Justice also remembered Fontana Drag City running four jet dragsters at the same time (Doug Rose in Art Arfons' Green Monster, Lucky Harris in Malone's US-1, J.D. Zink in Romeo Palamides' Untouchable, and Al Biscay in Palamides' Untouchable Twice).

Vic Raupe of Guthrie, Okla., remembers seeing four abreast at fabled Green Valley Race City in Fort Worth, Texas, in the mid-1960s. “Because of the huge number of mid-‘60s muscle cars, track owner and great promoter Bill Hielscher used the superwide track for four cars at a time,” he wrote. “This made for more time trials and an early end to eliminations to meet curfew hours. I remember one Saturday night, there were so many Chevelle SS396s, GTOs, and others of this era that in eliminations three cars would lose and one would return for the next round.”

Floridian Wayne Albert was told of four-lane racing at Miami-Hollywood Speedway, using the staging lanes that were parallel to the track, and Jim King of Lodi, Ohio, reported four-lane racing in the long history of Dragway 42 in West Salem, Ohio.

One interesting note that came out of all of this four-wide mania was an interview that John Force Racing publicist Dave Densmore did with crew chief Austin Coil, in which Coil not only talked about the famed Chi-Town Hustler participating in four-wide racing but also about driving one of the Hustlers in a four-wide race at Rockford in 1969.
 
“We had both our new car and our old car out there because we were testing the new car to make sure it was all right,” Coil said. “Somebody didn’t show up who was supposed to be there, so they made us an offer to run both cars. I drove the new one, and Pat Minick drove the old one. I think we made three runs.
 
“I drove [the Chi-Town Hustler] a couple times, later on,” Coil added. “The last time I drove was in Jacksonville, Fla., in, like, February of 1970, maybe.”

Wow, who knew?

OK race fans, that's it for the day, and also probably for the week. I'm leaving Thursday for Dallas for the O'Reilly Super Start Batteries NHRA Fall Nationals presented by Castrol Syntec and, unfortunately, I have a huge load of stories due for National DRAGSTER between now and then, so I'm not sure I'll have a column on Friday as usual. Apologies in advance.

The John Force-Tony Pedregon top-end tempest at Indy (now apparently smoothed over with the help of mutual friend Bob Tasca III, if you read Wednesday's transcript from the NHRA teleconference) got me to thinking about great rivalries in our sport.

Rivalries can be created and stoked by any manner of real or artificial devices, but the most prevalent seem to be created by either close competition or verbal jousting. We've seen all kinds of rivalries, from the respectful and good-natured to the bitter and hateful, and even some that have been manufactured, by one or both parties. Sometimes they're just good ol' clean fun, with the fans enjoying two champions trading wins back and forth, and sometimes they're mean and nasty, which keeps the fans on the edge of their seats, hackles up, and defending their driver to the end. A good rivalry sells tickets and T-shirts and generates reams of ink for both drivers.

Although the Force-Pedregon brouhaha may end up as just a minor dustup (though it surely won’t be forgotten), only time will tell if it stands the test of history as a legendary rivalry like some of those mentioned below. This column is not intended as a comprehensive guide to all rivalries over all time but rather a fun look back at a select few that strike my fancy for various reasons.

Stone-Woods-Cook versus "Big John" Mazmanian

The players: Fred Stone and Leonard Woods had been fielding supercharged gas Willys machines since 1960, first with K.S. Pittman at the wheel, then, beginning at the 1961 Nationals, with Doug "Cookie" Cook in the cockpit, leading to the formation of one of the most famous teams in drag racing: Stone, Woods & Cook. When fellow SoCal gasser owner "Big John" Mazmanian traded in his Corvette for a Willys, the die was cast for one of the great all-time rivalries of the 1960s. Fueled as much by hype and rhetoric in a series of ads in the trade papers as by supercharged gas, the two teams battled relentlessly, S-W-C with Olds power and "Big John" and driver "Bones" Balough with Chevy motivation.

The magic moment: Although the two teams raced innumerable times in class and match race competition, one race really sticks out, but it needs to be heavily prefaced. Two weeks prior to the 1964 Winternationals, the two teams met in a hotly debated impromptu pairing at Lions DragStrip; Mazmanian earned bragging temporary rights when Balough beat Cook on a holeshot, 10.23 to 10.15; the back story, however, was that Balough's win came on a rerun after Cook had reached the finish line in front the first time around but had put a wheel off the track in the process. S-W-C got revenge at Pomona, where Cook's holeshot and 10.03 elapsed time gave the prestigious A/GS class win to Stone, Woods & Cook against Balough/Mazmanian's better-but-later 10.02, giving both teams a chance to scream to the papers about supremacy.

After their Pomona win, Stone, ever the pot-stirrer, insisted that if "Big June" (as he mockingly called him) wanted another shot at S-W-C, he would have to put up $3,000 "for the honor and privilege of racing them." That winter, Mazmanian had replaced his Chevy powerplant with a 467-cid Chrysler, and after Balough uncorked an unearthly 9.77 in winning the Bakersfield March Meet, S-W-C quickly followed suit, abandoning their Oldsmobile for a 440 Chrysler.

Lions manager C.J. "Pappy" Hart finally got them both to the bargaining table and offered a $1,000 winner/$600 runner-up two-of-three proposal for the two giants to duke it out at Lions May 2. An overflow crowd packed Lions that night to witness the shootout. Balough won the first go-round, again on a holeshot, 9.96 to 9.91. Ninety minutes later, they returned to the line, but this time, Balough was too quick for his own good, red-lighting to tie the score as both drivers shut off early. Drag News' Ralph Gudahl wrote of the pre-final scene, "It looked like a sale at Macy's as everyone pushed to the fences, hung from poles, anything to gain a full sight of the course." The rubber match went to Cook and the blue Willys, 9.93, 141.06 to 9.99, 141.06. Despite their sharply traded pre-race barbs, members of both teams shook hands and congratulated one another, but the fans were the real winners.

Don "the Snake" Prudhomme versus Tom "the Mongoose" McEwen

The players: Mother Nature's battle became drag racing's when Tom McEwen, the promoter, and Don Prudhomme, the die-hard racer, created Wildlife Racing to bring The Jungle Book to life, thanks to sponsorship from Mattel toys that made them household names in the grubby paws of every little kid who could stick together two pieces of plastic orange track and let gravity do the rest. Prudhomme had long been "the Snake," and the wily McEwen, knowing that a mongoose was one of the few animals that could beat a snake, chose his nickname accordingly. McEwen, who already had made a name for himself hustling sponsorships for his race team, had an in at Mattel, where his mother worked as a secretary and his stepfather as a lawyer. That earned him entrée to company VP Art Spears in 1970, and before you could say "Jackrabbit Special," the two each had a Funny car and a Top Fueler, decked out not only with Hot Wheels colors but accompanying deals from Coca-Cola, Plymouth, and Goodyear, who were all eager to hop on to the fast-moving express. The two match raced exhaustively against one another, with Prudhomme generally getting the upper hand. Although the team only lasted three years, their battles, real and imagined, raged on, and fans never got tired of seeing them race one another.

The magic moment: Prudhomme won it all. Four championships and 49 national event wins; McEwen accrued just four NHRA Wallys. McEwen had never beaten Prudhomme in an NHRA final, and "the Snake" personally stopped McEwen from winning four times -- in the Funny Car finals at the 1975 Fallnationals, the 1976 Springnationals and Summernationals, and the 1978 Springnationals — but McEwen got the one that mattered most, the 1978 U.S. Nationals. In a storybook ending, McEwen, still grieving the loss of his son, Jamie, to leukemia just weeks earlier, upset Prudhomme in the final round at Indy. McEwen, overcome with emotion, sat in the car at the top end, and Prudhomme slithered his way beneath the body to join his old pal, rival, and occasional thorn in the side in a truly emotional and unforgettable moment that a few years ago was voted the Most Memorable Moment in U.S. Nationals history.

Shirley Muldowney versus "Big Daddy" Don Garlits

The players: You could probably define the history of Top Fuel from its start to its present day with just their names. Don Garlits, the grizzled and experimental hot rodder from Florida who set the bar for fuel racers everywhere, and Muldowney, who went from Schenectady, N.Y., street racing waitress to champion driver without the benefit of a deep background in automotive technology yet broke ground just as important as Garlits. While "Big Daddy" was down in the dirt checking the bearings, Muldowney, though not adverse to getting dirty, was tending to her growing legions of fans in the Women's Lib era of the early 1970s.

In the 1960s and '70s, Garlits was old-school popular; he built, tuned, and drove the cars, and to him, utilitarian mattered most of all. He was a drag racer's drag racer, yet part of a dying breed as the 1980s and '90s roared into view. Muldowney represented the newer breed. Sure, she had earned her driving stripes in gas dragsters, but she represented a new school: the driver. Her job was to drive and to attract fans and sponsors, whose addition to the team were becoming almost as important as horsepower. She paved the way for and inspired not only other women but men as well. How many of today's top nitro jockeys are not required to work on the cars? Yeah … 99 percent of them. Muldowney's immaculate driving skills were worth more than their weight in nitro, and, like Tony Schumacher and Larry Dixon today and Joe Amato and Gary Ormsby before them, she took care of business in the cockpit and at the ropes.

For Garlits and Muldowney, their different styles both separated and congealed them, giving one another ammunition in their well-publicized verbal jousts, but behind it all, you were always left wondering where the jabs ended and where the respect began.

Muldowney told Hot Rod Magazine, "Don't think Garlits and I didn't hate each other. I hated him and he hated me. But I still respected him. I have always respected him. What, are you kidding me? He's Don Garlits, 'Big Daddy.' We're very good friends now, but back then he just hated a woman kicking his ass. He hated my guts. He was awful. They rode him terribly if he lost. It was horrible."

The magic moment: Wow, where to start? Their track time might well be bookmarked by U.S. Nationals appearances decades apart: Muldowney's first Top Fuel final, against Garlits, at the 1975 U.S. Nationals (where, after winning his semifinal race, he's famously caught on camera at the top end, clucking in shock, "The lady dragster driver is in the final …") and, for us bleeding-heart fans, their side-by-side qualifying pairing at the 2001 U.S. Nationals. Between, they matched raced scores of times before delighted crowds, often as the night's highlight, their fevered efforts to one up the other softened by moments such as when Muldowney, from her hospital bed after a near-career-ending wreck in Montreal in 1984, exhorted Garlits to "go kick their butts" at Indy that year, which he did, and he even briefly served as a consultant for her after her comeback. But for me, one of the all-time-great Garlits-Muldowney moments was the final round at the 1982 Gatornationals (oddly enough, that final and the 1975 Indy final were the only two NHRA national event finals in which they battled).

There they were, in Gainesville, on Garlits' home turf; they qualified fifth and sixth, favoring Garlits by only a few thousandths of a second, 5.783 to 5.788. Garlits had knocked off the newest female contender, recent March Meet winner Lucille Lee (who also would win in Atlanta six weeks later), Johnny Abbott, and Jim Barnard with a best of 5.72, and Muldowney's pink Pioneer Special entry had recorded blasts of 5.80, 5,82, and 5.90 in trailering Mark Niver, Jody Smart, and Connie Kalitta. Muldowney's 5.90 defeat of Kalitta earned her lane choice against Garlits, who had run just an engine-wounding 5.94 against Barnard, setting the stage for a whopper of a final. Diamond P's Steve Evans interviewed her before the final, and although my memory of the entire interview is a little fragile, I do remember her being asked to rate Garlits as a starting-line driver, and her response about "Donald" was classic: "Marginal," she replied. Garlits, who had to change engines before the final, did get the drop on her at the green, .469 to .484, but that was the only time he led as she wheeled her way to her 12th win on a 5.86 to 6.28 decision.

Shirley Muldowney versus Connie Kalitta

The players: Connie Kalitta mentored Shirley Muldowney and her husband, Jack, in their fledging fuel days and ultimately ended up as much more to Muldowney after her divorce from Jack. She became "the Bounty Huntress" to his "Bounty Hunter," but the relationship was short-lived. Together they won the 1977 NHRA Top Fuel championship but split up soon after, and, after two rebuilding years, she won the 1980 crown without him -- even kicking off that season by besting Kalitta in the Winternationals final – and again was the champ in 1982. He was there for her in 1984, after her grievous accident in Montreal, to offer her a flight home on his chartered jet, but since then, it's been an on-again, off-again relationship (currently and most likely permanently off).

The magic moment: The two raced dozens of times in national event competition, but the most remembered is the final round of the 1982 U.S. Nationals. It would be their last final-round joust, and it was a great one: Kalitta was in the midst of a great season and had already defeated her in the final in Montreal, and neither had won the U.S. Nationals yet in their great careers. Muldowney qualified No. 2 behind Gary Beck's otherworldly 5.48 with a 5.57 and ran 5.56, 5.62, 5.65, and a final-round 5.57, 251.39 to best Kalitta's 5.66, 241.28 in the then quickest side-by-side pairing in drag racing history.

Warren Johnson versus Scott Geoffrion

The players: Sure, this could have been Warren Johnson versus Greg Anderson or W.J. versus Bob Glidden, but those might be less interesting. There's no doubt that W.J., Glidden, and Anderson are the kings of Pro Stock in the last three decades, and, despite their on-track ferocity, it's a good bet that there's now more than a bit of mutual (albeit unspoken and certainly delayed) respect for all that each has accomplished. W.J. even famously once said about losing to Glidden, "I never take losing to an individual personally," to which Glidden countered, "Johnson could lose to anyone and not care unless it was me. He couldn’t stand losing to me … I suppose that if a rivalry existed between Warren and me, it was because he couldn’t stand it when I was beating him."

Regardless, the Pro Stock rivalry that always intrigued me was "the Professor" against his student, the late Scott Geoffrion. W.J. gave the young New Jersey kid his first ride in 1991, but Geoffrion forsook his mentor and in 1992 joined the Wayne County Dodge team, where he experienced the bulk of his career successes, some against his teacher. W.J. whipped Geoffrion like the proverbial red-headed stepchild in final rounds from 1992 to early 1994, beating him five straight times before Geoffrion finally flunked "the Professor" in the 1994 Atlanta final and again that year in Dallas. Geoffrion's teammate, Darrell Alderman, had won the championship in 1990, '91, and '94, with W.J. winning the two between, and the skepticism about the source of the Dodge Boys' power no doubt fueled the ornery feelings.

The magic moment: It's Houston, March 1994, and the Dodge Boys were hot off a 1-2 finish in Phoenix, where Geoffrion beat W.J. in the semifinals and teammate Alderman in the final, and they qualified 1-2 in Houston, with Geoffrion atop the pack with a 7.03 and Alderman second at 7.061; W.J. sat third with a 7.065. Geoffrion handily beat Jerry Eckman, Mark Pawuk, and Kurt Johnson with his best run of eliminations, a 7.07. W.J. had mowed down Steve Schmidt, Jim Yates, and, in a huge semifinal clash, Alderman, with a 7.07 that earned him lane choice against Geoffrion.

Both drivers lit their pre-stage bulbs and then sat without moving for nearly a minute as the crowd – which favored Geoffrion based on announcer Dave McClelland's pre-burnout poll – buzzed above the idle of their engines and Geoffrion's occasional rap on the throttle. W.J. later said that he knew that Geoffrion had been instructed by team boss Dave Hutchens not to stage first and had not even bothered to warm his engine before the run.

After 30 seconds, Chief Starter Buster Couch ordered both to stage. Neither would comply, so Couch ordered them to back out of the beams and shut off their engines. After a few minutes to cool down, Couch ordered them to restart and told them to stage within 10 seconds, which both did, barely under the wire. Geoffrion got the slight jump, .460 to .477, but W.J.'s cooler engine pulled him through to a 7.07 to 7.10 victory. Words – and invitations to swap punches — were offered by both at the top end.

Johnson later explained, "I'm no virgin at this. Everybody knows that Scott was instructed to stage last, so I was going to sit there and wait for my Social Security check if that's what was necessary. It was a game to teach the kid a lesson."

Geoffrion retorted, "I don’t know what all this lesson stuff is about since I cut the better light. He's just a whiner."

The Dodge Boys had the last laugh – finishing the season 1-2 ahead of Johnson, though W.J. surely drew belly laughs the next year in Houston when he and Geoffrion were paired in qualifying. As they prepared to stage, a trio of dogs jumped the guardwall on the top end, and W.J. and Geoffrion were shut off on the starting line. Never one to miss an opportunity to needle, W.J. later quipped, "I didn't know what was going on until someone on the starting-line crew told me there were dogs on the track. My response was, 'I know, he 's in the other lane.' " Ouch.

Joe Amato versus Gary Ormsby

The players: Almost since his debut in Top Fuel, Joe Amato, with crew chief Tim Richards, was a serious player. In 1983, just their second full season, they won three times and finished second behind Gary Beck and scored four times the following year to win their first of five titles in the next two decades. Ormsby had returned to Top Fuel in mid-1983 after a long absence and won his first title at the 1984 Winternationals, at Amato's expense. That didn’t really strike the match to light the rivalry because for his first several years, Ormsby's Lee Beard-tuned entry was a fifth-place-type car while Amato was always among the top three. Ormsby's Castrol GTX mount really came to life in 1989, when he won six times en route to nosing out Amato for the title. They raced three times in the final that year, and Ormsby won two – they were an even 5-5 in final rounds against one another in their rivalry, and only once did each win more than one time in succession – and Amato struck back the following year to regain the championship. Amato and Ormsby dominated 1990, with each winning six times (on a 19-race schedule), and the championship came down to the final round in Pomona. Ormsby died of cancer in the summer of 1991 or there's no telling how great this gentleman's rivalry could have become.

The magic moment: Ormsby entered the 1990 season finale trailing Amato by 254 points, but by setting low e.t. (with a 5.01, then worth  50 points) and qualifying ahead of him by two positions (No. 1 to No. 3, for four more points), he was exactly 200 points (or one round-win) behind Amato going into eliminations.

Amato, who had defeated Ormsby, 4.96 to 5.09, in Saturday's $50,000-to-win Top Fuel Classic final, was steadily consistent Sunday with runs of 5.02, 5.02, and 5.03 for wins over Wayne Bailey, Eddie Hill, and Gene Snow. Ormsby was in the five-teens in trailering Jim Head and Don Prudhomme but earned lane choice for the race of his life with a 5.02 to 5.09 semifinal win against Kenny Bernstein. With a final-round win over Amato, he could tie him to the point. It was the perfect storm.

Ormsby staged last and left first … but too soon. G.O. red-lighted, but it probably didn't matter as his green and white machine quickly went up in smoke. Amato went right down the track and, to add insult to injury, bettered Ormsby's low e.t with a track record 4.93. The final points tally, 16,058 to 15,558, didn’t reflect the closeness of the battle, but Amato still left Pomona with his third championship, tying him with Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney.

John Force versus Whit Bazemore, Al Hofman, Cruz Pedregon

The players: When you're at the top as long as John Force has been, there are a lot of people gunning for your head, and when you have a near-monopoly like Force did – plus the biggest and highest-paid team – it's not hard for people to get their noses out of joint and eagerly take shots at you, verbally and physically.

Certainly Whit Bazemore, Al Hofmann, and Cruz Pedregon (and probably a few others) could be counted as having legitimate rivalries with Force, ones that went to varying degrees of hostility, outspokenness, and determination. Hofmann probably was the driver most like Force, a from-the-ground-up junkyard dog who asked and gave no quarter. Hofmann never won a world championship, never finished ahead of Force in the standings, and had a dismal 13-43 record against Force (4-9 in final rounds), yet he still may have been the opponent whom Force feared most because, like him, he was hungry.

Pedregon was a winner in the alcohol ranks before he turned Pro, and being in the saddle of the well-funded McDonald's entry certainly didn’t hurt his successful bid to end Force's two-year championship run in 1992. Of the three, Pedregon fared the best against Force, winning about a third of the time (hey, you take your successes where you can) but holding a losing record of 53-25.

I asked longtime Force publicist Dave Densmore which of the three he thought Force might consider his top rival, and Dens picked Bazemore, which surprised me. Bazemore certainly had the worst record of the three against Force (46-10), but "ol' Baze" had a way of getting Force's goat every time. Never afraid to speak his mind no matter the topic or the political correctness, Bazemore, who at various times reportedly was considered a potential Force hire, surely knew how to get Force riled up, making him dangerous on another front.

The magic moments: For Force and Hofmann, I'd have to say it was the 1996 Winternationals, where Hofmann, who had beaten Force seven times in 12 meetings the previous two years, overcame Force's psychic .401 light to win, then added fuel to the fire in the pressroom by jabbing at Force, who was standing nearby. "Some guys come to the races with two or three cars, three crew chiefs, and a bus. I've got one car and one crew chief, so obviously he's a lot more worried about me than I am about him," he said, a smirk playing across his face. Force fired back, "Where do you get this stuff, Al?" then muttered to those standing by, "Al has a lot more winning to do before he catches up with me." Hofmann took his turn, telling the media, "John must have been brain-dead to have a reaction time like that. Obviously he was worried." Yeah, these two guys loved each other.

For Pedregon and Force, it was, of course, the final round of the Dallas event, with Pedregon on the verge of taking Force's hard-won championship crown. Force smoked the tires but refused to give up and finally smacked the guardwall, disqualifying himself, but kept after the throttle, whipping the car relentlessly and bouncing off the wall a few more tires like a crazed bull trying to chase down Pedregon in the lights if for nothing more than a moral victory. Force actually flipped the car at the next race, in Pomona, overdriving a tire-smoking qualifying run and turning his car turtle. Pedregon clearly had gotten into his head, and the proud and usually unflappable champ certainly was flappable (and flippable).

For Force and Bazemore, Densmore pointed to their 1999 final-round battle in Atlanta as a key moment for Force. Bazemore left on Force, .492 to .527, but Force chased him down to win by just .001-second, 5.147 to 5.182 .

Tony Schumacher versus Larry Dixon, Doug Kalitta, J.R. Todd, and "Hot Rod" Fuller

The players: Because he's sponsored by the U.S. Army and for the last five years has run over everything in sight, let's compare Tony Schumacher to an Abrams M1A1 tank and his rivals to the munitions used against him. Larry Dixon is the only guy other than Schumacher to have won the championship since 2002 and the only other guy to win Indy this decade. He'd have to be like a TOW missile, about the only thing that I can think of that can take out the Abrams. They've traded wins, and although Schumacher's 2008 dominance blew out the candles a bit on their rivalry, Dixon driving for ex-Schumacher tuner Alan Johnson certainly has rekindled it. Doug Kalitta is probably more like a Sherman tank -- capable of inflicting damage to Schumacher in his day, but his best days in this rivalry are temporarily behind him. I’d equate J.R. Todd with a land mine. He certainly couldn’t go head to head with Schumacher every run but was fully capable of ambushing him and taking him out. Rod Fuller largely created the rivalry against Schumacher himself, and because "the Sarge" gave it little regard, Fuller is almost like machine-gun bullets bouncing off of Schumacher's shell yet still plenty noisy and occasionally capable of causing wounds.

The magic moments: Pick any one of the four Indy finals where Schumacher and Dixon raced, and you have an instant classic. After trading wins in 2002 (Schumacher) and 2005 (Dixon), Schumacher won again last year, so you can bet Dixon was looking to even the tally this year and perhaps also a little eager to stop Schumacher from tying Dixon's hero, Don Garlits, with eight Indy wins. Plus there's that whole Alan Johnson thing. Schumacher won again and holds a staggering 11-4 final-round edge on Dixon, but I'm not sure I've ever heard a cross word from either of them about the other. They may have thought it, but they never said it.

You can't think about Schumacher and Kalitta without thinking of "The Run" at the 2006 Auto Club NHRA Finals, and it wasn't even a race betweeen the two. Kalitta entered the season finale with an almost insurmountable lead, and the only way Schumacher could pass him was to go three rounds further in Pomona. When Kalitta reached the semifinals, Schumacher's options narrowed. Although Kalitta lost in the semi's, on a painful holeshot to Melanie Troxel, and Schumacher won his side, "the Sarge" entered the final not only needing to win but also to run at least 4.437 to reset the national record for the 20 bonus points; a win alone would leave him six points shy of Kalitta. With Kalitta watching from the top end, Schumacher lit the win lamp and the scoreboard with an improbable 4.428 to earn the championship by 14 points.

Todd has been an occasional thorn in Schumacher's side since he upset him in the final of the 2006 Denver race – followed by a mocking salute as he stood up in the cockpit – and, with a 3-1 mark, he's one of the few with a winning final-round record against Schumacher. The race we'll always remember, though, took place last year in Dallas, with Schumacher on a record-breaking tear. Schumacher had not lost a single round from early July through that late September day, racking up seven straight event wins and winning 31 straight rounds – both records – before facing Todd in the Dallas final (pictured). With the smart money favoring yet another win by the Army juggernaut, Todd whipped a holeshot on Schumacher and emerged with a stunning 3.912 to 3.910 victory.

Fuller beat Schumacher in the final to win his first Top Fuel title – in Memphis in 2005 – and quickly proclaimed, "To be the man, you have to beat the man, and today we were able to do that." The two dueled for the championship in 2007, with Schumacher winning again, but surprisingly, Fuller owns a 2-1 final-round advantage over Schumacher, yet it seems that it was a few choice words that stung Schumacher most. After Fuller beat him in the 2008 Madison final (pictured), Fuller said that the Don Schumacher Racing DSR initials really stood for "Dark Side Racing" (à la Star Wars), to which "the Sarge" bristled, "You can throw names out, but the right word to say is 'champion.' We earned that name. The rivalries will come later in the season. If you are going to make a rivalry, step up. Me and Doug Kalitta had a great rivalry and never had to say anything."

OK, race fans, that's it for today. It's time to check out this year's real rivalry: NHRA versus the rain. The wet stuff is coming down in Charlotte, and there's an iffy forecast for the weekend, so we'll keep our fingers and toes crossed. See ya next week.
 

After all, those of us in the business all started in the grandstands and on the other side of the pit ropes, snapping shots of our heroes with whatever camera we could get our hands on. As a fan, I went to the races with everything from a self-developing Polaroid to a 110 Instamatic to a full-blown 35mm rig and shot everything I saw. The fan photo has that distinct look; it's the spot from exactly where you and I and every hard-core fan has sat or stood. In the grandstands peering past fellow spectators or light poles. In the pits, as close as we dared get to the work without having to duck a flying 9/16 open end.

Insider reader Kent Ewer knows the drill. He spent a lot of time at the track in his younger days, frequenting Minnesota Dragways and Brainerd Int'l Raceway before moving southwest for the almost antithetical weather of sun-baked Tucson, Ariz. He passed along some of his favorites from those days that I thought I'd share and introduce another semi-regular wrinkle to the column that I will call Fan Fotos.

Ewer didn't include any captions (other than the naming of the photos that designated the track), so I'll supply those. I've also taken the (very light) liberty of cropping some of the photos and color-correcting them in Photoshop (an overzealous one-hour photo technician who liked yellow?) to give them a better look, but not too much. They are fan photos and supposed to be a bit imperfect, right? (No offense, Kent!)

OK, that's the set. Thanks again to Kent for sharing. If you have some Fan Fotos you'd like to share, send  your 10 best shots to pburgess@nhra.com. Please include as much info as you have (date, place, what's happening in the photo if not obvious, etc.), and I'll take it from there.

I'll catch you later this week.
 

Generally, I grab the folders from the National DRAGSTER library, prop my feet up on my desk, and let my fingers do the walking, using a mixed bit of criteria to decide whether to include the photos. First off is the neat-o factor: How cool is the photo? Did it stop me in my tracks or cause a nostalgic, heart-tugging flashback? Then I weigh the quality of the photo; some really great subjects are in some really crappy photos. Then I have to judge the researchability of the subject – is there enough info in the photo (car name, car number, location, etc.) or on the back of the photo to start digging around? I start pulling out a photo here and there, hoping I end up with 10 good ones. By the time I was done with the two L folders, I had 25; not good. So I painfully pared it down to the standard complement of 10, which are presented below. Enjoy.

OK, that's it for the L files. Sorry about missing a column update earlier this week, but Tuesday was a travel day home from Indy, and I spent it and Wednesday working on our coverage of the event for National DRAGSTER. By the time I could even think about doing a column, it was late Wednesday, and I decided that rather than rush into something that I was just going to update Friday anyway to concentrate on ND and save my brainpower for a Friday column.

Enjoy your weekend; I'll see you next week.
 

Indianapolis also may be known as the Circle City, named for its original layout that featured a circular commons that held the governor's mansion (later razed; today the area is Monument Circle) and not for the "other" famous racetrack located nearby (which is actually an oval, but there's already an Oval City, in Ohio not far from Akron … look it up), but this weekend it lives up to its other nickname, the Racing Capital of the World.

I spent the night musing about what might be coming our way this morning as we head out to O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis for our first day of the 55th annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals presented by Lucas Oil. Sure, the race began Wednesday, but we were still in Glendora then, battling deadlines and flying ash and choking smoke from those pesky brush fires, and yesterday was a travel day.

We have our ongoing Indy staff blogs cooking here if you want to catch up on more of my Big Go musings and those of a quartet of my fellow National DRAGSTER staffers.

Along the way, I compiled some miscellaneous Indy stats and facts I thought you’d enjoy. With a tip o' the hat to the ever-prolific and prodigious Bob Frey,

DID YOU KNOW THAT…

… there have been 334 U.S. Nationals winners in the past 54 years?

… 67 of those drivers have won the Big Go more than once? Two drivers have won it nine times, one has scored eight times, two have been victorious seven times, five have titled six times, another has won it five times, three have scored four times, 15 have done in three times, and 38 have scored twice. (To save you the math work, 267 drivers have won it just once.)

Bob Glidden won Pro Stock at the U.S. Nationals nine times, including this 1987 victory that he collected in the midst of a four-year winning streak in Indy.

… four drivers have won the U.S. Nationals four straight years, three of them in Pro Stock? Bob Glidden accomplished that amazing feat of dominance first (1985-1988), followed by Warren Johnson (1992-1995) and Greg Anderson (2003-2006). They are joined by Top Alcohol Funny Car's Pat Austin (1988- 91).

… three drivers have three-peated at Indy? Tony Schumacher and Frank Manzo both have won Indy three years straight twice in their careers. Schumacher did it in 2002, 2003, and 2004 as well as 2006, 2007, and 2008, and Manzo in 2000, 2001, and 2002 as well as 2005, 2006, and 2007. "Big Daddy" Don Garlits did it once (1984, 1985, and 1986).

 … 24 drivers have doubled up in Indy, winning two straight years? Glidden (1973, 1974 and 1978, 1979), Don Prudhomme (1969, 1970 and 1973, 1974), and Dave Schultz (1987, 1988 and 1993, 1994) all did it twice, and Joe Amato (1987, 1988), Brad Anderson (1984, 1985), Dale Armstrong (1974, 1975), Gary Beck (1972, 1973), Kevin Helms (1998, 1999), Kurt Johnson (1996, 1997), Doug Lambeck (1998, 1999), Ed McCulloch (1971, 1972), George Montgomery (1959, 1960), John Myers (1996, 1997), Cruz Pedregon (1994, 1995), Larry Pritchett (2002, 2003), David Rampy (1998, 1999), Scotty Richardson (1995, 1996), Joe Smith (1974, 1975), Glen Treadwell (2005, 2006), Angelle Sampey (2001, 2002), Lee Shepherd (1980, 1981), Gene Snow (1966, 1967), Terry Vance (1985, 1986), and Lee Zane (2003, 2004) all pulled off the feat once.

… no driver has ever won two classes on the same day in Indy, though several have come close. Austin was the first with his Top Alcohol Funny Car win and Top Fuel runner-up in 1991, and he has been followed in the near-miss category by Richardson (1996 Stock win, Super Gas runner-up) and Rampy (1998 Super Comp win, Comp runner-up).

… with a Top Fuel victory, Schumacher will have won eight of 10 U.S. Nationals this decade and will tie Garlits as the class' winningest driver in Indy?

Top Alcohol Funny Car star Frank Manzo is poised to become the winningest driver in U.S. Nationals history if he collects his 10th Indy win this year. His win in 2002 here also was his milestone 50th victory; he now owns 84 wins.

… Top Alcohol Funny Car wunderkind Manzo has the chance this weekend to become the winningest driver in U.S. Nationals history – regardless of class -- with a 10th victory? He also has two runner-ups here.

… Manzo has won the U.S. Nationals six times this decade?

… until Manzo tied him with an Indy win in 2007, former Pro Stock kingpin and home-state favorite Glidden had been the winningest driver in U.S. Nationals for nearly 20 years, since his last win here in 1988? How good was he?

… Glidden also has six runner-ups in Indy?

… the only person to beat Glidden more than once in an Indy Pro Stock final was Shepherd? He did it back to back in 1980 and 1981.

…  four drivers have scored in three classes in Indy? Pete Biondo and Richardson have both won in Super Stock, Stock, and Super Comp, and Jeff Taylor has won in Comp, Super Stock, and Stock. Montgomery also won in three classes in the 1960s (when class names shifted quite a bit), scoring twice in Little eliminator and once each in Middle and Sportsman.

…. Biondo has won twice in each of those classes, and Richardson just missed becoming a four-class winner when he was runner-up in Comp in 2007?

… only four drivers -- Prudhomme, Kenny Bernstein, McCulloch, and Jim Head -- have won the U.S. Nationals in both Top Fuel and Funny Car?

…  Prudhomme not only did it first, winning in Funny Car in 1973 after three previous wins in Top Fuel (1965, 1969, 1970), but with additional Funny Car wins in 1974, 1977, and 1989, he's the only driver with multiple wins in both classes?

… McCulloch is still the winningest Funny Car driver in NHRA history, even though his last fuel coupe win at the Big Go was in 1990?

John Force has won the U.S. Nationals four times, including with this special-edition gold car in 1998, but has DNQ'd the last two years.

… John Force has a chance to tie McCulloch at five wins this year, but that he's failed to qualify in Indy the last two years?

… Force hasn't qualified No. 1 at any NHRA national event since he qualified on the pole at the U.S. Nationals in 2006? That's a span of 66 races, the longest such drought of his Pro career.

… of the 17 NHRA events, past and present, at which Force has logged as many as 20 starts, the U.S. Nationals is the only event he has won fewer than 40 rounds (39)?

… Antron Brown has the chance to become the first NHRA competitor to win at the U.S. Nationals in both Top Fuel and Pro Stock Motorcycle? He earned two-wheeled titles in 2000 and 2004 and is a favorite to win this year in Top Fuel.

… in addition to Prudhomme, McCulloch, Bernstein, Head, and Brown, 12 drivers have wins in two classes: Darrell Gwynn (Top Fuel, Top Alcohol Dragster), Austin (Top Fuel, Top Alcohol Funny Car), Jeg Coughlin (Pro Stock, Super Gas), Snow (Sportsman, Comp), Ronnie Sox (Pro Stock, Super Stock), Vance (Pro Stock Motorcycle, Top Fuel Bike), John Lingenfelter (Comp, Super Stock), Rampy (Comp, Super Comp), Dave Boertman (Super Stock, Stock), Larry Morgan (Pro Stock, Super Stock), Bob Riffle (Comp, Modified), and Pete Shadinger (Comp, Little).

… three of the four Coughlin brothers – Jeg, Mike, and Troy – have won Indy titles? Family patriarch Jeg Sr. was a runner-up in Little eliminator in Detroit in 1959. Looks like John's turn next.

The late Dave Schultz is still the winningest Pro Stock Motorcycle rider in U.S. Nationals history and will be for a long, long time.

… even though his last triumph here was 15 years ago, the late Schultz is still the winningest Pro Stock Motorcycle pilot in Indy history with six wins? He'll hold that record for a long, long time as only one other active rider (Steve Johnson) has more than one win.

… Gary Beck (1972) and Larry Dixon (1995) are the only Pro rookies to have won the U.S. Nationals in their first start in Indy?

… only two drivers -- Rick Santos (1993, 1999) and Bill Reichert (2006, 2008) -- have won Top Alcohol Dragster more than once at the U.S. Nationals?

… Mick Leiferman probably holds the record for Indy frustration? He reached the Stock final three straight years (1975, 1976, 1977) and finished as runner-up all three times. He has never won the U.S. Nationals.

… John Smith also is a three-time Indy runner-up without a win, finishing second in Pro Stock Motorcycle in 1993, 1995, and 2000?

… 20 other drivers have reached an Indy final twice and failed to win?

Will this be Ron Capps' year to finally win Indy?

… current NHRA Full Throttle superstars Ron Capps, Doug Kalitta, Tony Pedregon, Brandon Bernstein, Rod Fuller, and Andrew Hines have never won the U.S. Nationals?

… Capps has not only never won the U.S. Nationals but never reached the final here? Fuller has an Indy runner-up, but it was in Super Gas, in 1998.

… Former world champs Eddie Hill, Gary Ormsby, Mark Oswald, Chuck Etchells, Dick LaHaie, Scott Kalitta, and Jim Yates never won at the U.S. Nationals?

… Al Hofmann, Tommy Johnson Jr., Bruce Allen, and Jay Payne are among the list of drivers with 10 or more wins without a U.S. Nationals win?

… Comp racers Tom Trisch and Treadwell went exactly 10 years between their first and second Indy wins? Trisch first won Indy in 1971 and then scored again in 1981, and Treadwell went from his 1995 win until 2005 before he won again here. Treadwell didn't wait 10 years before capturing his third, however; he also scored in 2006.

… the record for the longest time between multiple Indy wins is 22 years? Al Corda won Stock in 1971 and in 1993.

And, finally, did you know that …

… I'm out of Did You Knows?
 

Mopar was looking for a complete list of all Mopar-powered Top Fuel, Funny Car, and Pro Stock wins in NHRA national event history, which isn’t as daunting a challenge as it sounds, at least on the surface. The early NHRA Media Guides are a pretty good place to start because they have complete lists of all Pro winners, organized by event, so it was a matter of traipsing through all of the current events and all of the discontinued events (Le Grandnational, Cajun Nationals, Golden Gate Nationals, et al) to pick out the Mopar wins.

Darrell Alderman scored three world championships and 29 Pro Stock wins for Mopar, including at the 1991 Mac Tools U.S. Nationals.

Pro Stock, of course, is pretty cut and dried as teams are required to run an engine that matches the car manufacturer, but Funny Car and Top Fuel are a little more messy. Obviously, in recent years, almost all Top Fuel and Funny Car racers have used an aluminum aftermarket version of the Chrysler Hemi, and back in the day, there were a lot of other engine choices, some of which are not clearly delineated in the Media Guide. Fortunately for me, after some clarification, Mopar was only interested in body styles in Funny Car and the accomplishments of Mopar-sponsored Top Fuel racers Don Garlits, Darrell Gwynn, Mike Dunn, and Tommy Johnson Jr. Whew.

It should probably come as no surprise to anyone – Mopar fan or not – that Garlits is still the leading Mopar winner of all time with 35 victories and three championships (1975, '85, and '86), all in Top Fuel. It also shouldn’t come as earth-stopping news that Mopar's all-time Pro Stock hero is Darrell Alderman, one of the 1990s' Dodge Boys who ruled the class with his Daytona and Avenger entries to the tune of 29 national event wins and three championships (1990, '91, and '94).

(Above) Don Prudhomme's first Funny Car win was in Indy in 1973 with this Plymouth Barracuda, which he pressed back into service in 1974 (below).

After two incredibly successful years with a Chevy Monza, "Snake" returned to the Mopar camp with this successful Arrow.

Prudhomme's final three seasons with Mopar were in Dodge Omnis and highlighted by a pair of Englishtown wins in 1980 (above) and 1981 (below).

What did surprise me, however, is that until Ron Capps' Funny Car win in Las Vegas earlier this year, the winningest Mopar Funny Car racer of all time was … ta-da … Don Prudhomme! That's a pretty stout statistic in my book considering that "the Snake" hadn't competed in a Mopar-bodied flopper since the 1981 season and is best known for doing his winning in a Chevy Monza.

But, yes, from his start in the class in 1970 with a Plymouth Barracuda until 1975 (when he unleashed the vaunted U.S. Army Monza on the pack) and from 1977 (when he retired the Monza in favor of a pair of Plymouth Arrows and a trio of Dodge Omnis) through 1981, Prudhomme racked up 14 Funny Car wins for Mopar. Capps now has 16 wins for Mopar (in Stratus and Charger entries), all in the last four years, since his first Mopar victory in Madison in 2005.

"The Snake's" first Funny Car win was, appropriately, at the 1973 U.S. Nationals, where he had already won three times in Top Fuel. Prudhomme drove the Carefree Gum-sponsored 'Cuda to victory, then won the Gatornationals the next year, also in the 'Cuda (reskinned in Army livery after shelving his trick-laden-but-heavy Army Vega following the Winternationals), and won Indy again that year in the 'Cuda.

After 13 wins in the Monza, Prudhomme debuted the Arrow in 1977 in spectacular fashion with a victory at the Winternationals – his third of four straight wins there – then won the Summernationals and Indy (again!). The Arrow won the Winternationals again in 1978, the Springnationals, and Le Grandnational in his final championship season. He switched to a Dodge Omni in 1979 but won just one race, Le Grandnational, yet still finished second in points behind Raymond Beadle's Blue Max Arrow. The1980 season brought just two wins – in Gainesville and Englishtown – and a disappointing sixth-place finish. He went a full year between victories; he did not score again until back-to-back wins at the 1981 Summernationals and Grandnational. For 1982, Prudhomme slipped into a Pontiac Trans Am, which he stayed with through the end of his Funny Car career in 1989.

Capps' former Don Schumacher Racing teammate, Gary Scelzi, is the only other Mopar Funny Car driver in double digits with 12 wins from 2003 Sonoma to 2007 Richmond, and Chuck Etchells is a surprising fourth on the list with nine wins … surprising only because people forget just how good Etchells really was, especially with Tim Richards in his corner. Some of the other Mopar Funny Car winners surprised me, such as Tom Hoover, whom for some reason I can't see in anything other than a Corvette but who won twice in Dodges (Daytona, Avenger), and Kenny Bernstein, whom we usually associate with Ford or Buick, also had a pair of Mopar wins (Arrow, Omni) in 1980-81.

With 35 wins, Don Garlits is still the fifth-winningest Top Fuel driver of all time.

Garlits' 35 Top Fuel wins – the first at the 1963 Winternationals and the last at the same event 24 years later – are still an amazing feat considering that there were only four races on the annual schedule through 1969 and the slate didn’t reach double digits until 1976, and especially because Garlits wasn't a regular campaigner in the early 1980s. The most races that NHRA ever held in a season when he was racing full time was 15 (1986). Yet his 35 wins still rank fifth overall in NHRA Top Fuel history, more than 20 years after his last victory.

Gwynn undoubtedly would have challenged Garlits' numbers; his 18 wins were more than halfway there in a Top Fuel career that spanned just five full seasons before his tragic, career-ending 1990 accident. Dunn, who drove for Gwynn, is the only driver on two Dodge lists, with 12 Top Fuel wins and four Dodge Funny Car wins (of his 10 Funny Car wins) in cars owned by Roland Leong and Ed Abel.

Yeah, I know; it doesn't look right to see Bob Glidden in anything but a Ford, but he scored seven wins (and the championship) in 1979 in this Plymouth Arrow.

The late Scott Geoffrion, Alderman's Dodge Boys teammate, racked up nine Pro Stock wins for Mopar, tying legendary Ronnie Sox for second for the marque's success in the factory hot rod class. Sox was Mopar's first doorslammer legend, collecting six wins in Super Stock before nine in Pro Stock and at one time was NHRA's winningest driver. Surprisingly, Ford superstar Bob Glidden – who probably has a blue oval tattooed over his heart -- is the fourth-winningest Mopar Pro Stock driver with seven wins during the 1979 season when he campaigned an Arrow. Dodge's brightest Pro Stock star today, Allen Johnson, also has seven wins and is sure to eclipse Glidden's number shortly and no doubt will zoom past Geoffrion and Sox, too, within the next calendar year.

All tolled so far, 12 Mopar Pro Stock drivers have accumulated 69 wins for the Pentastar brigade, and 43 Mopar Funny Car drivers have collected 149 flopper wins in all manner of Mopars, including Arrows, Omnis, Barracudas, Horizons, Stratuses (Stratii?), Chargers, Daytonas, Challengers, Dusters, and Demons. The Mopar-sponsored Top Fuel drivers listed above have nabbed 67 wins, making for a grand total of 285 wins.

OK, that's today's quickie column (Jim Dunn, 1981 World Finals winner, Fireman's Quickie Plymouth Horizon! Stop me before I stat again!) during another busy week. Two days from now, I'll be Indy bound for my 27th U.S. Nationals. I and four of my DRAGSTER pals (Kevin McKenna, Brad Littlefield, Candida Benson, and Kelly Wade) will again host running blogs, keeping you up on what's going on behind the scenes to complement NHRA.com's usual swell coverage of the Big Go. We plan to launch the special section late today with introductory columns, so look for an announcement on the home page.

I'll have something new and Indy-related to post from the track Friday, so I'll see you then. If you’re at the race, be sure to flag me down and say hey.
 

Wednesday's shindig at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum presented by the Automobile Club of Southern California – the opening of our exhibit, "National DRAGSTER: From the burnout box to your mailbox for 50 years" – was a rousing and well-attended success. The press turnout was great for a Wednesday afternoon, and we were graced by the presence of several luminaries who came to share the day with us.

The exhibit runs along the south (front) wall of the museum to the right when you enter the museum. You can’t miss it because there's the world-famous Albertson Olds of the late, great Leonard Harris poised in front of a giant wall appliqué of the famous photo taken years ago at Indy of a National DRAGSTER photog capturing a Top Fuel burnout. A larger-than-life version of the front page of National DRAGSTER's coverage of the car winning the 1960 Nationals sits on an easel next to the car.

Rounding the corner, the first thing you see – that you can’t help but see – is a 15-foot by 15-foot version of the Feb. 18, 1966, National DRAGSTER front page with a tight photo of a burnout-smoking Top Fuel tire. On the long stretch of wall between the two bookends are large-scale reproductions of numerous National DRAGSTER covers and features that tell the story of how ND has covered the sport in the last 50 years. There are special groupings for women in drag racing, performance barriers, and the like. A special case salutes late ND Photo Editor Leslie Lovett that includes some of his cameras, National DRAGSTER shirts, photo credentials, and photos; another case is filled with old issues of Tie Rod (DRAGSTER's mid-1950s predecessor) and old tools of the trade, such as a photo-sizing wheel and grease pencil. Above that is hung a list of the 15 editors of our great publication alongside "issue zero," which was a preview of National DRAGSTER's first issue, a nice sales tool to send to advertisers and sponsors.

There's also a nice tribute section to National DRAGSTER's first editor, Dick Wells, who was my co-host for the afternoon's festivities and currently serves on NHRA's board of directors. We also were proud to have on hand three other former ND editors: Bill Holland (1969-74), Jim Edmunds (1974-1982), and George Phillips (1982-86), representing the editorial leadership of the magazine's last 40 years (our 11 predecessors lasted less than nine years total!).

As mentioned, the turnout was great from our fellow members of the Fourth Estate, including Drag Racer''s Randy Fish, hot rod know-it-all Pat Ganahl, publishing magnate (and former Funny Car driver) Jim Adolph, local newspaper motorsports writer Louie Brewster, and others. I was also honored to see that Dave Wallace, one of the deans of drag journalism and a longtime buddy and sounding board for me, made the several-hundred-mile trek to be with us and to hang out for the afternoon's Twilight Museum Cruise.

Adolph wasn't the only racer in the place, as we also were graced with the presence of a couple of Winternationals legends, "T.V. Tommy" Ivo and Carl Olson, plus second-generation racer John Lombardo Jr., hot rodding legend Alex Xydias, and Miss Hurst Golden Shifter herself, Linda Vaughn. (We had sent invites to the other local stars like John Force Don Prudhomme, Ron Capps, etc., but they were in Indy for testing). In the mixer time before festivities kicked off, I got a great chance to talk to Ivo about his infamous 1974 Winternationals top-end rollover, an episode that he looks back on fondly (no doubt in part due to its positive outcome!) as just another of the grand adventures in his life. I promised him we would speak at greater length about it in the future as it's sure to be among the nominees on the list of greatest Winternationals moments that y'all will be voting on later this year.

Once we got everyone seated, my boss, NHRA Vice President-Publications Adriane Ridder, welcomed everyone to the proceedings and spoke about the dedication of the employees past and present and acknowledged the hard work of those who helped prepare the exhibit under the leadership of Paula Gewertz and Teresa Long. Rey Oruga, who is the art director of National DRAGSTER, also directed the exhibit with help from members of the current staff (in alphabetical order), Nicole Cintron, Barbara Doonan, Jerry Foss, Marc Gewertz, Lisa Handy, Matt Hurd, Carl Landkammer, Jeff Mellem, Debbie Pierce, Juan Torres, Lorraine Vestal, Richard Wong, and yours truly) as well as the museum staff.

Adriane then introduced Wells and me, and what followed was a long segment, all unrehearsed, with us trading tales about our relationships with Wally Parks, the challenges of the job in our eras  – to which we both agreed probably had an equal degree of difficulty, but in far different ways – and shared funny stories. Wells is a gifted storyteller and shared some great tales, including how the print-shop foreman refused to print the first issue because they hadn’t been paid, so Wells had to roust Wally out of bed in the wee hours of the morning; Parks paid with a personal check to get the first issue printed.

There was a lot of Wally reminiscing, and, of course, the subject of his infamous memos came up. I've mentioned here how Wally wouldn’t think twice about pointing out – sometimes harshly, sometimes kindly – errors or missed opportunities, and it turns out that he didn’t limit his critiques to the DRAGSTER staff, according to Wallace and Ganahl. From all of that came one of those light-bulb moments for me as Wells told how Parks used to send critical letters to Drag News, DRAGSTER's scrappy rival, under the pen name Parks Wengard. That unusual name was also part of Parks' e-mail address for years, and I never thought to ask what it meant; I mean, the first part seemed obvious, right? It's the man's last name, right? Nooooo ….

Turns out that Parks Wengard spelled backwards is, well .... Drag News Krap, Wally's own little dig at his main competitor. And so now I know …

Our little chat went very well and smoothly; I'm not a big public speaker, but I had fun, and it looked like Wells did, too, and the audience seemed to enjoy our interaction and stories and appreciated our ongoing reverence for Parks and our mission.

We fielded a few questions and comments, then everyone feasted on a buffet lunch accompanied by much bench racing and "remember whens." I hung out as long as I could, but we still had the current issue of ND to ship (hey, who picked Wednesday to do this deal anyway?). I came back to the office, put the issue to bed, then headed back to the Museum to watch the Ewald brothers do a mini Cacklefest and to take part in the car show as a celebrity guest. Adriane and I picked a very clean '57 Nomad that you'll be able to see in the pre-race parade at the Auto Club NHRA Finals later this year.

Our exhibit is scheduled to be at the museum for a good long time, at least through next year's Winternationals, so be sure to stop by and check it out. I'm sure it will stir up your great old memories, too.
 

The Wayback Machine is on the fritz today (how convenient) because there's a whole lot of present-day stuff I want to talk about. So, I'll take off my history-professor hat and replace it with the current-events-teacher hat for the day.

Tomorrow is a huge day for the National DRAGSTER staff as we'll be gathered at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum presented by the Automobile Club of Southern California for the grand opening of a special exhibit celebrating National DRAGSTER's golden anniversary. Titled "National DRAGSTER: From the burnout box to your mailbox for 50 years," this wonderful tribute to one of drag racing's oldest and most storied publications will feature reproductions of past issues, photographs from our archives, and all sorts of memorabilia and mementoes from the past five decades, including a tribute to late, great ND Photo Editor Leslie Lovett.

A huge tip o' the editor's cap to Membership Promotions & Marketing Manager Paula Gewertz, Photo Editor Teresa Long, and other members of the Publications staff who worked long and hard (even repainting the walls!) to bring this collection together. They spent untold time researching the contents and preparing and arranging them with the kind of attention to detail for which this proud publication has long been known.

The opening will kick off at 1 p.m. with a press conference. We will be honored to have on hand NHRA board member Dick Wells, National DRAGSTER's first editor, with whom I will share the dais to welcome everyone to this celebration of drag racing's leading weekly.

Bill Holland, ND editor from 1969 through mid-1974, will be there, as will George Phillips, the guy who for three years preceded me in the saddle. Both are local -- Holland runs a very successful advertising business in the nearby San Fernando Valley, and Phillips still works at NHRA, now turning his skills toward moving pictures in the Broadcasting Department. I'm Facebook friends with ND's second editor, Bruce Tawson, but he lives in Denver. Parks, of course, also served briefly as editor, as did the late Steve Evans. I'll be thinking of both of them and Leslie tomorrow.

The list of former ND editors is kind of like the list of former U.S. presidents: There aren't a lot of us around anymore, or at least with whom we're still in contact. Plus, there have only been 15 of us. It's not a big pool to draw from. Throw out Wally's one year at the helm in 1982, which was a pretty big transition year at the paper (and my first here), and there have only been four of us for the last 40 years: Holland, Jim Edmunds (Holland's successor, mid-1974-81), Phillips, and me.

The plan is for Wells and me to banter a bit, comparing his era to mine, and perhaps field some questions, then open the exhibit at 3 p.m. Tomorrow is also one of the museum's Twilight Cruise nights, so we should have a good turnout. I'll be back Friday with some photos, but you need to stop by and see it for yourself. It is scheduled to be there through both this year's Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals in November and next year's 50th Anniversary Kragen O'Reilly NHRA Winternationals.
 

Speaking of next year, we were excited to release the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series schedule, and I'd have to say it has the most changes of any schedule in recent memory. There are a couple of highlights in there for me, including the addition of a second Charlotte event and a shake-up of the Western Swing.

I wasn't part of the schedule-making process, but I'm sure considerable thought and planning went into picking the dates, especially for the first Charlotte event, which will take place in late March, just after the historic Gatornationals. The two don’t really draw from the same market as you might think, and it's going to be great to see the cars at zMax Dragway in the cool of late spring. On a personal note, I might even get to finally go there; the first two years, the event has been held two weeks after Indy, and with all of the coverage we do here, it’s hard for me to sneak off in the middle for a road trip.

Adding that event also created a ripple effect that moved the Houston event from that date into mid-April and behind the first Las Vegas event, moving Houston from the fourth event to the sixth. Atlanta, meanwhile, got bumped from the sixth spot into the eighth position and mid-May. With all of the rain we've had this year – someone recently told me that only four or five of the 17 events this year have not in some way been affected by rain – any changes in the schedule might well be home runs.

Bristol moved from the eighth spot on the schedule to the 12th in what will be a very busy June with four events on back-to-back-to-back-to-back weekends, beginning in Chicago before hitting Englishtown, Bristol, and then back west a bit to Norwalk. I'm not sure what we're going to call that string of events (suggestions, readers?), but it will be every bit the grueling and demanding segment as the traditional Western Swing.

If you want to sweep the Western Swing in 2010, you'll have to finish it in Denver.

Speaking of which, I guess I can’t really call it "traditional" anymore as Denver, which has opened the Western Swing for the last 20 years, now becomes the final event of the annual sweat fest. From 1989 through 1998, the swing went Denver-Sonoma-Seattle before Seattle and Sonoma switched places in 1999. Interestingly (from a statistical point of view), there were four Swing sweeps with each venue in the final spot; we'll see how long it takes before Denver has its first sweep-clinching victory.

The schedule change, which gives teams an easier road back home en route to Brainerd, will shake up the crew-chief routine a bit. As Mike Dunn wrote in his Final Take column after Seattle, a lot of teams have trouble backing off their more-more-more mile-high Denver tune-up when they head back to sea level in Seattle, but now they'll be going the other way and then heading to Brainerd, which also has a little bit of altitude.

Memphis moves from early October to late August and will be the final event in the regular-season Countdown to 10. Memphis in August can be a cooker – 87 degrees, 44 percent humidity today after several days of 90s – and will make a challenging event for teams as they try to lock up spots or battle their way into the top 10s.

Next year's Mac Tools U.S. Nationals will kick off the Countdown playoffs.

The fabulous Mac Tools U.S. Nationals presented by Lucas Oil now becomes the first race of the Countdown to 1, which I rather like. Two years ago, in the first year of the Countdown when it had three stages, Indy was the first race of the Countdown to 4 playoff semifinals, which I thought brought some extra zing to the race. Of course, seeing it be the final event of the regular season with all of the last-minute battles the last two years has been really cool, too, but maybe overshadowed the event in some ways, at least to me.

There have been on-again, off-again talks within and outside of NHRA about ways to make Indy more than just another stop on the schedule. It's not really even that now – what with all of the grandeur and history – but those who remember points and a half (the race used to be worth 1,500 to the winner instead of 1,000) and 32-car Top Fuel fields remember what helped make Indy the monster it is.

(On a side note, and now a moot point with the schedule change, I got a compelling letter from my pal Steve Bell, who suggested, "Indy is the last event to set the field for the Countdown, but most of the positions are set by then. What might be more interesting is that the winner of each of the Pro classes gets the 10th spot in the Countdown. If the winner is already in the Countdown, then the racer in the 10th position would fill the spot. This would give more interest to the event and more urgency to the guys on the outside. What do you think?" I think it's an amazing idea but perhaps fraught with other issues.)

The other cool thing about making Indy part of the final six events is that all of them now will feature Pro Stock Motorcycles, instead of five of the six as happens this year.

Reading + fall weather = national record bonanza. Can't wait for 2010!

The oft-rain-delayed Reading event, which was at its best in its original mid-September date that yielded national records by the score, will now take place in early October, around the time that the track traditionally has hosted the Sportsman-class recordfest known as the Dutch Classic, so look for big things there. The season concludes, as it has since 2001, with Las Vegas and the return to Pomona.

And while we're still on the topic of 2010 (and Pomona), plans are storming along for the 50th-anniversary celebration of the Big Go West that will kick off the year. I'm part of a six-man planning committee charged with making the event a can’t-miss race. There's going to be a press release probably next week that will go into more detail about some of the special treats we have lined up to stoke your nostalgic fever, including static and rolling nostalgia iron, special guests, special social events, and more. If you attended the 50th U.S. Nationals in 2004, you have an idea of what's in store, but we'll have our own California spin on it.

Our Publications Department will launch a dedicated Web site for the event this fall that will include text and photo history of the event as well as tons of great video, and it also will serve as the voting portal for a fan vote to select the greatest moments in Winternationals history.

We're also in the midst of creating a book that we hope to have available by Christmas, detailing year by year the Winternationals' history and filled with features about the track, the event, some of the great debuts, and much more. You’re going to want a copy of this book, especially if you're coming to the race, which will be attended by many of the same drag racing superstars who made so much history there.

(Speaking of books, the second installment of Wild Rides, our collection of photo greats, will be available for purchase soon through Amazon.com. Filled with some of the wildest [and weirdest] moments in NHRA racing history and photographed by the staff of National DRAGSTER, it'll make a swell Christmas [or birthday] gift for the NHRA fans on your list. I'll drop you a link here when it's available.)
 

My pit crew gasses 'er up. Good times.

Just chasing our shadow down the road

Obviously, a lot is going on here, and with Indy just about a week away, it's only going to get crazier, which made it nice to have a little weekend getaway. As I told you last week, my son, Chris, and I went to Sonoma, a little 1,000-mile road trip of male bonding. It was great to be out on the open road, just me and him, talking about girls, cars, baseball, hockey (not in that order). It's about seven hours each way, and I don't think we listened to much music. We just chatted or rode silently in that way-cool way that only guys can do (if you’re silent for more than a few minutes riding with the other gender, you always seem to get a "What's wrong? Why are you so quiet?"), taking in the scenery, listening to the roar of the engine and the hum of the tires on the road. Two best buddies just running down the highway looking for adventuret. Do yourself a favor; take a road trip with your kid.

The boy is 20, and who knows how many other chances I'll get to bond with him like that, so I soaked in every great moment. Even though we weren’t on the way to a drag race (the only thing that might have made the trip better) and our favorite drifting racers didn’t fare so well, it was still a great trip. I got to see my folks, including the old man, who just turned 80, so I wonder too how many more chats I'll have with him. Pops even braved the heat to come out with us on Saturday to watch this newfangled style of motorsports and walked away a fan. My 17-year-old nephew also tagged along and enjoyed himself. Yep, just four guys, with a 60-plus-year age span, enjoying the sound of revving engines and inhaling the sweet perfume of burning tires. I'll have to get them to Pomona later this year and show them how it's really done. At least my ride will be shorter.

With it being the weekend of Maple Grove, I went to great lengths to stay in touch with what was going on there, packing an air card for the laptop to watch qualifying results on the drive up Friday and results on the way home Sunday and using the new mobile-phone app at the race to keep track of qualifying away from the computer. It was in an interesting way to "watch" a race and obviously just the tip of the technology iceberg. All in all, a great weekend to give me a chance to catch my breath for the marathon of Indy ahead.

OK, gang, that's the current-day update. I'll be back Friday with a new column. Thanks for reading.
 

With surgically repaired "Little Brad" (we can make him faster, stronger … we have the technology) and Candida holding down the fort for National DRAGSTER and NHRA.com this weekend, I'll be in Sonoma with my son, Chris, laptop in hand for a mini working vacation, attending the Formula Drift event. As I mentioned in April when we attended the FD opener in Long Beach, I have a lot of old drag race pals in that series who were veterans of NHRA's sport compact scene, including Gary Gardella, Ed and Ron Bergenholtz, Stephan Papadakis, and others, and it’s always good to see them. And now with Ford as NHRA's official car, we can openly root for Chris' favorite wheelman, Mustang madman Vaughn Gittin. I'll still be helping cover the race (posting photo and video galleries, team reports, etc. each night from my sister's house, conveniently located in nearby Santa Rosa, home of former Top Fuel ace Frank Bradley) and following the Reading event on NHRA's new mobile-phone app.

But anyway, on to this week's column. After Tuesday's return to the Misc. Files, I decided, without further ado, to go right to the next letter of the alphabet, K, for another 10 treats from the National DRAGSTER photo library of semi obscurity.

OK, race fans, that's the K file. Just as I was submitting this article to copy editing, I got an e-mail from Dennis Fiend, who runs the awesome TwoToGo Web site, dedicated to twin-engine cars. He's just completed a staggering K project of his own, pulling together 50 years of photos of the legendary "Golden Greek," Chris Karamesines. There's some cool stuff! Check it out here.

OK, I'm outta here and northbound. I'll see ya next week.
 

Anyway, when we last left off July 3, you were out buying fireworks, and I had just published the H edition (I'd done the I version way earlier … long story), but since then, we all got waylaid with The Fred Files and One-Hit Wonders, so today we arrive at J. I can’t tell you the number of racers named Johnson in this folder: John Johnson, Ron Johnson, Tom Johnson, Jim Johnson -- the list goes on and on -- but I was able to get a fair mix of other surnames anyway. Sit back and enjoy!

Most fans associate the Flying Dutchman name with Al Vanderwoude, but a number of drivers actually campaigned under his memorable moniker, including Tom Johansen in 1972-73 in this wildly stretched Ford Maverick. Johansen had campaigned a pair of Sour Grapes Dodges (a Charger and a Challenger) before joining forces with Vanderwoude.

Previous Misc. Files:
The Misc. Files: Welcome to the 'A' list
Bob Bommarito, and welcome to the Misc. Files
The Misc. Files: From C to shining C
The Misc. Files: D-lightfully D-verse
The Misc. Files: An E-Ticket ride
The Misc. Files: Meet the F Troops
The Misc. Files: The G Force 
The Misc. Files: H is for 'heroes'
The Misc. Files: The I's have it

A little follow-up to a few items in Friday's entry. John Bell wrote to thank me for showing off his stuff, including the pile of junk at right that used to be parts of race cars. He wrote that the Moby Dick remnant is from the 1977 Gatornationals and that the Blue Max shards are from 1976 "from a crash and burn in southern Florida" that were gifted to him by friend Mark Zarkos. I was surprised to learn that the Mike Burkhart detritus is from Dale Emery's infamous nosedive in Indy in 1977 ("Funny thing is Norman Blake and I could have had the entire tail section, but we couldn't figure out how to mount it to the back of my '75 Civic!").

Bell also noted that there's a small chunk of "Slammin' Sammy" Miller's white Mustang that he torched, also in Indy, back in 1973 that Bob Gerdes at Circus Custom Paint gave to him, and the root-beer-colored dragster cowl is from Vic Anderson's Pro Comp dragster, which crashed in Indy in 1975. I had identified the Magum Force fragments as belonging to Norm Day (who had a car of the same name), but reader Art Pavluk told me it was from the Swensen & Lani version of the car. "It was either a Vega or Pontiac Astre that was destroyed at a Wednesday night match race at Raceway Park in ‘77 or ‘78. Arne Swensen apparently suffered severe foot injuries, which, along with the financial setback caused by the crash, ended the team's career. My info could be wrong (you may want to check with Lewis Bloom), but I feel pretty confident." DragList shows that car (it was an Astre) still active in 1979 and that Swensen took some rides in the Philadelphia Flyer Challenger in 1979, though it doesn’t say if that was before or after the wreck.

Bruce Wheeler had a partial answer to Fred von Sholly's "three dragsters" photo. "That's my car in the middle," he wrote. "Crew guy Bert Toulette and driver Bub Reese flanking the car. The car on the right side of this shot might be the Creitz-Donovan-Carbone car, and that person leaning over the car might actually be Bob [Creitz] himself. Shot was taken in '69, possibly at the June event in the attached Drag Times ad." The attached ad (click here) is cool in its own right, showing an all-star eight-car lineup for the track's East vs. West AA/Fuel Dragster Championships: Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme, Tom McEwen, Connie Kalitta, Beebe & Mulligan, Creitz-Donovan-Carbone, the Frantic Fueler, and Wheeler's Wheeler Dealer, all promising to "do burnouts just like the Funny Cars for the first time in the east." According to Bruce, "Beginning in early '69, some [Top Fuel] cars had reversers, and they actually did bleach burnouts 'just like the funny cars.' They weren't as smoky (or as long) as those done by today's' cars, but they were 'burnouts' in the true sense of the word."

OK, fans, that wraps up today's column. I'll be back later in the week with something new and shiny. Well, something new at least. Thanks for reading.
 

K.C. Spurlock scored his first nitro Funny Car win at the 1990 Winternationals and won the race again four years later.

The recent one-hit wonder columns have unleashed a torrent of responses, many from those of you trying to keep me honest, asking about the inclusion (or lack thereof) of certain drivers. For example, one reader (the names have been removed to protect the not-so innocent) wondered why K.C. Spurlock wasn't on my one-hit Funny Car list. He remembered that K.C. Spurlock had won the 1994 Winternationals and (bonus points) even that he had runner-upped to Cruz Pedregon at the 1994 U.S. Nationals but forgot that Spurlock had scored his first Pro win at the 1990 Winternationals, in a dual upset with first-time Top Fuel winner Lori Johns.

Another reader thought I had left my good pal Pat Austin off the Top Fuel list, and though Austin is probably best remembered for the first double-up win – Top Fuel and Alcohol Funny Car at the 1991 Topeka event – he actually won five times in Top Fuel to go with his 70 Alcohol Funny Car wins. Yet another recalled Tom "the Mongoose" McEwen's heart-tugging win at the 1978 U.S. Nationals – shortly after the death of his son – but forgot that "the 'Goose" first won in Ontario, Calif., in 1973 and that he also won the Cajuns and Northstars in 1986. I did get busted, though, by Todd Berube for leaving Clare Sanders off the Funny Car list (1969 Winternationals; since added), though he was only 50 percent right as he also thought that Leonard Hughes' '70 Gatornationals win was his lone win, forgetting that Hughes also won in Englishtown the following year.

Tuesday's story also inspired an e-mail from former Funny Car racer Bob Pickett, driver of the Pete Everett's Pete's Lil Demon entries, Mickey Thompson's Grand Am, and so many more. Pickett no longer lives in Granada Hills, Calif. (a hometown in SoCal's San Fernando Valley that he briefly shared with Don Prudhomme); he has relocated to Florida, where's he's still competing, albeit now as a tournament salon skier (being in Florida, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's a form of water skiing, not snow skiing). He dropped me his phone number, so I'll be giving him a call soon to share his story. Even now, 27 jaded years later on the job, it's still a thrill to hear from racers I grew up watching and cheering for -- but have never met as they had left the sport before I became part of its inner circle – and know they are reading my musings. I saw Pickett for the first time at Irwindale, in 1972, where he was driving Everett's Demon; here's the somewhat fuzzy photo from 12-year-old Phil.

Within these walls works the Funny Car winner of the 1981 Springnationals.

I also tracked down Craig Epperly, but not in time for Tuesday's column. He's still SoCal-based and now vice president and chief operating officer at CSI Electrical Contractors in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. I'm setting up a time to talk with him for details about those early-1980s heydays, but the company bio describes him thusly: "Some may think that Craig Epperly is a quiet, unassuming man. Although that may be true, there is another reason for his lack of verbosity – he's always thinking and planning. Always! Craig has an illustrious career spanning over 30 years, 25 of which have been spent in supervision. His areas of responsibility with CSI include design-build projects, initial job setup, manpower scheduling, schedule compliance, foreman training, and total project quality management. Among his hallmark traits include his ability to execute a plan seamlessly and his well-earned respect and admiration of CSI employees. A consistent and valued part of the CSI management team, Craig is well-known for his supportive and nurturing nature, along with his philosophy of 'action speaks louder than words.' "

I heard back from Craig this morning, via e-mail, and he responded, "I have a lot of great memories from those days. Henry Harrison and Amos Satterlee were a big part of my success, and I will never forget that." He says that he still follows NHRA and attends both races in Pomona plus some nostalgia Funny Car races with Steve Plueger and Paul Trabue.

I've also been exchanging e-mails with Jay Howell, a long-ago racer perhaps best known for the Prock & Howell F Troop Willys. He has an amazing career story – he also helped build memorable cars such as the L.A. Dart wheelstander, Don Gay’s Infinity GTO, the Ramchargers' "Skinny Dart," Seaton’s Shaker Corvair, and many, many others. He also holds the unique (I believe) honor of being the only driver other than "the Snake' himself to drive one of Don Prudhomme's Funny Cars in the 1970s; he wheeled the yellow Hot Wheels Barracuda at match races in Indy in 1970 while Prudhomme was campaigning his Top Fueler. To me, that's interesting stuff. I had first heard from Howell after showing the rear-engine Cotton Picker Funny Car he had built in the C edition of the Misc. Files, in which I dubbed him "legendary"; he blushed as well as one can via e-mail, and we began a dialogue. It's been going on for a long time, partly because he's enjoying the retired life -- sailing the Atlantic along the East Coast "from Maine to the southern Bahamas" with wife Diane in their 40-foot sloop Far Niente (Italian for “without a care”) – and partly because of some health issues on his end, but he completed a career recap recently for me that I plan to share here soon.

My recent article saluting Ford's long history in the sport (and my own with Ford) elicited a couple of very cool images. The one at right was sent to me by reader Bob Robillard and shows one of the earliest Tasca Ford entries, a 406-powered Ford Galaxie driven by Dean Gregson, shown here at Charlestown Dragway in Rhode Island in 1963. Gregson was the first special high-performance manager for Tasca Ford after Bob Tasca Sr. founded the division for his successful dealership in 1961.

Wrote Robillard, "Living in Rhode Island most of my working life, I remember Tasca Ford from the beginning, and my high school butted up to Tasca's dealership lot. After hearing that you are a Ford fan, I decided to send you this pic." I've taken the liberty of cropping the photo to just show the Tasca Ford; you can see the whole image here.

The second image is of Raymond Beadle's Blue Max Mustang burning out under the lights at what looks like Orange County Int'l Raceway. What's great about it is that it's a drawing (technically a "photo illustratiion"), not a photo. It was created by John Bell, whose work I have shown here before, and depicts what he calls "his favorite Ford." I'd be hard-pressed to argue with him; the '75-'76 Blue Max was one bad hombre. I've shown it small here for the sake of space; you can see a bigger version here.

The final image, also sent to me by Bell, shows some of the collection of race car parts that he and his brother, Steve, who has been shooting the drags forever, have collected over the years.

Without a super-close examination, it's easy to pick out the flanks of one of "Big Mike" Burkhart's Funny Cars, some body panels from Jim and Alison Lee's Top Fueler, a chunk of Steve Gold's Jerry Boldenow-driven Moby Dick Corvette Funny Car (later campaigned by Ezra Boggs), two pieces of the aforementioned Blue Max Funny Car (I can think of at least two occasions that might have wrought the Max asunder -- his Gainesville barrel roll in 1982 or his body-shedding final-round wheelie in Columbus, Ohio, in 1975), and what looks like a serious chunk of the side of the Swensen & Lani Magnum Force Funny Car. What a collection!

The Fred Files, a quartet of columns featuring the early 1970s work of former Division 1 photographer Fred von Sholly, continues to draw mail. Richard Bibey wrote, "I grew up a literal stone's throw away from the Cecil County Drag-O-Way. Seeing all of these pictures have brought the memories flooding back. The test sessions at Cecil by 'the Grump' was something I had forgotten about. When I heard someone there, I would hop on my 20-inch-slick- and parachute-equipped bicycle and ride in. If there was anyone there, I was there. Us kids would race from the starting line to the finish line on our bicycles (I couldn't pedal that far now if I had to). I remember Bill Levitt in Quickie Too setting the track record one night and then arguing with one of the other neighborhood kids that Joe Jacono beat John Collins in the Mongoose 2 by a mile. I had parts in the basement from just about every Funny Car that crashed there. I wish I still had them. Mom got tired of walking around them and had the basement cleaned out one day. I have collected drag racing stuff for years. I just gave my entire collection to my niece's little boy. He had no interest in drag racing before. His eyes lit up, and the kid can't stop thinking about drag racing now. After these pictures and stories, I now have the same feelings again." Bibey also thinks that he spied himself and his two cousins in the background of the attached Fred Files photo, hanging at the fence (behind the smirking kid with the front-row seat). Could be!

Speaking of von Sholly, he dropped me a line to let me know that he's updated his PhotoBucket photo site with several hundred more photos; the total now tops 800. "They are not all great photos," he said, "but I feel that many are better than no picture at all since they are rare. I've left them all, the good and the not-quite-so good. If anyone wants their money back, I'll promptly send a refund!" He also has been pleased with the comments you've sent him. "I've been receiving many very nice and complimentary e-mails from all over the country and even one from Ireland," he wrote. "Evidently, everyone who used to work at Cecil County still reads your column! It's very gratifying."

Fred couldn’t just drop in without a gift to share, which is the photo below. "Attached is an interesting picture that I just found," he wrote. "It shows three dragsters on the starting line at Cecil County. On the right side of the photo, bending over the dragster, is Al Procopio, the owner-operator of Cecil and a co-owner of Capitol and Aquasco Raceways. Al was very inventive and always came up with new promotions. For the life of me, I can't remember the plan that night, and I took the picture! (Getting old isn't all it's cracked up to be!) Maybe one of your loyal readers can remember if you think it's an interesting subject and photo. I don't think they ran side by side as the picture suggests."

OK, readers, time to show off that Insider know-how. Drop me a line and let me know if you remember what was up.

And finally, there's this little gem. At right is a not-so-great photo I grabbed at speed with my phone on the way home from lunch (the Original Tommy's … great chili dogs and chili fries!) on the eastbound 210 Freeway just east of Irwindale Avenue. Yes, that Irwindale. Anyway, just off the freeway, about a quarter-mile's distance from the site of fabled Irwindale Raceway, is this billboard purchased by Citizens Business Bank. It's one of a series of billboards that the bank has created to salute valued partners of its bank, which began in 1974 in nearby Chino and has grown to nearly 50 branches, including one in Fresno, Calif., which might well explain why the valued partners featured here, more than 200 miles south of Fresno, are the Scelzi brothers: our ol' pal Gary and brothers Mike and Jim, representing their Fresno-based business, Scelzi Enterprises, which creates custom truck bodies.

The brothers and their business also are featured on the bank's Web site with five other valued partners (including the Tournament of Roses, which hosts a little New Year's Day get-together each year in Pasadena, just up the freeway from the sign), and they are featured in the company's annual report with their testimonial about the bank. ("Citizens Business Bank takes care of all our financial needs, which has helped our business grow and prosper. We continue to be successful because our banker takes the time to understand our business and customize solutions for our needs.") Both include this bottom photo of the brothers at work; the same image, minus the background, is what adorns the sign.

Even though he's no longer racing with us (for now), it looks as if it's still hard to get away from what Scelzi Sez.

OK, race fans, that clears out (mostly) the overflowing Inbox for now. I'll be back Tuesday with something else new and exciting. Maybe the next Misc. Files, maybe a Bob Pickett or Craig Epperly story, maybe the Jay Howell story, or maybe something completely different that hits my radar screen. Thanks for reading.
 

Friday’s column about Top Fuel’s “one-hit wonders” inspired a lot of comments (and two quick corrections). Perhaps the biggest surprise for people was hearing that there had been fewer than 100 winners in the category, which is pretty surprising for a class that’s been around for 46 years.

After Larry Dixon (Jr.) e-mailed to remind me that I had left his dad off the list (I had sorted the winners by name, and because we no longer refer to the son as Dixon Jr. anymore [at his request quite a few years ago], the name of his dad, winner of the 1970 Winternationals, had been lumped in with all of his wins), the total grew to 42 one-time winners. The second correction, as noted by several, was that Bobby Vodnik’s win in Indy in 1963 was actually a Top Eliminator win because nitro was not allowed at Indy that year. This further screwed with my percentages and dropped the total back to 41 one-timers (See? I was right all along!); that correction dropped the one-time-winner percentage to 44.56 percent, which is still pretty staggering. Think about that for a second: More than four in 10 drivers who won a national event in Top Fuel were not able to do it again. Tell me it’s not hard to win in Top Fuel!

Anyway, the most intriguing challenge was issued by reader Jon Sammels, who bet me a six-pack of my favorite beverage that the percentage of first-time winners in Funny Car was even higher. Naturally — and thirstily — I accepted.

Jon’s logic was interesting. “If the Funny Car pattern follows Top Fuel, a lot of these ‘one-hit wonders’ also will be in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where the careers seemed a bit shorter,” he wrote. “And with powerhouses like John Force, Don Prudhomme, Kenny Bernstein, and Tony Pedregon hogging up a lot of the wins, there’s not going to be a lot left for everyone else to grab multiple wins.”

Even though Top Fuel had about a three-season jump on its flip-top nitro brethren, only 19 more winner’s trophies had been awarded, 658 to Funny Car’s 639 (the NHRA schedule only had four or five events on the calendar in the mid-1960s). Eighty-three different drivers have bathed in the glow of an NHRA national event Funny Car crown, and though the average number of wins of all Top Fuel drivers combined is 7.14 (657 divided by 92) and Funny Car was only slightly higher at 7.69 (639/83), there were considerably fewer one-shot winners. Of the 83 winners, more than a third (30, or 36.14 percent) were not able to repeat the feat.

All things considered, the numbers still were pretty close, so I’ll go easy on Jon and expect a six-pack of Diet Coke on my desk in the next week or so.

I found it interesting that it takes six wins in each class to crack the top 25 and 18 in each to make the top 10. Looking a little deeper into the numbers, I found that 15 Funny Car drivers have two wins versus 13 for Top Fuel. Close!

As I did in Top Fuel, I developed a matrix, which can be found at the bottom of this column, charting not just the lone wins for the 30 but also any Funny Car runner-ups and wins in other classes. (Unlike in Top Fuel, though, I ordered these chronologically rather than alphabetically, which I think shows a little more of the trending that took place.)

As in Top Fuel, it’s hard to call a lot of these guys “one-shot wonders.” Scott Kalitta, of course, only won once in nitro Funny Car, in Houston in 1989, but was a two-time world champ in Top Fuel with 17 wins. Ditto for Tony Bartone, who may only have cashed in in Seattle last year in Jim Dunn’s fuel coupe but also owns 27 Top Alcohol Funny Car wins (including two already this year) and three in Top Alcohol Dragster. Melanie Troxel may only have the 2008 Bristol race on her Funny Car win résumé, but she also has four Top Fuel wins (and 11 runner-ups) and two Top Alcohol Dragster victories (and two runner-ups). Tommy Grove never won again in Funny Car after scoring at the 1967 Springnationals in Bristol, but by that time, he already owned two other wins, in Stock at the 1964 Winternationals and in Comp in Bristol the year before (in what essentially was a Funny Car).

Butch Maas drove dozens of cars over his drag racing career, but his Funny Car victory at the 1971 Winternationals -- and car owner Roland Leong's fifth in eight years at the event --- was his lone NHRA national event win.

Dave Beebe scored at the 1973 Springnationals, and although he didn’t appear in another Funny Car final and never won another national event, he was runner-up in Top Fuel at the World Finals in 1966. Ditto for Gary Clapshaw, who didn’t duplicate his 1995 Mid-South Nationals win in Funny Car but did take a surprising runner-up in Top Fuel to Tony Schumacher at the 2000 U.S. Nationals. And what about Larry Reyes? The popular pilot flew Roland Leong’s Hawaiian Funny Car through the lights backward at the 1969 Winternationals, then came back and won the race the next year. Leong won the Winternationals again the next year, with Butch Maas, whose victory was the only one of his much-traveled career.

As in Top Fuel, quite a number of one-time winners were just that — they had no wins in other classes and never made it back to a final again in any class, let alone in Funny Car; this was especially true in the class’ first year, when guys such as “Fast Eddie” Schartman, Doug Thorley, Maas, “Slammin’ Sammy” Miller, and Larry Fullerton match raced more than they campaigned on the national event tour.

Schartman, driving Roy Steffey’s S/XS Mercury Comet, became Funny Car’s first world champ when he defeated Don Nicholson in the final at the World Finals in Tulsa, Okla., in 1966. Schartman set both ends of the S/XS national record at 8.61 and 172.72 mph. Fullerton duplicated that feat six years later in Amarillo, Texas; the veteran racer’s only visit to the national event winner’s circle with his popular Trojan Horse Mustang was at the World Finals and earned him the world championship. Dave Condit, the longtime driver of the notorious L.A. Hooker flopper, drove the Plueger & Gyger Mustang to his only win at the 1974 Supernationals, though he was a bit upstaged by the drama of Shirl Greer’s fiery and brave world championship bid and the 6.16 national record set by Dale Pulde in Mickey Thompson’s Grand Am. Earlier that year, Greer had recorded his only national event win, in Montreal.

As you can see from the list, a large portion of these one-time Funny Car winners — 14, in fact — were from the 1970s; there are only three from the 1990s and four so far from the 2000s, though I expect Bob Tasca III to no longer be on this list at the end of the year.

Certainly two of the longest long shots on the list are Craig Epperly, who drove Don Tate’s Superstar Plymouth Horizon to the win in Columbus, Ohio, in 1981, and local Pomona favorite Sherm Gunn, who won the World Finals in 1984 in the event’s first year in Pomona. Neither driver had been to a final before, nor did they return to a final.

Craig Epperly's lone victory, at the 1981 Springnationals, was clinched with a final-round defeat of world champ Raymond Beadle.

Tate had dabbled with nitro as a partner to the Trillo Bros. (several T ‘n’ T cars, including fuel altereds and Funny Cars), but after Jim Trillo crashed their Funny Car in 1980, they split, and Tate took the Superstar name with him. He hired Epperly, and the addition of respected crew chief “Famous Amos” Satterlee certainly helped produce that moment of magic in Columbus, which was capped by a surprising final-round victory against then reigning season and event champ Raymond Beadle. The event had been delayed a week by rain and resumed on the second Sunday, a Bristol 2008-like long day of on-again, off-again racing that didn’t conclude until 1:30 a.m. Monday. After beating Tripp Shumake, Tom Anderson, and John Collins in the first three frames, Epperly left slightly on Beadle, .497 to .504, then held on for a narrow 6.210 to 6.214 victory.

Epperly finished the season a respectable sixth, but the team broke up at season’s end for unknown reasons. Epperly continued to wheel nitro Funny Cars for four seasons, driving for Joe Pisano, Anthony Almada (the A Team Daytona), and the H.B. Gold team of Billy McCahill and “Uncle Beavs,” Gene Beaver. Epperly’s brother, Rocky, later made headlines as the driver of former airplane racer Frank Taylor’s Dago Red Top Fueler, which set the national record at 257.14 at the 1983 World Finals at OCIR.

Sherm Gunn defeated Kenny Bernstein, Don Prudhomme, Billy Meyer, and Mark Oswald en route to his surprising victory at the 1984 World Finals.

Gunn, who had established a solid reputation as a chassis builder, had campaigned both alcohol and nitro Funny Cars since 1975 (preceded by years in gassers and an alky-burning altered) but primarily ran on the West Coast, where he was a staple at match races at Irwindale and OCIR. His national event nitro Funny Car successes to that point in a four-year career consisted of just a pair of round-wins, yet he beat four of the era’s best —Bernstein (on a holeshot), Prudhomme, Billy Meyer, and, in the final, Mark Oswald. Gunn certainly looked to be, well, outgunned in the final as Oswald had shoed the Candies & Hughes/Old Milwaukee Firebird to a pair of 5.70s (and a class-history-best 261.62-mph shot) in the opening rounds; Gunn’s best was a 5.91 to defeat Meyer in the semifinals. Gunn left slightly on Oswald, whose mount blew a head gasket in a brief blaze of fire before it hit the 100-foot mark. Gunn fired off his best run of the meet, a 5.87, to make it official. Oswald probably forgave Gunn the upset victory because Gunn’s defeat of championship hopeful Meyer in the semi’s clinched the 1984 world title for Oswald.

OK, so there you have it, Funny Car’s “one-hit wonders.” The only question now is who is going to bet me about Pro Stock’s solo acts?

What do the bands Starland Vocal Band, Paper Lace, and Big Country have in common with Top Fuel heroes Carl Olson, Clayton Harris, and John Mulligan?

Though many of you may know those groups as one-hit wonders, many probably would be surprised to learn that each of those widely respected nitro digger pilots claimed only a single NHRA national event Wally in their long careers, a fact that leaped out at me after last Friday’s final Fred Files, in which I shared the unlikely tale of Arnie Behling’s lone Top Fuel win at the 1971 Summernationals.

They’re certainly not alone. In fact, 41 — nearly half — of the 92 drivers who have scooped up the 658 wins in NHRA Top Fuel history did so only once in the class. I find that a pretty startling factoid worthy of a whole half-hour Lewis Bloom segment.

I feel a little bad calling those drivers one-hit wonders because they all had other spectacular accomplishments in their stellar careers. In Olson' case, there's also a March Meet win and a huge and emotional victory at Lions Drag Strip's Last Drag Race, both of which I know he places high on his list of accomplishments, plus three NHRA national event runner-ups, membership in the Cragar 5-Second Club and Bonneville 200-mph Club, an IHRA Top Fuel world championship, and a lifetime of service to the high-performance industry in one fashion or another. And although Harris and Mulligan's national event win list also has just one entry, each has multiple runner-ups and national records to his credit, and each has a revered place in the annals of drag racing history.

On top of that, for them and many of the 39 other one-race winenrs we need to consider that they competed in an era in which there weren’t as many national events on the calendar and they either match raced substantially -- which, for many, even held a higher importance than the national event stage --  or competed with other sanctioning bodies.

On the other hand, given some of the class’ dominant drivers over the years and their staggering win totals, it’s maybe a little more understandable. Tony Schumacher, with 59 victories, owns almost 9 percent (8.96) of all NHRA Top Fuel triumphs since Don Garlits won the first title at the 1963 Winternationals. Garlits, with 35 Wallys, still ranks fifth overall. Between Schumacher and “Big Daddy” reside Joe Amato (52), Larry Dixon (47), and Kenny Bernstein (39), and it’s only a matter of time before Dixon eclipses retired Amato’s total. It takes just six wins — J.R. Todd’s total — to be among the top 25 Top Fuel scorers of all time. But this column isn’t about those with a Top Fuel Wally space problem on their mantels. It’s about the other 41.

But what constitutes a one-hit wonder in drag racing? Especially when you consider what an honor and a thrill it must be to win in drag racing’s top class even once.

To be fair, that 41 number is probably not legit considering that it includes current drivers such as Spencer Massey, Morgan Lucas, and Hillary Will, who scored their breakthrough Top Fuel wins within the past year or so, had all won in the alcohol classes, and are far from done winning in Top Fuel. The list also includes guys such as Ron Capps, who has 29 Funny Car Wallys to keep his lone Top Fuel keepsake company (Seattle 1995); Tom McEwen, whose feel-good Top Fuel win at the 1991 Englishtown event was preceded by four Funny Car wins, including at the U.S. Nationals; Dave Settles, who scored five Top Fuel runner-ups after his 1974 Gatornationals win, which was preceded by four Pro Comp triumphs; and Bill Mullins, whose 1985 Columbus, Ohio, caper stands beside previous wins in Top Gas and Alcohol Dragster.

Bob Noice, Jimmy Nix, and Jim Bucher also won in Top Gas and Hank Johnson in Alcohol Funny Car, and a goodly portion of the list also posted at least one runner-up.

So I created the chart at the bottom of this column of all of the one-hit wonders. Reviewing that list, you can see that there are only 12 drivers whose only NHRA win was in their only NHRA final in Top Fuel: Art Marshall, Bob Gibson, Chip Woodall, Cristen Powell, Don Moody, Hank Westmoreland, Jim Barnard, Jim Walther, Jimmy King, Larry Dixon, Rick Ramsey, and Stan Shiroma.

Art Marshall's lone Top Fuel win, at the 1972 Grandnational in Montreal, is especially significant as it was the final win by a front-engine Top Fuel car.

It’s a pretty interesting group of winners. Marshall’s victory, at the 1972 Grandnational, was the final win by a front-engine Top Fueler and quite an upset for the unheralded 23-year-old speed shop salesman from Springfield, N.J. His car, the ex-Don Prudhomme high-back Hot Wheels dragster, was owned with Don Young and sponsored by Van Iderstine’s Speed & Auto, where Marshall worked. Theirs was the lone front-engine car in the field, yet he set down hitters such as Olson, Harris, and, in the final, Jeb Allen. Allen was hot off a Summernationals win and probably would have won the race had not a leak gushed water under his tires on the launch, causing him to lose traction.

Shiroma’s victory was the last Top Fuel win with a true Chevy engine, and he beat Rance McDaniel’s Rodeck in the final for it. Sixteen years later, McDaniel would claim his lone win at the World Finals in 1993. And it would be extremely difficult to call Moody a one-hit wonder given his portfolio (as my previous story on him will attest) and the fact that his one win, at that historic 1972 SuperNationals, was capped by a jaw-dropping 5.91 pass.

There are some other interesting things to notice overall in the list. Three of the drivers — Vodnik, Johnny Abbott, and Terry Capp — couldn’t have picked a better place to notch their lone victory: the U.S. Nationals. As lone wins go, that probably has to be tops; a lot of drivers (people like Capps, for example) have lots of wins but none in Indy. And what of Gerry Glenn and Jim Walther, whose only wins were at the World Finals, in 1971 and 1972, respectively, but were crowned world champ on the basis of those wins? I’d say those two guys did a pretty good job of cherry-picking a win.

It’s also interesting to note that five of those wins were at hallowed tracks such as Old Bridge and Pomona, which host prestigious events good for the résumé, and that unlikely venues such as Atlanta and Seattle have had their share with three each. I was in Seattle for two of them, including Michael Brotherton’s wild win in 1992. In qualifying, he had tipped Darrell Gwynn’s Coors Light car onto its head at quarter-track, but the team, led by Ken Veney, worked through the night and came back to win the race Sunday.

All of these drivers may have only had one day in the NHRA Top Fuel winner’s circle, but, as I mentioned earlier, what an accomplishment even that is. Each of them is among only 93 drivers in 46 years who, through a mixture of will, skill, and sometimes luck, outlasted the best the day had to offer and won in the most exotic class in the world’s fastest form of motorsports. One-hit wonders? Nah, more like wonderful one-hitters.
 

My first behind-the-wheel experience was in the cab of my stepfather's Ford F-250 as a young teenager, nervously guiding the yellow pickup two blocks down our street, an obstacle course lined with parked cars that threatened to jump out and bite the truck's significant bumper.

The truck became my first highway freedom – the folks seldom let me drive their Thunderbird – and I drove the wheels off of that truck, down muddy alleys and around town, and made it live up to its Ford Tough slogan. My stepfather still has it all these years later.

A few years ago, I taught my son how to drive behind the wheel of his mom's Ford Expedition and handed down to him our black '95 Ford Bronco 4x4 as his first vehicle, a keepsake that he pampered until the cost of fueling its massive V-8 caught up to him and we got him into a 2-year-old V-6 Mustang that he's hot-rodded with a K&N Filtercharger, dual exhaust, and low-flow, high-noise mufflers. My oldest daughter drives a Ford Excursion, trusting it not only to safely carry two of my grandchildren to swim lessons and school but to tow the family boat.

Yes, we're a Ford family, which is why yesterday's long-rumored announcement that Ford has become the official car and truck of NHRA certainly went down well in my little corner of Glendora.

If you’re a longtime reader of this column, you'll know my affinity for early-'70s Mustang Funny Cars. Cars like the Blue Max, Trojan Horse, L.A. Hooker, Plueger & Gyger, War Horse, Brutus, and Keeling & Clayton California Charger and the cars of Mickey Thompson, Tommy Grove, Connie Kalitta, Jerry Ruth, and many, many others delighted fans from coast to coast.

Tommy Grove: Mustang's first Funny Car winner, 1967 Springnationals in Bristol

Danny Ongais drove Mickey Thompson's 'Stang to Ford's first Indy Pro win in '69.

The only car to defeat Don Prudhomme in 1976 was Gary Burgin's Mustang II.

Ford Funny Car wins also came in Thunderbirds; Mark Oswald nabbed a trio.

Whit Bazemore is the winningest Mustang FC driver outside of Team Force.

Bob Glidden won nine Pro Stock world championships for Ford and claimed national event titles is six Ford models, beginning with a Pinto.

Don Nicholson won Mustang's only Pro Stock world championhip in 1977.

I did some research a few weeks ago for Susan Pollack, who handles PR for Bob Tasca III, and came up with 25 national event wins for non-John Force Mustang Funny Car drivers from 1967 – when Grove scored the first – through 1998, when Whit Bazemore won the Chicago race. (Surprisingly, Baze, with six wins, is the winningest non-JFR Ford driver; I would have bet the house on Raymond Beadle.)

Add in Tim Wilkerson's two wins and longtime Ford man Tasca's Gainesville title this year to go with the 116 earned by Force drivers throughout the years (himself, daughter Ashley Force Hood, Robert Hight, Eric Medlen, Tony Pedregon, and Gary Densham), and you have nearly 150 Mustang wins. Other Mustang drivers to win NHRA national event Funny Car titles: Danny Ongais, Larry Fullerton, Dave Condit, Shirl Greer, Gary Burgin, Billy Meyer, John Lombardo, Gordie Bonin, Gary Clapshaw, and Dale Pulde (in Bazemore’s car).

Add to those pony-car wins Kenny Bernstein's dozen or so wins in his aero-trick Bud King Tempos. I'm not sure that a Pinto ever won an NHRA Funny Car event, but I know that Mark Oswald won a trio in the Candies & Hughes Thunderbird, and Beadle got a hat trick in his Blue Max EXPs. There's probably one or two along the way I missed, but it won't be long before we're celebrating 200 Ford wins in Funny Car.

Of course, Ford power has been winning NHRA Professional races for five decades; Top Fuel icons such as Kalitta, Don Prudhomme, "Sneaky Pete" Robinson, and others used Ford SOHC engines to power their rails.

Ford's first Professional NHRA world championship was in 1972, when Fullerton and the Trojan Horse won Funny Car at the World Finals in Amarillo, Texas, back when winning that lone event meant being the season champ (though drivers had to earn the right to compete there).

Pro Stock icon Bob Glidden carved Ford's First On Race Day slogan into the history books of the factory hot rod class with event wins and championships in all manner of Ford vehicles, from Pintos to Fairmonts to Thunderbirds to Probes – and won national event title in Mustangs and EXPs.

Glidden won an amazing 49 times in the 1980s – all in Fords – and had a string of 21 straight years with at least one win. He scored his first win in a Ford – a Pinto that he drove to glory at the 1973 U.S. Nationals in his home state of Indiana – and scored his 85th and final victory in a Ford – his Motorcraft-backed Probe at the 1995 event in Englishtown – and only seven wins of that magnificent total were in a car that didn't bear the famed Ford blue oval.

Pinto pilot Wayne Gapp earned Ford its first Pro Stock honors by winning the World Finals in 1973, and Glidden followed the next year with the first of Ford's points-earned titles. Ford Pro Stock drivers won five of the first seven points-tabulated world championships; Glidden won the title in 1974 and 1975 in his Pinto, "Dyno Don" Nicholson won the 1977 title in his Mustang II, and Glidden was on top again in 1978 and 1980 in his Fairmont.

Interestingly, only four Pro Stock wins have been Mustangs, two by Glidden in 1975 (when he was driving a '70 Mustang to take advantage of a weight break for longer-wheelbase cars) and two by Nicholson in his Mustang II in 1977.

Although Ford fans have not had a major name to cheer for in a few years, that tide clearly has already begun to turn. Erica Enders and Jim Cunningham have been working this season to sort out their new Mustang, and Ford diehard Robert Patrick has announced his intention to return to Pro Stock next season, but all eyes probably will be on 16-time NHRA national event winner Larry Morgan, who announced earlier this season that he will campaign a Mustang in 2010.

I'm looking forward to the Ford era of NHRA Drag Racing, and with the Force team, Tasca, Wilkerson, and the new Ford Pro Stock teams on point, I think we'll see a lot more blue-oval entries First On Race Day.
 

While I've only been able to show you, through the four installments, a small sampling of the more than 500 images he sent me, they've been a pretty good representation of his varied and talented work from the early 1970s, primarily at East Coast tracks.

Although the 12 images and descriptions below are the last ones that I'll offer here, Fred and I do have a parting gift for you at the end of this column that I am absolutely certain will spin your world upside down. But no rushing ahead to see it, OK? Enjoy the slice of East Coast history below; there's some great and historic stuff here.

OK, so what's the big surprise? Are you sitting down?

Response to the publishing of some of Fred's photos here has been so overwhelming that he's graciously and generously offered to put several hundred images – including some stuff not on my CD – online for your enjoyment.

"Several people have suggested that I try to make some money from these photos, but NHRA has provided a lifetime of fun and excitement for me, and I don't feel that I should charge others to share my enthusiasm for the sport," he told me. "If you ever saw the movie Pay it Forward, you'll understand why I feel this way.
 
"I have added and will continue to add more pics as I find time to scan them in to my computer. I've added some from the DC Rod & Custom Show from 1970 and a few color shots from the '90s. Please urge fans who view the site to add comments to any photos, especially if they know something interesting about the sport in those days."

Wow, what a deal! You can find his gallery here.

I would just like to add a caveat here, please. Although he's making these photos available for viewing and downloading, please respect that these images are still his property. He shot them, and he still holds the copyrights to them, so please don’t use them commercially in any way. Also, repay his kindness by sharing your memories with comments on the photos so that others may benefit. You can also thank him personally here: fjvs@live.com.

OK, race fans, that's it for the week. Back next week with more fun stuff. As always, thanks for reading!

Honestly, I could probably run several hundred of his pics for weeks to come, but then I'd probably have to share the byline on this column. Instead, I'm going to pick the best 24 of the remaining and run them in two 12-photo installments, one today and one Friday. It seems that lately I've been heavy into the photo mode – the Misc. Files, the Fred Files, Al Kean's Seattle pics – and haven’t been writing as many feature stories as I used to and would like to get back to. I'm still eager to finish the Misc. Files (we're only up to J) and will mix those in as we go along.

But today, once again, belongs to von Sholly, former Division 1 Photographer (the capital P means he was the official guy, charged by then Division Director Darwin Doll with covering the races and sending photos to National DRAGSTER and other publications). Here's a dandy dozen.

OK, gang, that's it for the day; back Friday with the final installment of the Fred Files.

One more thing: Last Thursday marked the two-year anniversary of this column; my, how time flies. We're still going strong some 260 columns later, thanks to your support, your stories, and your readership.
 

Okay, so I felt a little guilty leaving you with nothing. Just couldn’t do it. I tried. So here's another great story from Fred von Sholly and a classic photo of "Jungle Jim" Liberman burning out at Cecil County Drag-o-Way to illustrate his point.

"Your comment about the 'multicolored flags' reminded me of a funny story from the late '60s when Connie Kalitta was scheduled for a match race at Cecil County. I was the track photographer at the time. Connie's race car arrived at the track for the race, but Connie was not with the team. We were told that he was flying in.

"What we didn't know was that Connie was literally flying himself in directly to the track and wanted us to stop the races so he could land his plane on the dragstrip. He called the timing tower to ask if there were any wires crossing over the track. We told him that there weren't. He said that the would 'buzz' the track before landing. We were ready for Connie when he flew over. We stopped the races as promised, and Connie started his approach to land on the track. He was almost on the ground when he made an abrupt move up to clear a string of those 'multicolored flags' that was strung across the track. We forgot about them, and Connie had no idea what they were. He thought they might be a power line. Needless to say, Connie wasn't real pleased when he finally landed, and he let everyone know it. Ooops!
 
"It ended up raining, and the race had to be postponed. Late in the day after almost everyone had left the track, Don Prudhomme asked if he could use a telephone. Unfortunately, the tower was closed and locked, and the only phone was inside the tower. No one remaining at the track had a key to get in. Cecil County was really out in the sticks, and there were no phones nearby. All of a sudden, Connie produced a briefcase and threw it up on the hood of a truck and opened it. Lo and behold, it contained a wireless telephone. Connie raised the antenna and got a dial tone, and Prudhomme was able to make his call. This was in the late '60s when only Connie and James Bond had a telephone in a briefcase. We were all very impressed."

 

Al Kean has been a loyal reader of this column from the start and also of National DRAGSTER. The Canadian race fan might best be remembered by his fellow fans for grabbing this amazing photo of Don Prudhomme's Hot Wheels Barracuda soaring through the lights at Seattle Int'l Raceway's Hot Wheels Northwest National Open in 1971. Kean shared his memories of that magnificent memory with me in a past Insider column (scroll down to the middle of it).

Anyway, after seeing the recent columns here showcasing some of former Division 1 photographer Fred von Sholly's great East Coast pics, Kean thought he would like to share some of his stuff, too! As a teen living just across the border in Victoria, B.C., Kean had frequented the Northwest tracks such as Seattle and Puyallup beginning in 1968 at the suggestion of his older brother. Even after moving some 500 miles north to Prince George, once he got some wheels, he began making the long trek south for the drags.

This last Christmas, while digging decorations out of the closet in his basement, Kean came across a box of slides from back in the day and had them scanned and placed on a CD, which he proudly sent to me with an index document seven pages long detailing the whos and wheres of the more than 300 images.

What's really cool to me about these images is that they are true fan photos, shot from the fences and grandstands and wherever Kean could get a decent line of sight on the cars (although it's clear in some of them that security may have been a bit lax in letting him get closer than most fans on occasion!). They remind me a lot of the photos I grabbed at OCIR and Irwindale – lots of shooting around heads and poles, some unfortunate misses (focus, frame), but some real gems, too. I've taken the liberty of cropping some of them for your viewing pleasure and left others as is. So, before we put the 2009 Seattle event in the rearview, here are a dozen images and a look back at Seattle from more than 30 years ago.

Okay, those were some pretty keen Kean photos, eh? Thanks for sending them in, Al!
 

I forwarded Fred a bunch of messages from readers eager to chat about the good old days or looking for photos of their cars and reconnected him with a couple of old pals. Makes a fella feel kinda good, y'know?

Anyway, so below is the first full course of your memory-invoking meal, 10 more great images. Enjoy.

Okay, there's another heapin' serving of the Fred Files for your weekend enjoyment. I'll be back next Tuesday with more fun and games. I have a couple of cool columns in the works that may or may not be ready for prime time by then; if not, I'll roll out the next edition of the always popular Misc. Files, letter J.

Although he is part of the legend of one of drag racing's great forks in the road, even the most hard-core fan would be hard-pressed to finger Timothy Daniel Ditt's place in the sport's history. For nearly 40 years, he has been largely anonymous, known only to many as the unknown and blurry figure in the grandstands, ominously circled in a crude hand-drawn oval on a famous photograph.

On March 8, 1970, Tim Ditt was just a 16-year-old fan like any other teenager, drawn to famed Lions Drag Strip that cool day to see the stars of the sport at the season-opening AHRA Grand American. He left the famed facility not the way he expected, in an ambulance and in peril, clinging to life at the end of a well-placed thumb in his armpit that stemmed the flow of lifeblood from his unconscious body.

Ditt was not at ground zero for the explosion heard 'round the drag racing world – the disintegration of the two-speed transmission in Don Garlits' Swamp Rat 13 front-engined Top Fueler that led "Big Daddy" to design the sport's first successful rear-engined dragster from his Long Beach, Calif., hospital bed – but he was at the cruel end of it when a random piece of debris nearly severed his left arm. Only the quick action of Lions starter Larry Sutton likely saved his life as the cowboy-hatted SoCal legend jammed his thumb onto the pressure point in Ditt's underarm and, like Peter and the dike, kept it there for the long ride to the hospital, where doctors completed the job of saving his life.

Top Fuel racing then was at a pivotal and, some might say, very experimental point in its history, and this near-tragic incident also paved the way for rules for better containment and other safety devices that have given our sport the tremendous safety record it enjoys today. Ditt is glad to be here to see it.

Larry Sutton (minus his trademark black cowboy hat!), left, was reunited with Tim Ditt, right, whose life he saved nearly 40 years ago at Lions Drag Strip.

More than 39 years after that fateful day, Ditt and Sutton were reunited at Sutton's Wrightwood, Calif., home, where they posed for this photo -- with a cardboard stand-up of "Big Daddy" – and where Ditt, now 56, learned firsthand of the day that changed his life, a day that until just recently was nothing but a jumbled memory.

Sutton dropped by the office yesterday to give me this photo, thanking me for my small part in the reunion. It had been my article about Sutton and his heroic actions and the help of Todd Hutcheson, nephew of former Top Fuel racer George "the Stone Man" Hutcheson, who is writing a book about that period in the sport's history, that got the two together.

It was an emotional moment for both, Sutton told me. "He's got a wife and two kids and some grandkids, and he told me he's had a wonderful life he wouldn’t have had if it weren't for me," he said. "I'm just glad for him to finally have some closure. He knew he was part of drag racing history but wasn't sure of much else that happened that day. He told me all he remembered was looking down at his injured arm and then falling backwards, then he remembered a real hard pain in his armpit. That was my thumb."

Hutcheson, who with co-writer Mickey Bryant hopes to release their book, Don Garlits, RED, early next year on the 40th anniversary of the incident, went to great pains to track down Ditt. He had a personal attachment to the incident because he, too, had been there, standing close enough to Garlits' side of the track to be bathed in the oil of Garlits' parts.

Hutcheson, a photojournalist for United Press International who has traveled the world covering royalty and rock stars, the Olympics , and more, used his reporter's nose to track down Ditt, beginning with nothing more than a name, then scoured phonebooks and the Internet before finally finding him in May.

"When I finally got ahold of him, he was overjoyed that someone else knew something about the incident," recalled Hutcheson.

Ditt, who underwent six hours of surgery on the day of the accident and 10 more surgeries in the next four years, finally met Sutton Saturday. Before driving off to meet his savior, he dropped Hutcheson an e-mail that read, in part, "I've prayed that I would live to have a chance to say thank you to the person (or persons) who saved my life. I'm really hoping I'll do more than cry and hug him. 39 years of feelings put on my mental back shelf, with no answers or closure may be over."

What a great moment and a great ending to an amazing story.
 

Wow, it's been a busy week, and I've been swamped in all sorts of meetings that have sucked away the precious time I had planned to dedicate to a new installment of the Misc. Files for today, but my loss is your gain with an intriguing peek at some goodies ahead.

A few months ago, I was contacted by Fred von Sholly,  the Division 1 photographer in the mid-1960s for then Director Darwin Doll, but he also was the track photographer at Cecil County Drag-o-way, which featured a lot of match races.

Fred wanted to know if I was interestied in having a large collection of his images from that era to add to the National DRAGSTER archives.

"I don't want anything in return," he wrote. "I just feel that someone out there might appreciate seeing these photos."

Are you kidding me? I know a lot of people who would!

Fred recently sent me a CD from the late 1960s and early 1970s with images of early Top Fuelers, Funny Cars, and Pro Stockers at Cecil County as well as at legendary East Coast facilities including Aquasco, York, Capitol Raceway, and Raceway Park, some of which are in the montage at right. I've been going through them and will present some next week. There's some great early stuff of "Jungle Jim" Liberman, Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme, Don Schumacher, and much, much more – a lot of stuff that I'm pretty sure has never been seen or at least for a long while. He sent more than 500 images, and while I'm obviously not going to be able to share them all, I will cherry-pick through them and give Fred's artistry another day in the sun. We've seen a lot of early stuff from the West Coast, but not as much from the East, so this could be fun.
 
I also had asked Fred to share some of his memories from that era, and he responded right away with a couple of gems about Pro Stock hero Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins.

"I was good friends with the owners of Cecil County Drag-o-way," he wrote. "Back in the late '60s and early '70s, Bill Jenkins used to test his cars at Cecil whenever the mood struck him. I asked the owners to let me know when Jenkins was coming to test.

"One day they called and said that he was coming. When I got there, Jenkins was the only person on the track. I think he had one guy with him. The track caretaker was running the clocks. Bill had a car carrier with a big vise attached. I arrived just in time to see him sawing a new Holley carburetor in half. Jenkins wasn't very talkative, but since he and I were the only people around, it was hard