Lame excuses, good pranks, bad hair, and let’s race

I’m still kind of buzzing from my first trip to Bristol -- thanks to all who dropped kind thoughts and offered kudos on the spur-of-the-moment rainy-day blog – and with the lost travel day I’m a little behind on columns, so bear with me today.

I had planned today to write about one of the most amazing drag cars ever to hit the strip – “Big Daddy” himself reportedly rates it in his all-time top five – the amazing dual-engine Freight Train Top Gas dragster, but with the travel hassles Monday (more on that in a second) and the mountain of information I got from talking to Train co-owner John Peters, I sure didn’t want to push it just to meet my self-mandated thrice-weekly allotment of entries. Look for it Friday. It should be well worth the wait.

As you may have read in the entry before this one, our travel schedule home was brutal. I mean, a 5:50 a.m. flight is bad enough if you hit the rack by 10 p.m., but at 10 p.m. we were still watching it rain in Bristol. I wrote my tail off to get the dot.com overall finished, and I think we hit the road for the “two-hour” trip to Knoxville about 11:30. I put the travel time in quotes because we made it there in considerably less time, thanks to the lead foot of Little Bradfield. I won’t tell you how fast he went, but the kid has been 240 mph in his dad’s Alcohol Funny Car, and while we were a shade below that, Brad knew that every tick on the speedometer above the limit meant another few precious seconds of sleep for him, me, and K.W. We pulled in at the Hampton Inn just after 1 a.m., checked in, and sacked out for three hours of well-deserved and long-awaited pillow time.

Less fortunate were ND photographers Marc Gewertz and Richard Wong, who had to shoot the winner’s circle. By the time they got to Knoxville, it wasn’t even worth crawling between the sheets, so they showered and stayed up until it was time to hit the airport.

The first leg went fine – other than the small jet’s incredibly uncomfortable seats – but we got stuck for an extra two hours in Dallas while the ground crews worked on a problem with the left engine. By the time we finally boarded, we were a bunch of grumpy travelers (plus I was still suffering from food poisoning or something, and they wonder why I don’t travel as much as I used to), and, of course, where was my seat? Right next to the good ol’ left engine. I spent the barely conscious parts of the trip waiting for the engine to go all Mike-Neff-in-the-Bristol-final on me, like the one in this picture, but it held together, and we landed in 100-degree temps in Ontario.

After a quick stop at work to post the Bristol eliminations video, some late-arriving team reports, and a blog (thanks, Wilber), I bailed out and headed home, crashed for three hours, tried to eat (bad idea), then crashed out again. Since I usually write on the plane but couldn’t this time, losing almost a full day to travel and weakness put me behind schedule on my ND assignments and backed up my plans for today’s column. I woke up Tuesday refreshed but concerned that my stomach was still not 100 percent (I’ve seen enough episodes of House to be paranoid that I may have a six-foot-long tapeworm or some obscure disease that cannot be diagnosed despite much brow furrowing until someone says something random like “The schoolbus arrives at 11” before House’s light bulb goes off), but I’m still happy I went. Bristol is such a unique and amazing facility, and it was such a great race, weather notwithstanding, that I’d go again tomorrow.

Chad Light, left: karaoke instructor, prank player.

Back briefly to Monday’s blog, which I had written Sunday afternoon but posted before I stepped out of the hotel at 4:40 a.m. Monday (to give it the correct day’s Last Update date on the home page). I was stunned to get the e-mail below from John Force Racing Marketing Manager Chad Light.

As you may have read in my Monday entry, I shared with y'all the lengths that he and cohort Kelly Antonelli, JFR director of marketing, went to to get John Force into the Old Spice Experience Challenge karaoke shower, which I thought made for an interesting tale of what Force’s people do to keep the world’s most popular drag racer in motion. So I was stunned when this e-mail appeared in my Inbox with the subject line “Great to work with all of you!”

It was such a pleasure to have built the lifelong relationships with all of you through my experiences at John Force Racing and the NHRA POWERade Series. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, as is the case for Kelly and me here at John Force Racing.

In what was seemingly a simple practical joke, Kelly and I crossed the line with our Old Spice karaoke trick with John, Ashley, Robert, and Mike at the recent event in Bristol, Tenn. It was purely meant to be fun but rather offended our employers. Therefore, as a result, we are now in search of new positions after finishing out our week here at JFR. We thought we had escaped under the radar until a recent NHRA.com article surfaced and made it into the hands of John Force. It proved to be the tipping point, as we each were informed today of its consequence.

Kelly and I would like to thank all of you for your support and thoughtfulness throughout our times here. We wish all of you continued success and growth and will be sure to drop you a line as we find our next career opportunities.

Respectfully,
Chad Light

My heart stopped. Well, not literally, of course, but it sank in my chest. Well, not literally, of course, but you know what I mean.

Chad is one of the great guys in our sport and has been – this time, very literally – invaluable to me in getting ahold of the sometimes elusive Force or even getting quick answers for me from The Man. Kelly Antonelli, for a long time better known to many of us than her husband, Ashley Force crew chief Dean, has been a key figure in Force’s management for as long as I can remember and another can-do figure in my dealings with Force. So to think that I had printed something that maybe I shouldn’t have – even though they had openly told me about their ploy -- and got them sacked hit me like a gut punch.

Sure, there were signs that maybe my old buddy was toying with me – I didn’t think he’d ever publicly announce he got fired, let alone the reason for it – and I surely couldn’t see Force going off for something like this. After all, it looked like Force was having a great time doing the karaoke. But the tone and the fact that I was blind-copied on it had me concerned.

I immediately e-mailed him back with a “Surely you’re kidding …” and was about ready to give Force some of that “outside the team” advice he sometimes requests. An agonizing 15 minutes later, Chad let me off the hook, but not before a misdirected start.

“Did it make you feel the slightest bit bad for throwing Kelly and me under the proverbial bus?” he asked before telling me that, yes, all was good in Force land and he appreciated the ink for the Old Spice attraction.

Man, do I owe him one now. Good one, Chad.

Todd then, a sharp-dressed man ...

... and now, Jack Black's twin

Speaking of good-guy marketing types, it was good in Bristol to see the multitalented Todd Myers, who does marketing and PR for Kalitta Motorsports and has done some incredible design work for me (including the home pages for NHRA.com and the Parks NHRA Musuem and several past specialty sites such as those for the 50th annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals and 40th anniversary NHRA Finals).

But when he pulled up a chair (well, actually some floor) next to me in the Bristol media center, he was sporting a, well, different hairdo than the last time I saw him. He’s usually one of those neatly coiffed, razor-cut kind of guys, but I thought I was looking at Jack Black.

“Dude, what’s with the new do?”

Turns out that there’s nothing he won’t “do” to help his team. He has vowed not to cut his hair until one of the team’s drivers – Doug Kalitta, Scott Kalitta, Dave Grubnic, or Hillary Will – wins an event.

“I try to let my hair grow out some because of the frigid winters in Michigan, and I usually cut it when the season gets started again, but I didn't this time, so it's been growing since last November,” he explained. “I haven't even had a trim since. Sometime after Phoenix, I mentioned out loud that it was time to get a cut, but someone on our team -- one of the crew guys, I can't remember who -- said I should let it keep going until one of our cars won a race. I said okay, and the word spread on our team, so now I'm committed to it. As far as I know, I'm the only one on our team who's becoming a hippie. Lewis Bloom makes it a point to tell me, ‘Love the hair’ every time he sees me. Being a sarcastic soul myself, I'm pretty sure he is as well, but we each laugh every time he says it.”

Hockey players are well-known for their “playoff beards” that aren’t shaved during that crunch time, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this in drag racing.

Who can forget Don Garlits’ 1967 vow not to shave until he got in the sixes – which he did in winning the 1967 Indy final, then shaved in front of one and all on the starting line in one of the sport’s all-time unforgettable moments – or even Cruz Pedregon’s vow that he’d not cut his hair until he won again, first reported by former NHRA.com scoopster Rob Geiger, who then got the honor of the first snip when "the Cruzer" finally won in Las Vegas in 2006 (although there are many who believe "the Cruzer" did a little trimming of his own during the drought).

Todd was smiling wide and ready for scissors in Bristol as “Aussie Dave,” Doug, and Hillary qualified Nos. 2, 3, and 5, and he was still hopeful as Hillary reached the semifinals, but it was not to be. It worked for “Big” and Cruz, and I’m hoping it does for Todd, too. Either that or he’d better get to work on his School of Rock act.

Tomorrow is a doubly special day for me. In addition to it being my birthday (the big 4-8), it’s also the year’s first NHRA Staff Drags outing on the Pomona quarter-mile. If you recall from past postings here, the Publications team has amassed an amazing record of success with multiple team and individual championships, and we’re looking to add more to that this year.

Because the previous event’s lowest-scoring team gets to set the format for the next event, those crafty devils over on Financial Way, led by race organizer Kieth Burley of NHRA’s Marketing department, devised a new format that they hope will blunt the Publications juggernaut.

In years past, the team championship, as in any bracket-finals-type race, went to the team with the most round-wins, and, because we put all of the Publications drivers through a brief but comprehensive tutorial about bracket racing, if nothing else, we’d get through the first round with larger numbers than the other teams and would roll to victory. Sometimes the drama was gone by the third round, so I guess I somewhat understand the need to level the playing field.

This year, each team will race among itself until the round where there are 10 or fewer cars, with the goal being to put three 10-car teams on a ladder and run without regard to team affiliation. If the last round of intra-team competition takes us below 10 cars, the roster will be filled with drivers who had the best reaction times in their losses. Got that? Good. But we’re not done yet. That will give us 30 cars, and the final two spots on the 32-car ladder will be the next two best-losing-reaction-time drivers, regardless of team. Awards will be given to the overall winner as well as Team MVP.

Because I couldn’t nail the Tree even if you gave me a hammer -- I usually survive on a strategic dial-in and savvy top-end driving – I’d better win my first round against my Publications opponent or I’ll be curbside.

Oh well, at least that would give me time to write that Freight Train column …

Bristol sights

I hope you won’t know it when you read this entry, but it was written in kind of a time warp. I'm beginning it Sunday morning while watching out my window as the Safety Safari works to dry the track, and I’ll add to it throughout the day but probably won’t post it until Monday morning.

Our travel plans call for us to haul butt back to Knoxville as soon as I wrap up the nightly NHRA.com story and sack out for the night there before what promises to be a 4 a.m. wake-up call to catch a 5:50 early bird back to SoCal. I don’t plan on hitting the rack until midnight because there’ll be a lot of work waiting for me when we check in at a Knoxville hotel – team reports and photo galleries and video clips still to post – hey, this job ain’t all caviar and champagne. With any luck, I’ll upload this right before we check out Monday morning.

That’s the plan, at least; Mother Nature may have other plans. Depending on which Web site or news channel you check out, it’s either going to rain all day or not at all, so we may be here another day or headed home. By the time I post this, you’ll know what happened, but, as I write this, I don’t know. You’ll know before me, I guess. Weird, huh?

Not that you probably care much -- other than it may reflect in my prose here -- but I’m working on about three hours’ sleep. After qualifying completed Saturday, we headed to Bristol Motor Speedway for the NHRA Circle Track Challenge, watched that for a couple of hours, and caught a late meal. I finished up the dot-com work and hit the hay at about midnight but couldn’t sleep. My right knee was aching something fierce (as they say in these parts). I’m not sure what the cause was, whether it was the repeated long uphill hikes through the pit area or racing Kelly Wade up the steep BMS grandstands (I won!), but I didn’t get to sleep til early this morning. Sucks being old. Also, I’ve somehow picked up a dose of stomach flu or food poisoning, Life is good. But anyway …

The Circle Track deal was a blast. Walking into the infield of the world’s fastest half-mile was truly a treat; the place is very impressive, and I can only imagine what it looks like filled wall to wall with people. A hearty and vocal group of a couple of thousand spectators, most of them either fans, racers, or crewmembers who drifted over from Thunder Valley, were on hand to watch some of the top NHRA nitro and Pro Stock drivers take to Street Stocks for the event.

“Fast Jack” Beckman was voted to the pole by fans and was joined on the front row by Pro Stock driver Justin Humphreys, who was still smarting from his DNQ a few hours earlier. Allen Johnson, Doug Herbert, Jeg Coughlin, Antron Brown, Ron Capps, Gary Scelzi, Doug Kalitta, Cory McClenathan, Tony Schumacher, Greg Anderson, J.R. Todd, Kurt Johnson, and Jason Line got in some hot-lap practice time, but Morgan Lucas had to sit out after his car’s rear end broke, and Bob Vandergriff Jr. was too big to fit into the small cockpit of his assigned car.

One lap in, “the Sarge” was in the wall after trying to merge in front of J.R. without the benefit of a spotter, wiping out the front end of his machine.

Allen Johnson, from just down Highway 81 in Greeneville, looked as if he has absorbed some stock-car skills as he quickly charged to the front in Jon Cook’s machine and held the lead for 10 laps, but Kalitta, who started in the fifth row and showed off his circle-track experience by quickly moving to second, pressed him hard before finally slipping by. A.J.’s great run ended shortly after when he was clipped on the front end, breaking a tie rod, but he was heartily congratulated by everyone for a strong run.

Scelzi also dinged up Chris Tunnell’s car after losing the brakes and finally swatting the wall with the right rear and breaking the rear end, and Herbert, who nerfed Capps from behind a few times in true “DougZilla” fashion, eventually fell out with a balky coil wire caused by the jarring action.

“Fast Jack” was impressive; he definitely wasn’t afraid of the car and probably charged harder through the corners than most before ultimately looping Freddie Taylor’s Camaro a few times (17, according to his distorted recollection), but a loose power steering line slowed any hopes of a comeback. Capps also looked solid in Jeff Williams’ machine, his years of wheeling all sorts of machines evident, and finished second, just ahead of Brown and Anderson.

After 12 laps, the NHRA drivers pulled in, and Kalitta received the halfway winner’s trophy. The regular Street Stock drivers then took over in the spot left them by their NHRA pals, and Jeff Counts led wire to wire in the blue Camaro that Kalitta had turned over to him ... but just barely. Tim Robinson, who inherited fourth place from Anderson, charged up and was a lap at most away from passing Counts.

Saturday’s other highlight was one that most race fans – and this grizzled reporter – have never seen before: John Force singing “Y.M.C.A.” in the shower.

A new display by John Force Racing sponsor Old Spice appeared in Nitro Alley that allows fans to sing karaoke in four simulated shower stalls in full view of an “appreciative” audience.

All four Force team drivers were on hand for an autograph session – the line, as it had been for Ashley Force’s appearance in the Brand Source booth the day before, was unbelievably long; you’d think the Force team was handing out $50 bills – followed by the karaoke session.

In a shrewd bit of maneuvering, neither Kelly Antonelli nor Chad Light disclosed to the boss in advance that he’d be singing after the autograph session, and they even got him to briefly trade his ever-present Castrol hat for a shower cap. The team was then asked to step into the showers so that the gathered crowd could see what it might look like if someone were to sing.

Then they broke the news to Force, and, true to his good-time nature, he went after it, doing his best to belt out the well-known novelty song with help from fans and only minor and somewhat muted accompaniment from his teammates. Old Spice standard-bearer Mike Neff got into the swing a little bit toward the end and ended up soloing while Force kidded with the crowd. Ashley looked as if she’d rather be in her Mustang on fire, and Hight mostly played Milli Vanilli.

“That was the most embarrassed I’ve ever been,” Neff admitted later in the media center, where he was being interviewed as the day’s low qualifier. “I can’t sing; Force actually sounded good. He might have some talent there.”

Much, much later …

Okay, it’s now 5:35 p.m. Sunday, and I got bored during all of the rain and decided to do the entry below, but with another big rainstorm bearing down on us, I’m not sure we’re gonna finish tonight, which will change everything I said at the top of this entry. If we do finish tonight it’s gonna be about 10 p.m. at best. By the time we pack up and get to Knoxville, it’s gonna be pushing 1 a.m. Yeah, three more hours of sleep!

Top Fuel final done … Pro Stock final coming up. Doh! More rain.

It’s 10 o’clock. Total food intake today: half an apple, six pretzels, none of which remained with me very long. TMI, I know. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.

I have to say that my Bristol experience has been memorable in so many ways, no matter how this turns out, and with the Pro finals to be run under the lights here, allow me to finish this time-challenged entry with the lyrics from Bruce Springsteen’s immortal song, “Thunder Road," which seem very appropriate.

Well the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back
Heaven's waiting on down the tracks
Oh-oh come take my hand
We're riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh-oh Thunder Road oh Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it's late we can make it if we run
Oh Thunder Road sit tight take hold
Thunder Road

The Bristol rainy-day blog

Looks like we're going to be in for a long day here, and I'm getting bored. So, here's the play-by-play on the day.

9:30 a.m.: Rain fell until about 9:30 this morning, but finally relented, and the Safety Safari and Bristol crews get to work drying the track.

11 a.m.: Pre-race ceremonies begin on time, and all looks good for a noon start as scheduled. NHRA announces that the teams will be on a 65-minute turnaround time between rounds instead of the traditional 75.

Noon: It’s cloudy but dry, and racing begins. We get all the way through Top Fuel and the first pair of Funny Car before …

12:30 p.m.: ... a light rain begins to fall as Jerry Toliver and Jim Head are preparing to race. The drivers climb from their cars, and the car covers go on. Toliver’s is particularly well-appointed, with a representation of the car on its side. Many in the hardy Bristol crowd have brought rain gear, and the rest head for cover under the grandstands.

12:50 p.m.: The Safety Safari begins drying the track again.

1:10 p.m.: Racing resumes, and we get three more pair down the track before …

1:18 p.m.: … a light rain returns as Del Worsham and Robert Hight are firing their cars. Car covers come out, and there is much milling about and bench racing.

1:50 p.m.: The rain finally relents, and the Safari begins drying the track … again.

2:02 p.m.: The call goes out for the drivers to get in their cars. Like a car-wash customer waiting for his auto, Del paces anxiously next to his car as the crew unwraps it and wipes it dry of any stray drops.

2:05 p.m.: The cars are lit, and Hight powers to a stunning 4.74, breaking the track record of his former teammate, the late Eric Medlen. Hight acknowledges Eric in his top-end interview, and he’s a little melancholy about taking away his buddy’s record. How 'bout that Safety Safari?

2:09 p.m.: The rain is back. At this rate, one pair every 55 minutes, we’ll finish approximately on Tuesday.

2:10 p.m.: Both the cars of Tony Pedregon and Melanie Troxel ,who had completed their pre-run rituals, are towed back to the pits to have their engines serviced, oil changed, etc.

2:25 p.m.: The rain quits and drying starts, then …

2:34 p.m.: ... rain starts again. Sigh. Again, the pressroom denizens call up weather Web sites, and everyone’s suddenly a meteorological expert, predicting when we’ll be running again.

2:40 p.m.: Bristol track officials present Rickie Smith with his Legends of Thunder Valley plaque; he was among the initial class last year but not here to collect. A sixth name is added to the signage this year, the Sox & Martin team, and Buddy Martin, along with the late Ronnie Sox’s wife, Diane, are here to accept. Martin heaps praise upon his former driver.

2:50 p.m.: John Force, still wearing his head and neck restraint, hobbles out to the starting line to check out the situation and is met, as always, with a roar from the crowd.

3:06 p.m.: Still a whole lotta standing around going on; the Safari trucks are poised in the shutdown area, ready to pounce. Cruz Pedregon, next in line to run John Force, is pacing around the burnout box while crew chief Rahn Tobler checks out the track. It's a mix of dark clouds and gray sky, but the clouds are whipping by fast and not dropping much wet stuff. Local newspaper guys are beginning to talk about writing rainy-day stories. Copycats.

3:10 p.m.: Famed Sports Illustrated photographer Heinz Kluetmeier, who, along with reporter Rick Hoffer, has been shadowing John and Ashley Force all weekend for an upcoming story in SI, comes to the media center and is immediately surrounded by the drag shutterbugs, eager to meet him and hear his tales.

3:21 p.m.: The trucks are rolling, the trucks are rolling!

3:22 p.m.: The car cover is off of Pedregon's machine, and the dual jet dryers are hot-lapping at a furious pace. After Hight's blast, everyone is eager to see what the track will dish up next.

3:25 p.m.: "The Cruzer" is all suited up and hopping in, but Force is nowhere in sight, unless he's hiding inside his car under its black car cover. ... but wait.

Not only does Force come strolling up, but Melanie and Tony P. come steaming past and roll into the burnout box ahead of them to resume their rightful place in the running order. We're about to have nitro again. It's been about an hour delay, and by my count, we're two and a half hours behind schedule. The cars light at 3:27 and ...

 3:28 p.m.: ... Mel and Tony do their burnouts and pull in to stage. The crowd rises. And Rick Stewart shuts 'em off. More rain.  :(

3:35 p.m.: I venture out into the light rain to get some details (is there nothing I won't do for you guys?) and chat with T-Ped crew chief Dickie Venables. After the first no-go, they hauled back to the pits to cool the clutch only. No oil change. But now, with two burnouts on the clutch, he's concerned and wants to change it out. He discusses the situation with Mark Oswald and Brian Corradi of Melanie's team. They don't seem as convinced a new clutch is needed, but both cars head off down the return road, so I guess that's where they're headed.

Chief Starter Rick Stewart tells me that in all of his years of starting race cars, he's never had to shut off the same two cars twice, back to back. More history at Thunder Valley!

Capps is still strapped into the NAPA Dodge. I peek under and ask him how many times he's been in and out. "Four," he says, then adds wishfully, "we must be in the final."

3:47 p.m.: With T-Ped and M-Trox in the pits and needing about 30 minutes to swap out clutches, looks like Force and "Cruzer" will move ahead of them. The car covers come off again and are neatly refolded for the gazillionth time today, and it looks like we're ready again. By my rough count, we're three hours-plus behind schedule. It's gonna be a long day.

3:50 p.m.: Cruz beats Force, who shakes and gets loose. Then his car locks up on the top end. Great ...

Only two more pair to go, then Pro Stock, then Pro Mod round two, then Top Fuel round two  ... or at least that's what I hear. T-Ped and Mel will have to fit in there somewhere, too.

I'm not doing round by round here, so stop refreshing so much. I'll update significant milestones as we hit them. Or if it rains again.

4 p.m.: The Motel 6 Vision screen shows Tony P. and crew warming the car in the pits after installing a new clutch. No Pro Stockers have rolled into position yet; are we waiting for the two wayward floppers?

Turns out they're on the way, and we'll wait on them. Meanwhile, it's announced we'll go right back into Top Fuel after Pro Stock. And here come the last two floppers ... winner gets Ashley Force in round two. Will it be an all-female tilt with Melanie?

Yes! Melanie's car makes a move to the centerline at 330 and falls back until Pedregon smokes 'em slightly at half-track. They go through the lights together, with Mel tightroping the centerline and earning her first Funny Car round-win. More history coming up, race fans.

4:19 p.m.: For about two minutes there, everyone was looking at the sky instead of the track. Amazing. Blue sky. And what are these things attached to our feet? Shadows? No, couldn't be. Then, like an apparition, it's gone, and it's cloudy again.

4:35 p.m.: Round two of Top Fuel ... and the blue skies are back.

5:19 p.m.: We ran the Pro Mods and the Sportsman cars, now it's back to Funny Car; looks like Melanie and crew got their allotted 65 minutes and then some. She and Ashley are in the second pair. The sun is shining, and dark clouds are flitting by but not over.

5:24 p.m.: Unbelievable, part 1. Mel upsets Ashley, 4.82 to 4.86, in their historic bout.

Unbelievable, part 2: I'm informed that we're about 20 minutes away from a major, major downpour. Fast-moving, yes, but packed with wet stuff. Sigh.

5:38 p.m.: Oh, goody. Bob Frey has just announced that the coming storm is packing thunder and lightning and that the fans should be prepared to head for cover when it arrives. With Pro Stock on the line, ain't no one going nowhere yet. Hard core. Guess we're gonna see a REAL "thunder valley."

5:51 p.m.: Top Fuel round three pulls into position. They're racing the weather as much as each other. The sky is dark, dark, dark ... incredibly, the GEICO-banner-towing airplane that has been in the sky since the event started is still circling despite the incoming storm. At least with everyone watching the sky, it's getting lots of "views."

5:58 p.m.: Just as Tony Shoe beats Hillary Will to join Dixon in the final, the skies open up again. Just sprinkles now, but enough to stop the action. The Super Comp diggers that were next are doing three-point turns and heading back under the tower and, I'm guessing, to the arks.

6:05 p.m.: Oh yeah, now it's raining. Hard. Best estimate we hear is a two-hour downtime. I need a nap.

6:50 p.m.: The rain has relented a bit, and even though it's still sprinkling, some of the Safari crew is on the track pushing the biggest water puddles aside with tractors and sweepers. There's even a sliver of sunshine peeking down on the bleach box, a ray of hope to the faithful still here.

7:05 p.m.: The rain appears to have fully stopped, and every broom, vacuum, and water-pushing and -drying device on the grounds is in action.

7:30 p.m.: Working with hand-wheeled blowers, brooms, and torches, foot soldiers of the Safety Safari have dried the first 200 feet or so while the mounted units, working from the other end, appear to have reached the 660-foot clocks. Neither section is what you'd call dry, but there's no real standing water left except between those points.

7:45 p.m. The word is that we're about 45 minutes away from resuming action. The radar looks clear, and it's record-busting cool. The plan is to go right into the semi's of Funny Car and Pro Stock, then run the Top Fuel final. After that, more Sportsman action, followed by the other finals.

8:06 p.m.: Now it's all about killing time. The bored and frazzled media chow through nine large pizzas in less time than it took to type that, and sporadic outbreaks of Uno are reported. Bench racing is rampant. Say, did you ever hear the one about ...

8:30 p.m.: The magic time has arrived, but the stage is not quite ready. Some Safari trucks continue to toil way down the shutdown area, but the remaining crew chiefs are all scoping out the starting line, and the cars are all in the lanes.

8:45 p.m.: The lanemaster gives 'em the spin-it-over sign, and the Funny Cars of Melanie Troxel, looking for her first Funny Car win, and Jim Head roar to life in the semifinals.

8:48 p.m.: Melanie reaches her first Funny Car final when Head goes up in smoke. Melanie, too, has to pedal her ProCare Rx Dodge through tire shake farther downtrack and does it masterfully. She'll now face either Hight or Neff; if it's the latter, we'll have two drivers going for their first win.

8:51 p.m.: It will be Melanie against Neff. His Ford survives just a bit longer than Hight's as both engines go sour at the top end. Neff is in his second straight final, and one of them will win his or her first Funny Car crown later tonight.

8:55 p.m.: There can't be more than a couple hundred hardy fans still dotting the grandstands, but they'll be able to call their friends who left and tell 'em they missed history. They'll see Greg Stanfield also looking for his first win, in Pro Stock, after five runner-ups, square off against Dave Connolly, both of whom won on holeshots, in the final round.

8:58 p.m.: It's the Top Fuel final, Shoe in the left lane and Dixon in the right. It's Shoe's 75th final and Dixon's 79th, but this one is over early as Dixon has to pedal it and the Army driver grabs career win number 44. We'll look for the Funny Cars and Pro Stockers to come back in about an hour.

9:45 p.m.: Connolly is the first of the remaining four Pro finalists in the staging lanes. It's chilly outside for sure.

9:50 p.m.: Stanfield pulls up, his crew on the golf cart swaddled in blankets. Both drivers are suiting up, either because they're ready to decide this final or because they're cold. It's a toss-up in my book.

9:55 p.m.: Ladies and gentlemen, you're not going to believe this. It's sprinkling again.

10:03 p.m.: The sprinkle was just that, and the jet dryers -- count 'em, three -- are back and cranking. They've probably burned enough fuel today for several around-the-world trips.

10:13 p.m.: The Pro Stockers are under the tower, and the Funny Car finalists are suiting up. It's almost happy time. A few more passes by the jet and the sweeper, and we should be set.

10:20 p.m.: Pro Stock final on the line, Stanfield's GXP in the left lane, DC's Cobalt in the right. Somewhere, GM's Fred Simmonds is smiling. Connolly takes it on a holeshot as Stanfield is dead late. It's Chevy's 150th Pro Stock win.

10:22 p.m.: High drama ensues on the starting line for the Funny Car final when Neff’s crew was unable to get the Mustang shell lifted to rearm the clutch despite the best efforts of teammate Robert Hight and Ashley Force crew chief Dean Antonelli. Troxel had to pedal her car early and appeared doomed before Neff’s machine fireballed, no doubt due to the clutch problem.

Just a cleanup after Neff and a few more Sportsman cars, and we're finally, mercifully done.

Me, I'm outta here. Thanks for playing.

Stomping around Bristol

Welcome to Thunder Valley, USA -- Bristol Dragway -- and although the fuel cars have yet to run and send their signature thunder reverberating across the grounds, I’m already mighty impressed with the place. I’ve seen the photos for years, but nothing really compares to being here for the first time.

The grandstands on the left side only go to half-track, but they are tall and very close to the track and recessed into 45-degree slopes that go the length of the track. Save for the Thunder Valley Club and a small grandstand, there’s no real seating on the right, just another big sloped hill that borders the pit area. The starting-line tower spans both lanes and wraps slightly around for a bowl effect, and the trademark hills that straddle the shutdown area also wrap around the end of the track, sealing us truly into a valley. It all feels so compact; the quarter-mile looks shorter from this vantage point, and the shutdown area seems impossibly short. It’s such a unique setting; ESPN stat guy Lewis Bloom said it best a few minutes ago: “It’s very intimate.”

The day started out sunny but has turned cloudy, but it’s far better than the rain we endured on the two-hour ride from Knoxville, where we landed. Although there’s an airport closer – Tri-Cities Regional Airport – it’s a little on the small side. Not that Knoxville is a giant – we had to travel from Dallas in an ERJ-145 jet, which seats only three across in a cabin whose low roof brushes back the hair of anyone 6 feet and over – but I guess it’s a better alternative. The two-hour ride blazed a trail through verdant green countryside and alongside the Great Smoky Mountains, past the birthplaces of Davy Crockett and the boyhood home of President Andrew Johnson (and the current home of Pro Stock racer Allen Johnson).

Because I can’t remember the last time I visited a track I hadn’t already been to, the ride from the hotel was filled with expectations and excitement, and when that “giant spaceship,” as Gary Scelzi called the Bristol Motor Speedway oval, came into view, it was a special moment.

Even though the skies were threatening and a few drops of light rain were sprinkling, I headed off into the pits, which, like the rest of the track, are pretty unique. The Pro pits run down the right side of the track, just about 100 feet the other side of the guardwall, and it literally is the Nitro Alley that the sign proclaims. It’s the only pit area on the tour where the teams are on one road, lining both sides for as far as you can see. Unlike a lot of tracks where you might need a road map to find your favorites, just walk in a straight line long enough here, and you’ll find them.

I stopped and chatted briefly with Ron Capps, who's excited about Saturday night's Circle Track Challenge at the oval. He's one of 16 NHRA drivers taking part, and if you know Capps, he'll drive anything with wheels, and he's pretty competitive. He was talking with Lori Worley, Bristol's go-to publicist, and as soon as he found out that Worley had let Greg Anderson and Jason Line check out the track in their SUV, he wanted a chance to put some wheels on the high banks in advance, too.

Finally, for me at least, no first trip to Bristol would be complete if I hadn’t visited, firsthand, the shutdown area carved into the hills. Down here, the exposed granite is just the other side of the return road. It’s almost cavernous. As I made the long walk to the top end, I realized why there’s an illusion of the place being short. Just after the finish line, the track heads slightly uphill, and a few hundred feet later, it takes a pretty good further kink uphill. It made what should have been an easy three-quarter-mile hike an endeavor, but at least I burned off that IHOP breakfast. The slope is so great that the Super cars can just coast down the return road to the e.t. booth and scales, and, if you can believe it, the end of the shutdown area is reported to be as high as the top of the three-story timing tower. Who knew? I’ve yet to hear the fuel cars run – the day starts late here – but even the Super Comp cars sound a little better.

Bob Wilber offers his version of the Bristol walking tour and some photos in the CSK blog.

Wednesday’s Bristol “history lesson” brought in quite a few e-mails from those who had been at the mid-1960s Springnationals.

Chase Knight, about whose Golden Gator dragster I wrote several weeks ago, made an interesting point that I had overlooked. In reading the original race report in National DRAGSTER, I read but did not grasp the significance of the sentence: “Robinson cranked up with his air starter near the line and met Prudhomme at the line late in the day.”

Knight, who also passed on his high school graduation to go to the 1966 event, fills in the rest of the story. “The 1967 Top Fuel final also had a bit of drama, as Pete Robinson pulled his car out from the 'doorslammer' staging lanes to the starting-line area, instead of coming down the fire-up road from the top end. With a flashback to the 1966 final, folks were concerned that Pete had broken and was just putting an appearance in for the last round. As ‘the Snake’ pushed down from the other end, Pete's crew fired up the SOHC with a removable air starter. Certainly the first time we'd seen anything like that! Although Pete lost the final, we had seen the future of safely starting Top Fuel cars.”

According to Knight, unlike today’s battery-powered starters, Robinson’s was driven by compressed air. He had an oxygen bottle nearly five feet long in the back of his push truck, and a high-pressure line connected it to the starter through a regulator. A crewmember would open a valve, and the compressed air would spin the starter and turn the engine over.

I did a little digging around in the ND files and found this image of Robinson’s “air starter” from the 1970 Dallas event. You can see pneumatic hose running off to the right. In the blown-up version below it, you can see what appears to be a relief valve of some sort "letting off steam." Neat stuff. Self-starting cars were not required by NHRA until 1976, so "Sneaky Pete," as usual, was well ahead of his time.

Glenn Menard, a veteran track manager at places like Texas Motorplex, Irwindale Raceway, Southland Dragway, and LaPlace Dragway, also was at the event, having towed from Baton Rouge, La., with Comp racer George Donaldson.

“For the finals on Sunday, we hiked up the mountain opposite the pits,” he reports. “What a view. In the finals, as ‘the Snake' pushed down from the lights, Pete lit his cammer, had a small fuel leak, but fixed it before ‘the Snake’ got there. From our vantage point, it was like being in the blimp in the current TV shows.”

The place is special, no doubt.

On to other topics filling my Inbox.

The recent article about the handheld drag racing game spurred a lot of response and sent readers like Larry Peters scurrying off to find theirs. “I started thinking, ‘HEY!! I have one of those too. But where is it? I searched most of my hiding places, and then I remembered: the bottom drawer in the bedroom dresser. Sure enough, buried under a lot of other ‘where did I put it?’ stuff, there it was. I ran out and told my wife I found it. She didn't care. Then when I tried to start it, the batteries were dead. After a quick teardown battery swap, I fired it up. Standing in the kitchen for 15 minutes playing it was fun. She thought I was nuts.”

Regular reader Tom Scott even had a tip for y’all. “Just like fuel cars of today, go direct drive --- i.e., start it in 4th gear and keep the r’s just as high as you can without blowing the motor and take off. Once we figured this out it, was no problem to win the event. I can’t remember the times we ran (high 3s pops in my head), but I remember it kind of took the fun out of the game because you could beat it so easy. We then started to make brackets and run against each other for best times. It was a lot of fun, and I think of that game often but could never remember what it was called. Looks like I’ll be cruising eBay for one now! Thanks for wasting another day for me.”

My pleasure, Tom; it’s what I do.

And finally comes this interesting photo from longtime Raceway Park photographer John McCartney, showing a Wally Parks memorial decal on a golf bag. Not just any golf bag, mind you, but one belonging to LPGA tour regular Brandie Burton.

The LPGA golf tour came to the Jersey area town and stopped to play at the Upper Montclair Country Club close to McCartney’s home; he even used to caddie there as a youngster. He was surprised to come across the sticker and tracked down Burton for an explanation.

Turns out that she’s friends with Funny Car star Gary Scelzi as well as our own Joni Elmslie of Joni’s Race Shop fame. Small world it is, but I'm glad to see Wally being remembered at places other than the quarter-mile.

Well, it's about an hour before the Pros run, so I'm gonna hit the pits and then stand ringside to get the true Thunder Valley experience.

Looking forward to (and back at) Bristol

Bristol, yesterday and today

Tomorrow, I’ll be winging my way east to Bristol for the annual O’Reilly NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals presented by Q, and I’m pretty excited to be going. It’s my first trip to Bristol Dragway and the majestic Thunder Valley of drag racing lore, where the sounds of engines bounce off the hills and the shutdown area carves a path between two mountains, earning the track its nickname. Brad Littlefield and Kelly Wade will be handling the words for ND and Marc Gewertz and Richard Wong the photos while I hold down the dot-com beat, and we’re all revved up to head out.

My trip was reason enough to delve into the history books for another the-way-it-was column that y’all seem to enjoy so much (do they say y’all in Tennessee?), but because this year’s race is justin  its eighth appearance on the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series schedule (before that, in 1999 and 2000, the track hosted the offbeat yet cool Showdown between Top Fuelers and Funny Cars), I’d thought I’d dial the Wayback Machine just a little further into the past and head for the three-year span from 1965 through 1967, when the facility hosted the first NHRA Springnationals.

(Distracting trivia note: The term Wayback Machine comes from a cartoon on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show featuring a professorial talking dog, Mr. Peabody, and his pet boy, Sherman, who used it to go back in time to relive historical moments. In the show, however, although the machine was pronounced “wayback,” its actual name was the WABAC machine, a sly nod to the UNIVAC and ENIAC computers that would have been its contemporary. Now you know … we now return you to your originally scheduled programming.)

When NHRA added the Springnationals to the schedule for the 1965 season, it was just the third event, joining the already legendary U.S. Nationals and Winternationals, in what NHRA dubbed drag racing's Triple Crown.

NHRA announced the event with great fanfare in late 1964, before the track was even completed, and track officials already were touting the new multimillion-dollar racing plant as “the most modern and complete dragstrip in the nation.”

Held in early June, Parks envisioned that the event would “round out our national championship program and give drag racers both a geographical and calendar balance of competition. The Winternationals will kick off the season, the Springnationals will provide a midseason challenge, and then we will wrap it up with the Nationals. These three major championship meets will not only produce some outstanding competition but will provide a yearlong check of performance progress throughout the country."

The dragstrip was built alongside the existing Bristol Motor Speedway circle track (then known as Bristol Int'l Raceway, which was constructed in 1960 and held its first NASCAR race in July 1961) and was noteworthy in that it included a crossover bridge for spectators, a four-story tower that housed offices, suites, the timing tower, and media accommodations “second to none,” officials bragged. Radio station WJCW in Johnson City, Tenn., broadcast the final four hours of the event live to an eight-state area, which was pretty much unheard of in those times but standard fare today for NHRA fans who can listen live via the Internet from NHRA.com.

I don’t want to say that those three years were haunted, but some mighty weird stuff happened in Bristol, especially in the final rounds.

Maynard Rupp won the inaugural Top Fuel title, wheeling the Logghe Stamping Co. entry to victory against the overhead-cam Ford dragster of current car owner Connie Kalitta in an all-Michigan match, but the event was most notable because co-champions were crowned in Comp when the final-round battle between Pete Shadinger and Glen Blakely was interrupted by a malfunction in the timing equipment. The B/A class title in Comp, by the way, went to a young circle-track racer from Level Cross, N.C., by the name of Richard Petty.

The 1966 event also had its share of interesting outcomes, as this time the Top Gas final featured a unique outcome. Mark Pieri red-lighted but was declared the winner when his opponent, Dick Vest, was disqualified for having loose ballast and was relegated to runner-up. One of the highlights of the event was an exhibition run by Jack Chrisman's famed Comet, a predecessor to today’s Funny Cars, which ran an 8.82 at 182 mph, the fastest speed ever recorded at a national meet by a stock-bodied car. Chrisman's Comet became the first car in the new Super Experimental Stock, or S/XS, class, which was created just after the Bristol event for cars with "excess engine relocations or modifications that otherwise render them illegal for A through E Factory Experimental Stock classes," but the entries were already being called "funny".

The Top Fuel final was no less remarkable. The “Smilin’ Okie,” the late Jimmy Nix, took Top Fuel against Ray Marsh, who was happy to just be in the final. In the semifinals, Julius Hughes should have battled Marsh for the right to face Nix in the final, but both of their mounts were broken, Hughes’ machine with a toasted clutch and Marsh's with a shelled rear end. Hughes’ car simply rolled to the starting line to become the runner-up, but in a display of sportsmanship, he conceded the race to Marsh, allowing Marsh the necessary pit time to replace his broken third member so that Nix would have an opponent. In another freak stat that drives historians nuts, Hughes was awarded "co-runner-up" status with Marsh.

"The Snake,"  far lane, defeated "Sneaky Pete" in the 1967 Top Fuel final; close quarters for two tire-smoking, 200-mph dragsters, don't ya think?

In 1967, Top Fuel honors were captured by “the Snake,” Don Prudhomme, in what was just the third of his 49 wins. Prudhomme, like Kalitta two years earlier, was running an overhead-cam Ford fueler, and he defeated “Sneaky Pete” Robinson's similarly powered digger in the final. Prudhomme was just two years removed from his breakthrough 1965 season and was wheeling the Brand Ford entry for Lou Baney, tuned by Ed Pink.

The field featured a ton of hitters, including Tom Hoover (in another OHC Ford-powered digger), Mike Snively (driving Prudhomme’s former ride, Roland Leong’s Hawaiian), Tom McEwen (a longtime Goodyear tire tester who ignited a firestorm of controversy by running M&H tires on Don “the Beachcomber” Johnson’s entry), 1965 event runner-up Kalitta (like McEwen, on M&Hs), Chuck Kurzawa in the Ramchargers rail, 1966 Top Fuel winner Nix, Leroy Goldstein, and Californian Dave Beebe.

McEwen had the hot numbers early, much to the chagrin of the Goodyear engineers, with a 7.11, but Prudhomme, despite dealing with a cracked cylinder head, showed everyone the way home with an unprecedented string of six-second passes and capped it with a stunning sub-national-record 6.92 at 222.76 mph on just 85 percent nitro. National DRAGSTER dubbed him “King of the 6s” on the front page of the June 16, 1967, issue.

Also of note at that 1967 event, Tommy Grove captured the event’s first Funny Car title, defeating 1965 Top Fuel winner Rupp. Top Gas went to Bob Muravez, who was racing under the alias of Floyd Lippencott Jr. after his father had forbidden him to race.

Bob Muravez, aka Floyd Lippencott Jr., stands/hides behind a stand-in "winner" plus car owners John Peters and Nye Frank, and the Train, in the 1963 Wintrnationals Top Gas winner's circle.

Muravez, like Prudhomme, a member of the famed Burbank Road Kings car club (he actually was initiated at the same meeting when Prudhomme became a member), won Top Gas in Bakersfield, Calif., in 1962 but was under pressure from his father, who told him that if he wanted to keep working at the family’s Maytag dealership franchise and hoped to own it someday, he would have to quit racing, which he did for a short time before the siren call of the quarter-mile lured him back.

A young Steve Gibbs, in his pre-NHRA days, was the Drag News reporter for San Gabriel Drag Strip, and after Muravez won a race there, he implored Gibbs to use an alias. Hence, Floyd Lippencott Jr. was “born.”

“The Floyd part came out of thin air, but I borrowed the name Lippencott from a college textbook that was on my shelf,” recalled Gibbs. “I threw in the Junior part as an afterthought. The track announcer, Mel Reck, started using the name at subsequent events, and it stuck.”

After he won Top Gas at the 1963 Winternationals in John Peters’ fabled Freight Train twin-engine machine, Peters initially was listed as the winning driver before the Lippencott name was inserted.

It wasn’t until years later that records were amended to officially reflect Muravez, who also won Top Gas at the 1969 Springnationals, as the rightful champ. Muravez was most recently the grand marshal at the 2003 NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion presented by Automobile Club of Southern California.

The 1967 event also marked the beginning of a record-setting streak for southeast doorslammer legend Ronnie Sox, who won Super Stock that year and the Springnationals in each of the following four years, a feat not duplicated at any event until Bob Glidden won the Springnationals five straight years from 1979 through 1983. Sox won Super Stock at the 1967 event, then again at the 1968 race, which was held in Englishtown, and at the 1969 event, which was in Dallas, and then won Pro Stock at the 1970 and 1971 races, also held in Dallas. The event moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1972.

Okay, class, history lesson over. I have a plane to catch. I'll write Friday from B-town.

It's a family affair

I spent a fair part of Mother’s Day afternoon in the emergency room after one of the dogs took a healthy bite out of the right hand of Mrs. Editor – odd, because it’s often the hand that feeds them; guess they don’t know that saying – and between idly watching the Lakers lose to the Jazz in OT and waiting for the suture fairy to arrive to sew up Mrs. E (who had presciently pre-anesthetized herself during brunch with Bloody Marys and champagne), I was thinking about a post-Mother’s Day theme for today’s column.

Although mothers are a big part of our racing community, both in the pits and on the home front, there aren’t a ton of mothers in the driving limelight of our sport among the 40-odd women who have won NHRA national events. The Shirleys, Shahan and Muldowney, leap to mind as moms who race, along with Vicky Beam and Margaret Glembocki (whose sons also race), Shelly Anderson-Payne (whose young kids don’t … yet), the late Shelly Howard, and tough racers such as Rhonda-Hartman Smith and Stephanie Reaves. And although it seems that the majority of the recent female winners in the Sportsman ranks are young, their ranks are no doubt dotted with mothers as well.

(Above) Cordis Johnson, near lane, took down son Michael in the 2008 Madison Comp final; (below) 14 years earlier, Connie Kalitta beat son Scott in the 1994 Gatornationals Top Fuel final.

Stock veteran Jim Waldo, near lane, has raced both of his sons in national event finals. Here, in Indy in 2001, Eric let Dad have it.

So, without so much as a dog-eared copy of a People magazine in the treatment room to peruse for journalistic tips and my mom idea at a standstill, I began thinking about family finals we’ve seen, stoked, naturally, for this lover of Comp, by the outcome of Comp racing in Madison, where Cordis Johnson beat his son, Michael in the final round. I had interviewed Cordis late Friday and have had the pleasure of interviewing both his daughter, MaryAnn Austin, who has two Comp wins, and Michael, who also has two wins, after their victories.

The Johnsons are some of those salt of the earth people who most folks only read about in magazines but that NHRA fans and racers know as regular citizens of our quarter-mile community. Their truck-and-tractor repair business in Springdale, Ark., provides them with a good enough living to field a pair of Super Modified entries in Comp, no mean feat with the price of Comp engines these days, but the team is basically Cordis and Michael and Cordis’ wife of 40 years, Mary, who serves as the crew for both cars.

The final between Cordis and Michael and their matching red and white Super Mods is the 19th father versus child final-round battle in NHRA national event history -- the 18th, of course, coming just a week earlier when Ashley Force bopped her dad in the Atlanta Funny Car final -- although 13 of those have pitted Pro Stock powerhouses Warren and Kurt Johnson. Overall, dads own a 13-6 final-round record against their offspring.

The first father-child national event final on record was between Super-class veteran Ted Seipel and his son, Kyle, at the 1992 Seattle event. After six rounds of racing, the two should have squared off in the final, but with young Kyle in the hunt for a season championship and the rear end in Ted’s familiar Lotus acting up, Ted elected to not stage his car.

The first green-light father-son duel took place the next year, in Atlanta, when W.J. and K.J. dueled in the Pro Stock final, which W.J. won (7.17 to 7.22), as he has in 10 of their 13 final-round meetings, including the most recent, in Denver in 2001. Five of those meetings were in 1993, when Kurt scored two of his three wins against his old man (the other was in Reading in 2000).

The year after that, in 1994, Connie Kalitta beat son Scott in the Gatornationals Top Fuel final, 4.79 to 4.95, the only other time besides those already mentioned that a father has faced his kid in the final in the Pro ranks.

Stock racer Jim Waldo has the unique distinction of having raced both of his sons, Eric and Gary, in Stock eliminator final rounds. Waldo lost to Eric at the 2001 Mac Tools U.S. Nationals and beat Gary at the 2004 fall event in Las Vegas. Interestingly, the boys have also faced one another in a final round, at the 1997 Seattle event in their home state, where Eric took the win. Gary won the Seattle race three years later, making them the first father and kids family unit with three different winners.

The Richardsons, Edmond and Scott, with respective national event win totals of 42 and 36 and far and away the most prolific brother tandem in NHRA history, raced one another in the Super Comp final in Denver in 1993 and twice won at the same event (1995 Houston and 1993 Atlanta). The Biondos, 34-time champ Peter and 11-time winner Sal, have not only shared the winner’s circle on three occasions, but three times at the same event, in Reading last year as well as back to back in 1995 and 1996. When the Biondos’ father, Sam, won their home event in 2002, they became the second family with three national event winners.

With wins now by three members of his family to tie the Waldos’ record, I kidded Cordis that he needs to get his wife out there to win a race and take the lead and was surprised to learn that she had already tried but was forced to hang up her helmet after racing aggravated a previous neck injury. “She had to have an operation,” recalled Cordis. “She still hates me. The first thing she said when she woke up was that I’d better not ever bring her another helmet.”

She must not hate him too much because they’re still together after 40 years, which prompted Cordis to share with me the story of their first meeting in Viney Grove, Ark., near their current hometown of Springdale, which oughta tug at a few heartstrings, especially among the mothers still reading this far into the column.

“I met her at a Dairy Queen back in 1967,” he recalled. “She was driving around in a '55 Chevy that I really liked, so I offered her $300 for it, and we ended up going out on a date. I had a brand-new ’67 Dodge R/T, and for that first date I took her to the street races. She was all dressed up in high heels and a new dress and didn’t know anything about racing. I asked if she’d mind getting out while I raced these guys. Some ol’ boy was standing there watching and poked her in the ribs and told her, ‘Honey, if the cops come, you hit the ditch. She told him, ‘Not dressed like this I’m not.’ That was our first date, and we’ve been racing together ever since.

“Three years ago, for our 37th wedding anniversary, I went back to where I was standing when I first saw her and took a hammer and knocked me off a chip of concrete and had a jeweler put it into a ring with a bunch of diamonds. Before I picked it up, the jeweler told me that when he’d show it off to women who came and tell them the story, they’d just set to bawling.

“I never did get that ’55, though. She gave it to her brother after we got married.”

Ooooh ... shiny

Sorry this column is so late, but between a full slate of meetings today and breaking in a new laptop, I’ve been busy. As much as I love a new computer, all shiny and not sullied by attempts at spyware or bad additions to the spelling dictionary, there’s always a lost bit of productivity reinstalling all of your old programs, remembering all of those passwords you have set to auto-fill, resetting your preferences, and all that stuff. And no matter how much you prepare and copy all of your necessary files over from the old machine, you always forget something and have to go back to the old machine to dig it up. But ol’ "Lappy" had a lot of miles on her and was well past her expiration date, so I broke down and got another one.

The worst part of getting a new machine is you pretty much have teach Word all over again about drag racing. It’s kind of like hiring a new crewmember, y’know? I mean, they know the basics, but you have to show them how business is done in your operation.

And spell-check? Woo-boy …

As comedian Jim Gaffigan berates it, “That’s a person’s name, spell-check … you are SO DUMB, spell-check.”

First, how can it not know Prudhomme – one of the true icons of our sport -- let alone suggest that I, a longtime “Snake” worshipper, had misspelled his name? Then, to suggest that maybe I meant Proteome? C’mon, spell-check, one is a drag racing legend and the other is the entire complement of proteins expressed by a genome, cell, tissue, or organism. Duh …

Troxel = Trowel? I mean, Melanie may love gardening and all, but c’mon, spell-check! Boninfante, fuel crew chief, does not equal benignant, which is to be kind or gracious. (not that Nicky isn’t, of course), and as much as we may worship Worsham, the two names are not interchangeable. And confusing Valvoline, a pretty good motor oil, with Halocline, a strong vertical salinity gradient ... well, that's almost inexcusable.

Disappointed with my initial foray, I put spell-check to the ultimate drag racing test: I fed it the names from our Top 50 Drivers list from 2001, a who's who of our sport. Garlits = Grits? Kalitta = Carlotta? Karamesines = Caramelizes? LaHaie = Laramie? Ongais = Congas? Rampy = Trampy? Veney = Veneer? Tsk, tsk.

Spell-check, sir, you are no racing fan.

I’m also a big fan of the Autotext function, which you can seed with long phrases you don’t want to type more than once. For me, it’s those long event and racetrack names -- The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals, etc. – so you enter them once, and once you’ve typed the first couple of letters, the full name pops up, you hit Enter, and voila! And keyboard shortcuts and macros? Love them. With the wide variety of styles employed by publicists, it’s handy to have a simple keystroke that lowercases all-capital headlines or strips out the extra returns so present from those who type their stories directly into their e-mail.

So, here it is, the end of the working day – well, way past the end of the day, and today’s column is just being posted, but as you an see, the photos are all nicely Photoshopped, the Word words spelled correctly, and if we ever move the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals to The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, I can pretty much give that to you with just two taps on my new keyboard.

Life is good.

Just stay away from the dogs. Especially on Mother’s Day.

Tale of the tires

The final product looked great, but it wasn't always fun or easy, Jack.

Before we turn our attention to Bristol and the upcoming O’Reilly NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals presented by Q, where John Force can begin work on his next 1,000 wins, I wanted to share with you the interesting tale of the tires and all that went into the memorable photo of Force that was sent around the world and splashed on sports pages, ESPN's SportsCenter, and everywhere else that NHRA’s ray of sunshine shone that day.

As you can imagine, and as you have learned from following our semi-regular Five Favorite Fotos feature, getting "the shot" is often the result of good planning and anticipation. Such is the case here as well.

Elon Werner, who works with Force’s publicist, Dave Densmore, to feed the media’s hunger for all things Force, whether they involve John, Ashley, Courtney, Brittany, Robert, "Zippy," Coil, Fedderly, "Guido," Medlen, or any of the other stars in the Force galaxy, provided me with a timeline of the work leading up to The Moment that I thought might make for interesting weekend-worthy reading.

Obviously, with Force sitting on 992 wins entering this year, we all knew that if he was healthy enough to drive (and we all knew he’d be behind the wheel one way or another, right?), eight wins was light lifting for him. One thousand was just around the corner.

Force put in two right out of the gate in Pomona and two more in Houston to put him at 996 and within an event’s win of 1,000.

NHRA tech boss Don Taylor sketched a blueprint ...

wheels and tires were chosen ...

test photographs taken ...

... and NHRA's Graham Light gave the green light for some downtime.

The original concept began earlier in the year when the NHRA Marketing and Communications departments began to discuss ways to salute Force’s milestone achievement. In the past, drivers who reached the 50-event-win plateau were greeted with a custom-made sign; that obviously would not be enough for this momentous occasion.

“We wanted to be sure the text on the trophy or plaque made clear John’s milestone so when photos were taken it would be clear what fans were looking at,” remembered Michael Padian of the NHRA Communications Department. “There was some concern about the trophy/plaque being done in time for the Las Vegas NHRA event, the first race where he had a shot at 1,000, so we went into contingency mode. How could we illustrate this remarkable milestone – and this was important – and do it in a way that would represent the sport of NHRA POWERade Series Drag Racing?

“The idea of the three tires representing the zeros just sort of jumped off the page.”

NHRA consulted with John Force Racing on the idea, and NHRA’s Don Taylor came up with a quick sketch that would become the blueprint that everyone would work toward.

“It was simple and covered all the important elements,” said Werner. “John’s Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford Mustang, four Goodyear tires, and John himself. The key was getting a shot that could be framed to not have a lot of empty space in the background and be easy to set up at a moment’s notice.”

While NHRA’s Corporate Art department designed and ordered the number 1 that would be affixed to one of the tires, the staff at Force’s Yorba Linda, Calif., shop took photos of various tires in their possession to see which types of tires (new or used) and wheels would look best before settling on gold wheels and race-worn tires.

“The next big hurdle was staging a photo to make sure the sketch actually translated to a real photo,” said Werner. “John is relatively superstitious, so getting him to stand in for a 1,000-round photo when he had only won 996 rounds was not even an idea anyone wanted to bring up. The Thursday before the SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals, I was pressed into duty to stage the photo with Richard Shute of Auto Imagery and Lachelle Seymour from NHRA Communications.

“All the elements were moved around, and shots were taken with me positioned on either side of the Ford Mustang. All the possible options were narrowed down to five candidates that were distributed to representatives from NHRA Marketing and Communications as well as John Force Racing.”

A top-end location at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was scouted and approved, but Force threw a monkey wrench into the plans when he failed to qualify for the event. So it was on to Atlanta, where the same drill was put into place. Locations were selected, roles were assigned, and everyone was at the ready.

“Coming into the race, our secret hope was John getting 1,000 round-wins at the conclusion of an event so there would be more time to coordinate the photo and not hold up racing action,” said Werner, and they almost get their wish.

Not only did Force qualify in Atlanta, but he won his first three rounds to push his total to 999 and set up a final-round date with none other than his daughter Ashley, who also was gunning for a piece of history, the first Funny Car win by a female racer. Ashley made history by defeating her father, who would have to wait at least a week before he could claim his piece of history.

Force qualified for the O’Reilly NHRA Midwest Nationals presented by Castrol on his last qualifying opportunity and was pitted against Ron Capps in the first round.

NHRA Senior Vice President-Racing Operations Graham Light gave the green light to a short stoppage in the racing schedule should Force win the round, but with just 75 minutes between rounds, everyone wanted to get the job done quickly and efficiently.

At the top end, an actual line was painted on the return road to mark where Force's Castrol Mustang should stop. “X” literally marked the spot. Force reps moved the tires to the top end in anticipation of a win. The tires were rolled into position but quickly began rolling away because the return road is less than level. Small concrete blocks were procured to act as braces to hold the tires in place.

A quick meeting was held in Force’s pit area with crew chief Austin Coil, alerting him that he would have to park his tow vehicle in a different place should John win. Coil nodded and went back to work. Force was finally brought up to speed on what he needed to do should he win. His role is simple: Come out of the car, do his ESPN2 interview, then pose for the photo.

NHRA’s top-end crew was informed of the plan, and a half-dozen photographers were present with ladders to get the perfect shot.

And, of course, Force got a little distracted during the whole thing.

Force beat Capps, and everyone rolled into motion. But as the green Ford was rolled toward the spot, the turn was made too wide, and his Mustang came to rest 30 feet from assigned spot.

Then the transmission locked up.

A mad dash was made to move the tires, signage, and photographers into the new location.

Force does his thing with ESPN, but instead of moving to the setup area, he wants to talk with Capps. As he’s doing that, Force’s newest protégé, Mike Neff, wins his first round of racing, so Force wants to congratulate him, much to the dismay of the assembled group

Force is finally corralled and photos are taken, but Force insists on having photos taken with Coil and the crew.

As Force is loaded onto the back of the POWERade Fan Experience truck and heads to the starting line for more celebration, there is concern that in the hubbub, maybe the photographers missed the shot. The photographers give a thumbs-up, and the organizers collectively sigh in relief.

In seconds, the top end goes from chaos to stillness as NHRA Marketing and Communications reps and JFR representatives shake hands and congratulate themselves on a job well done.

Concluded Werner, “As Col. John ‘Hannibal’ Smith of The A-Team used to say, ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’ "

Show and tell

It’s been a busy week here at NHRA Publications Central, what with back-to-back national events, the production of the souvenir program for the National Hot Rod Reunion, and intense work on a super-secret Publications project that I hope to be able to share with you all soon, so, as we toil to get Issue 18 of National DRAGSTER 2008 out the door and on its way to the printing presses in beautiful Beaver Dam, Wis., I figured I’d make this one easy on the eyes with a little show and tell.

We all know that NHRA has been in some pretty highfalutin places lately, such as Sports Illustrated, Men’s Fitness, Good Morning America, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, etc., but did you know that an NHRA dragster once made the pages of super-fab Vogue magazine? 'Tis true.

Now, I’m not a Vogue reader — my tastes run more to Maxim and Stuff — but I understand that it’s one of the leading fashion and lifestyle magazines out there. It was founded in 1892, which means they’ve put out around 1,400 monthly issues (Ha! DRAGSTER is on number 2,271!), but the only one I care about is the August 1970 issue.

It was the Look Young issue, and the cover featured scintillating blurbs such as “Terrific New Clothes Starting at $15” (this was 1970, remember), “The Beautiful Throat: Unique Exercise Routine” and “Good Skin: How To Have It … How To Fake It,” along with a fair-haired maiden who was the subject of the issue’s fashion shoot, which was done at then-new Ontario Motor Speedway, home to be of the inaugural NHRA Supernationals later that year.

The front-engine Top Fueler – a California Chassis Engineering-built machine with a Tom Hanna body, paint by Bill Carter, and 392 Chrysler power courtesy of Ed Pink – was owned by former ND Editor (and regular column tidbit contributor) Bill Holland and partner and driver John Guedel. The car, Art Linkletter's All-American, was a prop for the shoot, which also incorporated Guedel (“a proponent of the one-piece ‘silverized’ driving suits,” noted Holland) posed in his driving gear. Guedel’s father was the producer of Linkletter’s popular television show and others, including Groucho Marx's, hence the "sponsorship."

A male model also was used in the shoot: a then unknown Michael Douglas, who two years later would burst onto the small screen as Inspector Steve Keller opposite Karl Malden on the TV show The Streets of San Francisco.

“Back then, we were actively trying to promote the sport of drag racing to the mainstream media and had reasonable success,” remembered Holland. “They were looking for a nice car that was L.A.-based. As John and I were always trying to get extra exposure for our car and drag racing, we volunteered for the gig. Me working for NHRA may have given us an inside track. We also did a national TV spot for Certs breath mints with the car, which was shot at OCIR.”

Speaking of promotions, former Top Fuel racer Don Roberts, another regular reader of this thrice-weekly compendium of nonsense, passed along this crazy photo of the two-car King & Marshall team doing a bit of a sticky shtick for Loctite and its then-new Super Bonder glue in April 1972.

“We glued an aluminum bar and a steel bar together with Super Bonder, hooked them to the cars, and tried to pull the bars apart not once but twice,” he recalled. “The bars stayed together. We did this promotion in the infield at Seekonk Speedway in Seekonk, Mass. Don Marshall is seen to the right giving the signal to a crew guy standing in front of me at the wheel of the dragster and to another crew guy standing in front of [Jimmy] King, who was at the wheel of the Duster Funny Car.”

King, of course, was more famous for another photo, the one at right. At the 1970 Nationals in Indy, he backflipped his slingshot just off the line, and the next week, the surprisingly lightly damaged car was back in action with a wheel attached to the top of the roll cage. I asked Roberts what he knew about that whole deal.

“The motor bogged on the leave, the clutch hooked, and a pair of Marvin Rifchin's newest sticky-compound tires put the car up in the air, and from there it stood straight up on the push bar,” he recalled. “The car and King fell over backwards to the right and landed upside down. In 1970, the term ‘wheelie bar’ didn't exist for Top Fuel dragsters, but I am sure if the car had them, it would have helped in this situation.

“King wasn't hurt, and the car had little damage and was back racing the following weekend. The guys in the shop screwed the caster on the cage when King wasn't looking as a goof. All the caster ever got was strange looks and caught on my firesuit pants getting in the car.”

There’s a nice photo bio of Roberts on Bill Pratt’s DragList.com site.

After my recent column about the Vallco Drag Racing Game – creator Greg Zyla has been delightedly overwhelmed by the renewed interest in his 30-year-old baby – I was reminded by reader David Moore of another of the options that young drag racing fans had to get behind the wheel: Hasbro’s handheld Red Line Pro Drag Racing game. He had recently come across one on eBay.

With its butterfly-wheel design, the game allowed fans to compete in Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock, or Stock with a full or Pro Tree. You’d mash the gas thumb button on the right and shift with the thumb button on the left (three speeds each for Top Fuel and Funny Car, five for Pro Stock, and four for Stock) while an LCD representation of the track, your tachometer, and the scoreboard let you know where you stood. You had to beat preset opponent performances for each class on each type of Tree (for example, you needed to run consectutive rounds of 4.97, 4.82, and 4.67 to reach the Top Fuel final, where you needed to run 4.52 to win -- or 4.32, for some reason, if you raced on a full Tree).

Being the computer nerd/research junkie that I am, I actually found a PDF set of instructions for the game online (“Racing tips: Peel-out sound and ‘smoke’ on your screen mean your RPMs were too high …”), where you can read more about it, including the required e.t.s.

Update! No sooner had I published this entry than I got an e-mail from reader Frankie LoCascio, who pointed out that the Hasbro game, introduced in 1999, is actually an updated version of the game that Kenner (famous for those cool zip-cord SSP cars!) made in the 1980s. Kenner was bought by in 1985 General Mills, which sold it to Tonka in 1987, which sold it to Hasbro in mid-1991. Hence, the different brand names on essentially the same product.

So, thanks to the instant and always correctable and appendable nature of the Web, here’s an update! Here’s a pic of the older version, which is a lot more square and dated looking and does not have the cool LCD screen of its successor. This version had four classes, with Modified substituted for Pro Stock, and the Tree is at the top instead of at the side.

In what was a pretty cool idea, Hasbro teamed with Travelodge hotels in June 1998 to make Pro Drag Racing and its other handheld game, Trivial Pursuit, available to sample at the check-in desks of 300 of Travelodge's most popular locations with the plan to expand to the entire chain in the fall when four other new titles, including Monopoly and Totally Twister, hit the shelves. The products also would also get a trial on cruise lines such as Carnival and Royal Caribbean as well as in Discovery Zone play centers.

And finally comes this really cool video, the link to which was sent to me by another former National DRAGSTER editor and current NHRA board member, Dick Wells, and it's probably one of the wilder drag-race-type competitions you’ll see. It pits a Bugatti Veyron, a wild, mid-engine sports car that is the quickest accelerating and decelerating road-legal production car in the world, against a Eurofighter Typhoon airplane. The stunt was set up by BBC television’s popular automobile show Top Gear.

The Bugatti’s W-16 engine has 16 cylinders in four banks of four cylinders, each of which has four valves (for a total of 64). The 488-cid engine sports four turbochargers and makes an advertised 1,001 horsepower and requires radiators to keep the engine and turbos cool. It goes zero to 60 in 2.46 seconds and turns the quarter-mile in 9.8 seconds at 150 mph. Despite its hefty 4,160-pound curb weight, Bugatti claims it can brake from 400 kph (249 mph) to a standstill in less than 10 seconds thanks to unique cross-drilled and turbine-vented carbon rotors, front calipers with eight titanium pistons, and rear calipers with six pistons. At speeds of more than 124 mph, a hydraulic rear spoiler also lifts to act as an air brake, snapping to a 55-degree angle in 0.4-second once the brakes are applied. Bugatti claims maximum deceleration of 1.3 Gs on road tires.

The plane, a twin-engine multi-role canard-delta wing strike fighter aircraft, can hit 910 mph and climb at 62,007 feet per minute.

The reason that all of these stats are so important is because the two-mile race requires Top Gear's Richard Hammond to accelerate the Veyron from a standstill down a one-mile course, brake at the other end, and race back to the starting line before the plane, piloted by Royal Air Force squadron leader Jim Walls, can take off, climb one mile into the sky, then plummet back toward Earth and pull out of the dive before pancaking itself on the tarmac and cross the finish line ahead of the car.

Who won? You’ll have to watch the video.

An irrepressible Force

I was never all that good at math in school, but you don’t have to be a quantum physicist to calculate that John Force had to average about two round-wins in each of his 501 starts to reach the 1,000-win plateau he crested with his first-round victory at the O’Reilly NHRA Midwest Nationals presented by Castrol. That’s an average of a semifinal appearance each time out, which is pretty damned impressive in my books.

Doing 1,000 of anything successfully – whether it’s 1,000 trips to the grocery store without bashing into a shopping cart or changing 1,000 diapers – is quite an accomplishment, but when it means muscling a short-wheelbased, 7,000-horsepower, rolling time bomb to the end of a 40-foot-wide, quarter-mile-long ribbon of concrete and asphalt ahead of the racer in the other lane trying to do exactly the same thing, it’s REALLY something. Most drivers don’t have 1,000 runs under their belt – including in qualifying – let alone 1,000 winning passes.

Considering that he started from nothing and won just 14 rounds in his first 22 events in his first five abbreviated campaigns, ending up with 1,000 in 501 is astonishing. Consider this as well: In 125 of those 501 starts, he won all four rounds available, so one should easily be able to deduce that he had a lot of first-round losses to balance it out. But, as we know, he gutted it out and eventually became the sport’s biggest winner, and the rest is history, right?

Lately, though, things have been a little tougher for him, which is why I really liked his quote from the press release after he recorded that 1,000th win: “Winning a thousand rounds, that means that at a point in time, we were pretty good!”

It was a humble Force, a true-to-himself-and-his-fans Force because he knows he hasn’t won as he used to. He knows he hasn’t been in the winner’s circle to hold the trophy since Brainerd last year. He knows that a year from now he’s going to be 60 – still young for a drag racer, but feeling old in the bones, especially the sore ones he has now.

But even if he somehow thinks his glory days are behind him, I’d invite him to put a little Toby Keith in the CD player and sing along: “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.”  That's how John Force is, and there's not a Funny Car racer in the pits who doesn't fear him as much now as ever.

As we all know, he didn't reach 1,000 wins by accident or by luck.

To have any modicum of success while you’re trying to come up through the ranks -- barnstorming the country, living on burgers and beans five to a room, trying to build a name, find a sponsor, and keep the rods from coming out of not just your engine but your personal life -- takes dedication.

But he made it through to the other side. We all know the stories: polio in youth; sharing an impossibly small trailer with his parents and four siblings; quarterback of a high school football team that never won a game; truck driver; how he used a tax-refund check and the sale of a prize that his mother-in-law had won on a game show (an organ) to buy his first race car; cars that usually had more oil underneath them than in them; doing anything for a buck, even dressing up as little red-haired, pigtailed Wendy to satisfy his sponsor; nine straight runner-ups without a win.

And sometimes it's not much easier today, mentally at least. To continue to stay after it 30 years later while not only running a multimillion-dollar business and nurturing protégés – three of which are your daughters, all of whom will be winners – but also while keeping the world safe for democracy and nurturing an ever-growing fan and sponsor base and dealing with a gazillion people who all want “just five minutes” of your time and attention AND dealing with your own demons … well, not many people could be John Force.

A lot of people would like to be John Force, but only because they don’t know how hard it is to be John Force.

I’m not talking about how he has a mean limp right now after his crash last September or how, like any dad, he’ll fret when his daughters drive to the mall let alone to the big end. For all of his successes – Wally trophies and championships that overflow his headquarters, adoring fans, TV shows, media appearances, and all of the other trappings of success – I feel as if he’s a bit of a tortured soul sometimes. For all that drag racing has given him, it’s also taken from him. It has cost him sleep, hair, stomach upset, and peace. For a while, it claimed his marriage, and it took Eric Medlen for all time. That one still hurts and will for a long time.

And for all that he has given drag racing – a modern-day hero, a Don Garlits for this generation of fans, and an inspirational success story to kids everywhere that, yes, you can grow up poor and still become a champion, on and off the track – it still feels to me as if he thinks that’s not enough.

I’m not going to pretend to be in John Force’s inner circle, but throughout the years, we’ve become good friends, and he knows he can call me anytime, any day to talk about what’s on his mind. I’m under standing orders to call him if ever I get wind that the fans are turning against him for any reason so he can “fix it.” He calls sometimes just to chat about our first grandchildren, who are roughly the same age. My grandson Jaden shares John’s birthday, which was yesterday. Sure they’re separated by 55 years, but he brings them closer every time we talk.

And then sometimes, sometimes … he just needs to talk, as he did Tuesday after Ashley had won in Atlanta. He picked up the phone in the middle of the night wherever he was, and though he had every right and opportunity to talk about how he had turned another raw rookie into a national event winner, he left a very long, personal, and emotional voice mail.

He couldn’t sleep, he said, so he got up, put on his robe and his ever-present Castrol hat, and prefaced his message with the caveat that “this probably won’t make any sense, because it doesn’t make any sense to me … maybe I ate too many pickles for dinner” and continued to talk until the voice-mail-message limit cut him off. Then he called back and talked some more.

With all that he has already given us – new sponsors, big sponsors, safety innovations, technological centers, major media exposure, reality TV shows, Robert and Eric and Ashley, and so much more – he still has more work to do before he pulls that last parachute. He wants to ensure that the much-publicized next generation has the tools and the support to keep this ol' hot rod of a sport going strong. He sees us lose pioneers of the sport -- much like we could have lost him last year -- and he's thinking of ways he can help. Me, I think he thinks too much. I know he probably reads too much into dreams and visions and subconscious and that he lies in bed for hours trying to figure out what it all means, how he can save the world.

Sometimes he throws money at the problem, sometimes people and technology, but mostly it’s just his heart and his soul. I remember making a special trip to watch him in Noble, Okla., in 1992 at a Division 4 points meet. He was fresh off the “I saw Elvis at 1,000 feet" episode in Memphis and worried about the future. He rolled into Noble with a car that was built like a tank, a Funny Car From Hell aimed at him never having to go there again at a time when he was the class leader in fireballs. It had a spare parachute mounted under the body. After noting that his car had pivoted on the oil pan in the Memphis fire after the tires had blown, he had six-inch billet aluminum wheels welded to the bottom of the chassis to keep ‘er rolling straight. He had small aluminum wings in front of the butterfly steering wheel, precursors to today’s “doghouses.” It had a ginormous parachute-deployment button on the inner roof instead of the traditional smaller handles. He had a button to trigger the fire bottles instead of the traditional extra handle on the brake handle that forced a driver to momentarily stop pulling on the lever to activate.

And, of course, the pièce de résistance, a full-blown, 007-worthy, body-ejection system to cast off the burning shell if things got really ugly. Triggered by another button, it would unlatch the front catch that held the nose of the body to the chassis, then a pair of large cylinders would lift the nose of the body a foot off the chassis, where the wind could catch it and flip it off the car. The body was tethered to the chassis with a 20-foot steel aircraft cable.

I don’t remember the thing ever getting a trial by fire, so to speak, and it was so ungodly heavy that Austin Coil ditched it not long after, but the thought process was there. It was Force trying not just to save his own bacon from the fire, but that of others in the class. He did it again last year, in the wake of the Medlen tragedy, throwing everything he had in his arsenal at it -- money, expertise, people, technology – and collaborating with NHRA and manufacturers and other racers to build a better mousetrap and to build a foundation in Eric’s name. It’s part penance and part his nature.

“I help as I can,” he told me simply once. “I like to help. I’m just trying to sort out my life and what really matters.”

Even though he has already given the sport so much, I feel as if he thinks his work isn’t done, as if he owes the sport still more. It’s a tremendous burden he places on himself.

Force can be a powerful ally, and he knows it. He commands respect and possesses power and influence within the sport. Everyone wants him on his or her side, and sometimes he’s the unwilling rope in political tugs of war. But not only does he want to help, I think he feels he needs to. That’s why he’ll “work the ropes” until he’s dead tired and hand-cramped, why he’ll grab onto that already-dialed cell phone that some fan just handed him so he can talk to some sick kid or some fan’s buddies at the bar, and he’ll do it with a smile on his face, because that’s what important to him.

What matters to John Force is me and you and anyone else who has ever cheered louder than a nitro car. What matters is family. What matters is the sport and the people in it, and that they all get to go safely home to their families at night. What matters is not just that our sport has a future, but that it has a bright one.

What John Force has accomplished in our sport will never be matched, and I’m not just talking about the 1,000 wins or the rest of his untouchable records. I’m proud to work with him, to watch him do his thing, and to call him a friend.

Congratulations, John. Take a week off, will ya?

Friday feedback frenzy

Heading into what promises to be a busy weekend of perhaps record-breaking performances at Gateway Int’l Raceway, I think it’s a good time to take it easy. I’m gonna back the feedback machine out of the trailer and fire ‘er up to share some of the great notes I’ve received the last few weeks. In other words, you guys are pretty much gonna do the work while I put my feet up on the desk and enjoy.

The outpouring of love for the recently departed Gaines Markley was strong. His niece Maria Markley created the video tribute at right, which contains wonderful childhood photos of the former Top Fuel racer and world championship car owner as well as cool vintage race pics.

Rob Bruins, who drove Markley’s Top Fueler to that championship in 1979, reported that Markley’s services were attended by a Who’s Who of Northwest drag racing, including Markley’s pal Gary Beck (who with Bruins spoke at the services), Walt Austin, Herm Petersen, Jerry Ruth, Wayne King, Dick Kalivoda, "Gentleman" Hank Johnson, Jerry King, Lauran Ott, Ted Gord, Jeff Sayer, Bobby Mitchell, Jack Verhilst, Bob and Paula Gage (alcohol racers and Markley's partner in a machine shop; Bob also spoke), and a number of sprint car boat racers for whom Markley had built engines.

“Gary spoke of their youth together and how Gaines taught him about mechanical things and how he always felt Gaines was much more of a natural driver than he,” said Bruins. “I spoke of his wit, knowledge, and mentoring with a few stories of typical Gaines stuff. Bob relayed Gaines’ compassion for helping others and how he was concerned with others not getting proper recognition for the things they did and how if you didn't ask Gaines specific questions on his accomplishments, he wasn't about to toot his own horn. Gaines' nieces and nephew referred to ‘Uncle Gaines' emergency hot line,’ on call for all emergencies, anytime, their personal resident auto-repair guy.”

John Lindsay, owner of the notorious Impulse! line of Funny Cars, dropped me this remembrance of Markley, whom he called “one of the nicest guys that I have ever met.”

“In 1975 or 1976 I had booked my first ‘tour’ -- all of two races with the Impulse! Vega. We had a match race in Edmonton, Alta., on Wednesday night and then had to be in Seattle three days later for the Sea-Fair 64 Funny Car show. On the final run in Edmonton, the Dana 60 rear end in the race car came apart, breaking the ring and pinion and the outdated Posi-traction unit. I ordered a new gear set and a late-model spool from California to be shipped next-day air to Seattle, and we headed down the highway to Washington.

“When we got to Seattle, the gears were there, but the airline had lost the spool. I just HAD to make the Seattle race just to have enough gas money to get home, so in a panic I called Jim Eubanks, who was helping me with the car in California. He had lived in the Seattle area before moving to California, and I thought maybe he had an idea to get me out of a jam. All he said is, ‘Call Gaines, tell him that you are a friend of mine, and tell him what you need.’ I had never worked on a Dana rear end and knew nothing about them, but Jim told me that Gaines ran one and could fix ANYTHING! I called Gaines, who I had never met, and explained my problem. His reply was typical: ‘WELL, I can’t fix it until you get it over here, so you had better hurry.’

“I told him that I had all the parts except the spool, and he told me not to worry, that he would come up with something. He gave me directions to his house in Federal Way, and when I got there, he was taking the spool out of his dragster to put into mine. I didn't even know this man until I called him an hour earlier. He totally set up the rear end, showing me the do's and don'ts of the breed, and all for the price of ‘You owe me a favor if I ever need one.’ Gaines never missed stopping by my trailer every time I was in Seattle just to say hi after that day. He will be missed!”

As excited as I was to have stumbled across a display photo of the Markley-Beck-Rhoades BB/GD that I ran in last Friday’s column, I was even more excited to hear from the man who shot that photo, John Dutton. Because the image in our possession did not have a photo credit on the back, I had no idea who shot it until Dutton’s e-mail showed up, complete with a scan of the original proof sheet from the photo shoot, which Dutton says took place Sept. 22, 1968, at the Mayfair Shopping Centre in Victoria, B.C., to promote an upcoming BB/GD match race at Van Isle Dragways – where Dutton was the strip photographer and relief announcer during the mid- to late 1960s -- against Gary Shepheard and Bert Sweeting of Victoria.

Beck confirmed the story, adding that Canada Dry soft drinks and drink mixes sponsored their car for that match, hence The Basic Bar sign propped next to the dragster. Dutton was a busy guy back then; he also covered Mission Raceways and was a weekly columnist for Drag News (Canada Notes), plus a regular contributor to International Wheelspin News, Road and Motorsports Magazine, and, of course, National DRAGSTER.

Northwest dragster veteran Sayer also got a kick out of that old photo and, like Lindsay above, received a welcome tech answer to a problem courtesy of Markley. “Seeing the picture of the Markley, Beck, and Rhoades BB/GD brings back some real memories. The first dragster that my wife, Carol, and I had was a similar Harris-chassised BB/GD, and we were bit by them several times while they were winning the Division 6 Super Eliminator championship. Even then, there was a lot of talent in the other lane whenever I pulled up to race them. Gaines always took time to talk whenever we were at the track, whether it be a local match race or a national event. I remember in Pomona in the early ‘70s, we were in the staging lanes with our Top Gas dragster looking at some dents in the rocker covers from the ‘trick’ exhaust rockers I inherited from somebody. We were undecided on how to attack the problem before the dents became holes; Gaines took one look and said, ‘Double up on the gaskets, but be sure you glue them together.’ It worked, and we got in.”

Greg Ozubko, whose paint schemes have adorned famous drag cars for years, grew up in Edmonton and had the opportunity to work with Markley and Bruins. “When I was a young boy, growing up and virtually living at the track in Edmonton, I did everything I could to help just about any or every racer who came to town. There were four of us who did this: Ian DeLaSalle, Brian Davidchuk (who later drove in TAD), Rob Flynn (now crew chief for Top Fuel’s Rod Fuller), and me. I had the immense pleasure, both at the time and even now when I think back, of being allowed the privilege of helping Rob Bruins and Gaines Markley in the world championship year when they came to Edmonton for the divisional points meet and, as I recall, another race that year or the adjoining years. I was allowed the privilege of working on the car doing really trivial things that to me at the time were huge and the ultimate thrill of riding in the tow vehicle. Seems to me there were no reversers then, and pushing the car back after the burnout might have been the ultimate. I did this for many teams, but to this day the one that treated me the absolute best and allowed a pain-in-the-ass kid a truly great thrill was Rob and Gaines. Rob was the consummate gentleman. Gaines funnier than the day was long and, yes, always deeply thinking, but in somehow a funny way. They both have always had a special place in my mind and heart, and I am ever grateful for that. I was very saddened to learn of Gaines’ death. I wish I had the chance to thank him in person.”

Following my recent hero-worshipping of Shirley Shahan, reader Dan Tuttle dropped me a line to not forget the late, great Roberta Leighton. Leighton, who passed away Nov. 15, 2002, was another super-talented female driver in the early 1960s and the sister of longtime former NHRA whirlwind P.J. Partridge. Leighton began racing in 1953 and worked with NHRA founder and President Wally Parks to lift the notorious no-females ban in place through mid-1962. She rewarded his faith and decision by winning the J/Stock class championship in Indy that year, becoming the first woman to win a trophy of any kind at an NHRA national event. She competed in NHRA class competition through 1978, then bracket raced for 12 years, served as a track official at many national, divisional, and local races, and played a major role in the operation of Division 7's Inyokern Dragstrip. Her son, David, is a reader of this column, so I hope he will share some stories with us in the future.

I also heard from Bob Kenworthy, president of the Colorado AMC Club and director of the American Motors Owners Association, which put on the 2007 American Motors Owners Association Mile High International Convention at which Shirley was pictured in my previous column.

Kenworthy picked up Shirley and husband Ken from the airport in an AMC Jeep Wagoneer limousine, and Shirley and fellow former AMC racer Lou Downing, the original pilot of the Pete's Patiot AMX, were scheduled to be guest speakers and were the talk of the convention all weekend.

When the action shifted to Bandimere Speedway (fast fact: John Bandimere Jr. once owned and raced a '69 SS AMX, known as the Frog), Kenworthy arranged a special heads-up match between Shirley, in her restored Drag-on Lady AMX, and Downing, in the famed Pete’s Patriot. According to Kenworthy, the two AMXs had never met heads-up in all their years of racing. Unfortunately, Downing’s mount threw a rod on a test run, so he had to find a suitable substitute and came up with an appropriately painted red, white, and blue '71 Gremlin owned by a local racer to help kick off the night. Shirley, who hadn’t been to Bandimere Speedway since 1972, laid down a pretty burnout and showed that she still knows the fast way down the track with a 10.4-second clocking.

At the convention banquet, Shirley and Downing talked about their racing histories, and, according to Kenworthy, “You could have heard a pin drop in the room with over 400 people enjoying their stories.”

I know the feeling!

You’ll have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, to the March 31 entry, to find the origin of this one, which is a tale about Englishman Clive Skilton’s victory over “Big Daddy” Don Garlits in a 1977 match race in Jackson, Miss., as told by Billy Donahoe, who was there.

“It was late March '77,” he recalled. “Two friends went with me to the track, Riverside Raceway, in Pearl. One of my friends was a fan like me; the other one, this would be his first time at the track. We had built up ‘Big’ for two weeks, telling him that this was going to be an easy race for ‘Big.’ One thing my friend had in common was our love for Led Zeppelin. The concert movie The Song Remains the Same had come out a few months before, and we had caught it a few times at the midnight movies. If you've seen the film, you know that each member of the band had a fantasy scene in the movie. The late John Bonham's fantasy was much more regular than the other three: riding his chopper, driving his hot ride, having a brew, and driving a Top Fuel dragster. Clive Skilton's dragster. Since I was into the sport, I thought this was pretty cool.

“When we got to the track, Clive was already there parked in the staging lanes, which was about the only paved spot. When he opened the side door on the trailer, there was a picture of the car from the movie. To say the least, we about had a fit. ‘Big’ showed up later. When he rolled out his car, I almost had another fit. The year before, he had match raced Shirley there with the long '76 car. This time, he rolled out the 5.63/250 '75 car. I knew we would not see any times close to that, but it just made me that much more positive that ‘Big’ would win all three rounds.

“It was a very cloudy day. You could almost feel the rain in the air, but they managed to get all three runs in. Clive got the win all three rounds. I don't recall what the times were; scoreboards were not even a dream at that point, at least at this track. We left the track a little wiser, a little more humbled. And realized that ‘Big’ was human after all.”

And, finally, it didn’t take long after my version of the Vallco Drag Racing Game arrived for the troops to gather round the cardboard quarter-mile for a little match race. Senior Editor Kevin McKenna, Copy Editors Sarah Barnes and Melissa Pasillas, Editorial Assistant Miesha Payne-Reid, NHRA.com Webmaster Jade Davidson, and yours truly each blindly drew a pair of cards from the 1977-season Funny Car deck and set to qualifying. Falling back into my old habits, I, of course, kept notes while the ladies got a bit of a history lesson on Funny Car racing, ‘70s style.

Miesha rolled Dale Pulde’s gorgeous Mike Hamby-tuned War Eagle Trans Am to the low qualifying spot at 6.14, followed by Dale Armstrong in Mike Kase’s Speed Racer (6.18) and Kenny Bernstein (6.20); Tom Hoover’s Showtime Corvette was fourth at 6.21 to round out the top half of the field. Gene Snow’s Arrow was slotted fifth at 6.21, followed by Billy Meyer’s Hawaiian Tropic Citation (6.24) and Al Segrini in the Custom Body Arrow (6.26). Alaskan Jim Moore rode the bump with his Arrow at 6.33, which bumped out former world champ Shirl Greer’s 6.38. Qualifying was a bit of a flametacular as Rob Williams in Roger Guzman's Assassination Arrow, Denny Savage in the Powers Steel Camaro, and Kosty Ivanoff and the Boston Shaker Corvette all experienced debilitating top-end fires and missed the cut.

We went old-school with the ladders, with No. 1 facing No. 5. Armstrong had low e.t. of round one with a 6.14 to 6.36 whacking of Meyer, followed by Pulde’s narrow 6.19 to 6.26 melting of “the Snowman.” Segrini nipped Bernstein, 6.25 to 6.32, and Hoover advanced easily over Moore, 6.29 to 6.55. Hoover took charge in the semi’s with a brilliant 6.05 (low e.t.) to best tire-hazing Armstrong’s 6.22, and Pulde continued his march with a 6.13 win after Segrini’s mount nosed over at the top end and slowed to a 6.59.

The final was all Hoover, as he and I mowed down Pulde and Miesha wire to wire, 6.17 to 6.37. I could also feel the smiles emanating from Minnesota.

Yesterday it was all about Top Fuel. Brad Littlefield masterfully guided Connie Kalitta through a tough eight-car field that sported a 6.05 bubble that was too stout for the likes of Graham Light (yes, that Graham Light), Chris Karamesines, Clayton Harris, and seven others. Dave Uyehara and I qualified low and had low e.t with the Good, Bad, and the Ugly car at 5.77 but lost to "the Bounty Hunter’s" 5.84 in the semi’s. Kalitta had run 5.86 in round one to best Jeb Allen and outdueled the Sarah-wheeled Gary Beck machine on a 6.08 to 6.02 holeshot in the final. Vegas better beware if Brad ever steps up to the craps table.

Years after I first played the game, the thrill still holds, and the fun is big for old-time fans like me. Game creator Greg Zyla reports that he has gotten great feedback and stories from longtime customers and has sold off a lot of his surplus of games since my article here last week, but he’s offering a wide variety of options. You can reach him at extramile_2000@yahoo.com.

Suddenly, I feel the need to roll some dice. I’m outta here.

The Drag-on Lady: Racer, pioneer, mom

Shirley Shahan then, in the winner's circle, Pomona, 1966 ...	... and now, at the NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion last October.
Shahan's groundbreaking win at the 1966 Winternationals was the focus of ABC's Wide World of Sports camera crew.
With H.L. on wrenches and Shirley at the wheel, the couple was the sport's premier husband-wife duo of early drag racing lore.
The Shahans' kids -- from left, Steven, Robert, and Janet -- were a constant sight at racetracks with their parents in the 1960s.
In addition to her quarter-mile heroics, Shahan took part in long-distance economy runs on behalf of Chrysler. She won the event in 1968.
Shahan's Drag-on Lady AMX Super Stocker, which debuted in 1969, was a crowd-pleasing record setter. This is famed Irwindale Raceway.
Still loyal to her AMC days, Shahan was guest of honor at last year's National AMC Convention in Denver.	Shahan and her kids' sometime babysitter, Ed McCulloch, at last year's California Hot Rod Reunion.
Shahan's son Bob created and races this replica of his mom's '68 Dodge.

Last Monday, your humble doorkeeper to drag racing’s great untold stories cited the accomplishments of our two groundbreaking Shirleys: Shahan, the first woman to win an NHRA event, and Muldowney, the first to do so in a Pro class. I’d dare to wager that the vast majority of you, whether you’re new to the sport or have been around since it was a good thing when a Top Fueler smoked the tires during a run, know all too well the exploits and heroics of Ms. Muldowney: three-time NHRA Top Fuel world champ, subject of an award-winning movie, and testament to the fortitude of the human soul and the need for speed. But it occurred to me sometime afterward that Shahan’s name, let alone her story, might be unfamiliar to many.

When I wrote that piece, I was on my high horse about Danica Patrick being called (by some, since retracted) the first woman to win a major auto racing event, and I’ll admit that when I wrote “I’d better get Shirley Shahan on the phone and let her down gently,” it was on a type-and-duck basis because, while as far as I knew she was still gracing our planet you never know anymore; so it was doubly wonderful to hear from her after the column appeared. She thanked me for my kind words about her career and for giving her the chance to relive her experience and said, “Thanks to all your fans who read your articles and remembering me as being the first. It was a great thrill at the time and still is. I especially remember the fans who stood up as I passed by after my final run, cheering for me. I will never forget them and their support.”

And, well, you know me … never one to leave well enough alone. So I begged her – I’m not proud, you know -- to share the details of her amazing career with you all.

It took a while for her to get back to me – “us retired folks are just really busy,” she explained (she turns 70 this June) – but when she did, her story was rich with detail just ripe for this column. I had planned to run this Monday, but then Ashley Force struck another first for women drag racers, so this column is doubly timely now. And so here is the story of the career of the amazing woman known to many as the Drag-on Lady. (For the record, though her name now is Shirley Bridges, I’ll stick with Shahan here for clarity.)

Shahan was born and raised in Visalia, Calif., a city with oak-tree-lined streets in the heart of central California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley and home to the Visalia Vapor Trailers, NHRA’s longest active NHRA Car Club. Shahan took to automobiles the way some girls take to dolls. She learned to drive at age 10, at the wheel of her dad’s ’34 Ford pickup. As the oldest of four children, she also was dad’s mechanic helper during his own racing forays. “At an early age, I knew the difference between a 5/8 and a 9/16,” she recalls proudly.

Although her first teenage love was fast-pitch softball – she had a cannon of an arm, hewn by loading and unloading her dad's roofing truck, and could reach home plate in one throw from her centerfield position – after earning her driver’s license, she spent weekends cruising Main Street and racing against the boys in the family’s Studebaker pickup.

She married early, at age 17, and she and H.L. Shahan initially had a couple of cars, a ’55 Chevy and then a new ‘56 Chevy with a 265, that