Keeping NHRA Fans Up to Date
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It's ramped up and almost ready
Any trip to Englishtown is steeped in history — the names of heroes such as “Jungle Jim” Liberman and Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney are always invoked. The vast majority of the nitro racers who compete annually always…
The name game
Quite a few of you applauded my tongue-in-cheek strikethrough "mistake" in referring to the annual event in Englishtown as the Summernationals, which, of course, now is the name of the recently completed event in Topeka. I'd…
Rats, snakes, hustlers, and kings
At this time next week, I'll be at one of my favorite places in the drag racing world, Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown for the annual Summernationals SuperNationals. (Still struggle with that one, and don't even get me started on…
At a loss, again ...
Another Tuesday, another sad duty to report another substantial loss to our sport. Yesterday, about 5 p.m., just a week after the death of James Warren, we lost 1970s veteran fuel Funny Car campaigner Dick Rosberg, adding to the already staggering…
Memories of James
As expected, the news earlier this week of the passing of Top Fuel hero James Warren brought forth a sea of sorrow and a wave of nostalgia as fans and friends remembered the West Coast giant and mourned his passing.
A few…
A monumental loss
Searching through the James Warren photo archive, I was struck by this photo, showing Warren, center, in the Irwindale Raceway winner's circle with Roger Coburn, left, and Steve Evans. Hard to believe we've lost all three of…
Hot times in ol' Hot-lanta
Fair warning that this will be this week's only Insider column because come Thursday, I'll be in the air again (surrounded by an airplane) on my way to Atlanta for the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern…
Let's get small
Honestly, I don't know where and how some of you find the patience to craft incredible machines out of just about thin air, but follow-up to last Friday's report on the from-scratch efforts in plastic of British artist/modeler Mark Gredzinski…
And ... action!
"And then we put a camera over here to catch my good side ...."
So, the news is now out, unveiled last Friday at the Anaheim Comic-Con during a panel discussion and officially announced yesterday on…
Model citizen
Most of us hard-core drag racing fans built plastic models in our youth – and a lot of you apparently still do – but I have to admit that I was never very good at it. Sure, the pieces would all end up in the right places and the decals mostly…
A weekend of tributes at the NHRA Museum
In his five-decade racing career, not many people got one over on Don Prudhomme. Save for Tommy Ivo's notorious practical jokes on the young "Snake's" first road trip with him in the early 1960s, you couldn’t pull a fast one on Prudhomme, whether in…
More odds and ends
I spent the weekend combing through recent submissions to catch up on some of the follow-ups you guys have been sending. (Yes, this is how I spend my weekends ...)
Frequent artistic contributor John Bell wrote to say that he enjoyed "The Legend…
Enough!
You know what? It has been a pretty lousy two weeks for the NHRA family. Just before the Las Vegas event, we learned of the passing of former Division 4 tech ace Lindy Vencill, known far and wide as one of NHRA's great…
More of your photos
The outpouring of photos of Don Garlits from your collections in the last week prompted me to revisit – as promised earlier this year -- some of the many other photos that have been sent my way the last few years. Many of you have given me the honor…
The Legend of Benito Magneto
I may have mentioned in a column or two over the winter that we moved our editorial offices downstairs to consolidate the Publications Department onto one floor of our humble little Route 66 salt mine and that…
The Garlits lovefest continues
The Bucher brothers -- from left, Mike, Rick, and Tim -- helped Garlits push Swamp Rat 34 back into the pit area at the 2002 Gatornationals.
Just back in from a great weekend in Sin City, and the…
Your Garlits stories and photos
Writing a drag racing history column about "Big Daddy" Don Garlits is like playing The Beatles or The Beach Boys on your classic-rock radio station: Ain't no one gonna complain. I wasn't surprised to see an outpouring of love (and old…
Swamp Rat Spotters Guide, Part 3
Welcome to the third and final installment of my Swamp Rat Spotter's Guide, a thumbnail look at "Big Daddy" Don Garlits’ historic hot rods of the last six decades. Inspired by my recent reading of his new book, Don Garlits and His Cars,…
Swamp Rat Spotter's Guide, Part 2
OK, we're back on the hunt of the elusive Swamp Rat. … Well, I guess not really elusive, seeing as how I'm cribbing from Don Garlits’ book Don Garlits and His Cars and giving you my interpretation of his recount about the construction, life…
Swamp Rat Spotter's Guide, Part 1
Ask any serious drag racing fan how many Swamp Rat entries "Big Daddy" Don Garlits had over the years, and you’re likely to be told 34, which is a pretty expected answer. After all, those fans know that "Large Father" took…
My greatest Gatornats hits
With the Tire Kingdom NHRA Gatornationals just two weeks after the season opener for the first time in ages, I'm already again finding myself gearing up for a trip to the drags. Unlike the Pomona lid-lifter, this one will require more than a 10-…
Your stuff
Even though I can’t sing and can’t play a single musical note, I like to think of myself as the creative sort. I've shown a fair amount of ability to put words to paper to construct semi-meaningful sentences (and sometimes even paragraphs on…
In the Snake Pit
Though we didn't completely dodge the rain bullet at the Winternationals, we got away with pretty much just a grazing wound from losing Friday, which only gave folks like me time to better explore the Snake Pit, the collection of Don Prudhomme's…
The Pomona archives
Welcome to Winternationals week and the countdown to the beginning of the 2011 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series season. The race begins in just two days, and with this year's delayed start to the season, I'm sure I'm…
At the (dry) hop ...
Ask any number of drag racing fans who attended the digs in the 1970s what they miss most, and I'd wager that half of them would say dry hops. For the uninitiated, a dry hop was like a practice launch that Funny…
'Cool is in the eye of the beholder'
Whatever your definition of cool – and based on the avalanche of submissions I received in the last four days, it's a pretty wide definition – I can say that you guys are sure cool. I couldn’t believe the number of e-mails I received or the wide…
Yeah, 'the Snake' is definitely cool
Quintessential Don Prudhomme cool. Toothpick in mouth, cool shades.
"Yeah, I just won the Winternationals for the fourth straight year; it's no big deal."…
Fan Fotos: 1970 Summernationals
Last month, I spent a little time cleaning out some of the many Insider folders that I created in my e-mail program, but I purposely skipped the one labeled Fan Fotos, containing groups of submissions from the faithful readers here. I have run these…
Sticking it to me
I asked for photos of your decals – or "stickers" as many would call them -- so naturally, you guys decided to bury me in submissions. What I present below is just a small but representative sampling of what I received, and…
Decal details
I'm still pulling together all of the info from the massive collection of sticker/decal images that you all sent as the result of my two Sticker Shock columns last month, but in the meantime, here are follow-up notes on some of the decals that I…