NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

For the first time in NHRA history, an NHRA national event was postponed due to cold weather after a northern cold front swept across the Baytown area late Saturday of the 1989 event, when Sunday dawned at just 32 degrees and a bracing wind lowered the wind chill to just 3 degrees.

Just one year after history was made at the 1988 event with the first four-second Top Fuel pass at an NHRA national event, the track earned another distinction: hosting the first event ever to be "colded out." The weather got so cold that the event actually had to be postponed one week because it simply was too cold to run race cars.

Teams had come to the race knowing it would be chilly, but no one was prepared for what happened. Late Saturday afternoon, it was about 50 degrees and everyone was bracing for a chilly final qualifying session when the thermometer nosedived 15 degrees in just a few minutes and more than 30 degrees in a few hours. Before long, the wind kicked up, and the wind chill dropped into high single digits. 

The Funny Cars came to the line for the final session, and the track was a veritable skating rink. Only a few cars were able to hook up despite tire-melting burnouts and a constant application of torches by the Safety Safari. Don Prudhomme, who qualified No. 1 with the first 5-teen in Funny Car history (5.19) but didn’t make it down the track in that frigid session, explained succinctly, "The motor said, 'Let's go,' and the tires said, 'Bulls--t.' "

Mark Oswald, then driving the Motorcraft-sponsored Candies & Hughes Probe Funny Car, wrote in his On the Run column in National Dragster, "When the cold front moved through, the temperature dropped so fast I thought I had died. I believed for a moment that rigor mortis was setting in."

The end came when Jim White grenaded an engine in the Hawaiian Punch Dodge and the slick stuff just kind of congealed there on the track into a thick grease-like substance, trying its darndest to freeze. The Safety Safari made attempts to clean it up, but it was clear that wouldn't be an easy task, so the rest of the day’s action was canceled.

On Sunday morning, the temperature was 32 degrees but a mere 3 degrees with the wind chill, and NHRA decided to cancel the weekend’s activities and return the following weekend.

The delay was well worth the wait as Scott Kalitta scored his long-overdue first win – and his only one in Funny Car – defeating Bruce Larson in the final. Gary Ormsby won Top Fuel, Bob Glidden bagged Pro Stock, and a young Top Alcohol Dragster driver named Cruz Pedregon won a special Alcohol Showdown event.