NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Growing up as a young drag racing fan in the early 1970s, the monthly magazines were my window to the quarter-mile world outside of Southern California, and it was through the lenses of the many great photographers of the era that my love and knowledge of the sport expanded.

Guys like Steve Reyes, Jim Kelly, Jon Asher, Jere Alhadeff, Norman Blake, Tim Marshall, Jeff Tinsley, Barry Wiggins, John Shanks, and so many more gave me looks at cars and drivers and tracks that I’d never seen and thought I never would.

Jim Joyce was another of that hearty breed of Nikon nomads who roamed the country in search of nitromethane-fueled fun and photos, and he contacted me recently offering to share some great images from his collection. How could I say no?

Joyce first got interested in photography in high school, where he was the co-editor of the yearbook at Cleveland’s Holy Name High School. He graduated from Instamatic to 35mm and, like many teens, was deeply interested in cars as well. Like me, he had his head buried in the newest issues of Hot Rod or Super Stock and Car Craft and soon found his way to Ohio racetracks like Thompson Drag Raceway, Dragway 42, Norwalk Raceway, and Quaker City Dragway. He began to shoot racing photos from the stands and the results weren't always spectacular at first — “rolls and rolls of underexposed film,” he admits — but his work eventually began to draw the attention of the track operators, and before long, he was trackside. A photo feature in the Cleveland Plain Dealer got him his first NHRA starting-line pass from the late, great Dave McClelland at the 1974 NHRA Springnationals in Columbus.

Before long, his work began appearing in all of the major magazines, and he was accepted into the fraternity of traveling shooters. Although he mostly worked the Midwest, he did make journeys to California for the NHRA Winternationals and the West Coast match race scene throughout the ‘70s until he got married in 1981 and had to give up the roadwork, worked for the telephone company for 37 years before retiring in 2007, and has remained an active fan who watches it on TV and attends the odd national event here and then with his grandkids.

Some of the first images that caught my eye were Joyce’s photos of Chris Karamesines going on his head at the 1975 NHRA Gatornationals in his famed gold-plated Top Fueler. I’ve seen a few of these before, but never these.

Joyce: "That was my first race with a motor drive. I had just bought my first Nikon from Barry Wiggins, and it had a motor drive. I’m pretty sure that Jon Asher and I walked down to the top end at Gainesville and we were standing underneath the scoreboard, and I had a 200mm lens watching ‘the Greek’ coming down the track, and all of a sudden I see the car turn and then he’s up on the guardrail and his head's right next to the guardrail and the engine's still running. Look at the tires.

“I ran out of film — I got seven shots total, and they ended up in a Swedish magazine — and Asher was over there picking up the gold off the track.”

Another great shot that Joyce took was Clint Miller lighting up the Mountain Monza at the 1976 NHRA Winternationals.

Joyce: “This was really the first big Funny Car fire I ever got. I had actually been at Dragway 42 when Shirley Muldowney had her big fire, but I was at the starting line. This time, I was down in the top-end grandstands with what Norman Blake used to call 'the vultures' on Saturday in Pomona. I really like this one, because you see his hand going up to the parachute, and he's got the fire underneath the front wheels and all underneath the car.”

For a time in the 1970s, police-car-themed Funny Cars were a thing. I’ve previously expressed my love for the Pat Foster-driven Chicago Patrol, but Joyce, being from Ohio, was more familiar with this car, Stan Bowman’s Ohio State Patrol machine.

Joyce: “That’s at Dragway 42, and I really liked Stan because he was just down the road in Cleveland. I liked the car because it was sort of unique with the flashing lights on the roof.”

Here’s a couple that are very near and dear to my heart, the Frank and Linda Mazi’s supercharged BB/Altered Opel that I got a chance to drive back in 1984 for a story in NHRA National Dragster that I called Altered States [Part 1 | Part 2].

This first photo is from Indy 1980, after it was the God of Hellfire car that crashed in Bowling Green, Ky., in 1976, and before they painted the car multicolored a few years later, as it was when I drove it.

Joyce: “I've taken so many pictures of that car throughout the years. I was good friends with them throughout the years, and I still talk to Frank. Every once in a while, I still see Frank here in Cleveland. At Indy, the Sportsman guys staged on the east side of the track and would start the vehicles, and you could always hear Frank coming with those weedburner headers.”

Joyce: “I really like this shot of John Force and the Wendy’s Corvette from Indy, in 1979, I think. Back in the day, he was one of the original leakers; who knew he’d become so good? I really like that one because of the blur and the crowd and the nice burnout that he's doing; he was probably still working for hamburgers back then.”

I’m going to say that the photo Shirley Muldowney is from 1979 Gainesville because she has her original 390 permanent number on the wing. Shirley won her first championship in 1977, so in 1978, she would have carried No. 1. Crazily enough, she didn’t finish in the Top 10 in 1978 and then finished fourth in 1979, so she had No. 4 on the car in 1980.

Joyce: “What I like about this is that it shows you how high these people were sitting in the cars. They're not lying down like they are today. I think that’s [fellow Top Fuel racer] Bob Struksnes' wife [Joy] in the background.”

Shot from about the same place is this fine photo of California hero James Warren at the NHRA Gatornationals. He won the event in 1976, and they hardly ever changed the paint scheme, so it could be then or 1977, when he lost in round one. As a huge “Ridge Route Terrors” fan, I’d like to think 1976.

Joyce: “What I remember about his shot is all those guys in the background, a bunch of shirtless guys sitting on their trucks watching the races. I don't know, it’s just funny, just a weird background. I don’t know who those guys are or why they were allowed to park their trucks there. One has a push bar on it, so maybe some kind of tow truck, and the big white Ford looks like a water truck.

“The other cool thing is how clean those engines were. The motor is just sitting there. It doesn't have all these check valves and hoses that you see today.”

Don Garlits and Gary Beck famously dueled for both the IHRA and NHRA Top Fuel world championships in 1975. Joyce captured this shot of 1974 NHRA champ Beck dueling with Garlits at Dragway 42. My research showed they faced each other in the final round there in August, with Beck winning, 6.00 to 6.03. I don’t know if this is that race or maybe from qualifying, but it’s really cool.

Joyce: “I love this photo of Garlits and Beck in the lights. I like it because the parachutes are out, the tires are still tall, and they're neck and neck. If I remember, it had to be IHRA at the time they were both racing; they were both neck and neck in the points battle.”

Another great “in the lights” photo is this one that Joyce snapped of Don “then Snake" Prudhomme and Raymond Beadle and the Blue Max at the 1976 Gatornationals.

Joyce: “I'm a ‘Snake’ guy. I’ve got more pictures of ‘Snake’ than I can shake a stick at. I knew Bob Brandt pretty good. He was actually from northern Ohio before he got hooked up with ‘Snake’ back in the late ‘60s.  You can't really tell who's leading here, going through the lights, but it looks to me like ‘Snake.’ Just a cool photo of two rivals."

Here's a shot from the other end of the track of Prudhomme and Garlits as they were congratulated by NHRA President Wally Parks for being voted as First Team members by the Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association.

Joyce: “What I love about this is that Prudhomme has on a nice crew uniform and Garlits has this white T-shirt on with grease from head to toe.”

Joyce: “This is from another trip I made to Pomona and shot on the starting line. It’s Tommy Ivo doing a wheelstand, and if you look really close, it looks like the right rear tire is actually off the ground. It was a nice-looking car, and he actually spent summers here in Cleveland, had a house out in Lakewood, right around the block from the old Sikora chassis company and Lakewood Industries.”

Joyce: “This is Bob Motz and his jet truck. This one was shot at Thompson, but you can't tell it. For some reason, there's no sign on the bridge at the time. Can you believe people would stand up on that bridge when the cars were running? I still maintain that this is the most awesome drag race vehicle I've ever seen. I've seen him lift chunks of asphalt up.”

OK, so that’s it, a great collection of memorable pics from back in the day from one of the large groups of guys who made those monthly magazines so memorable for all of us young fans, and made this young fan want to run away and join the circus with them.
 

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

Hundreds of more articles like this can be found in the DRAGSTER INSIDER COLUMN ARCHIVE

Or try the Random Dragster Insider story generator