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Farewell, "Friendly Fran"
Social media is the buzz phrase of the new millennium, allowing instant commentary by and about practically anyone. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it isn’t terribly hard to find out what today’s drag racing…
Ivo's four-engine enigma
Ask any 500 Tommy Ivo fans which of his many, many race cars is his most famous, and it’s a pretty safe bet that 495 of them will say it’s his wild four-engine Showboat. And who could blame them? With four Buick engines…
Gordie Bonin, your memories
Praises and love continue to roll in in the wake of Gordie Bonin’s unexpected passing two weeks ago, and the level of admiration is touching. I’m sure that “240” knew he still had a lot of fans, but maybe not the depth of…
Lions re-created: Small in size, big in fun and memories
For those who were at the recent Lions Drag Strip Reunion at the NHRA Museum and even for those who read my report last week, one thing that caught everyone’s eyes was Rick Voegelin’s amazing scale model of the famed facility.
The small-scale –…
The OCIR Reunion
Get-togethers at the NHRA Motorsports Museum are always fun, and its Southern California location ensures an all-star cast of drag racing greats, so it’s no surprise that they showed up in force at the Orange County Int’l…
Remembering Gordie Bonin
It has been three days since I got the news, and I still can't believe that Gordie Bonin is dead. The death of the popular former Funny Car star last Friday took the community by surprise and by shock, the first reports…
Sorting through the Inbox
It may only be Nov. 22, but it already feels like Christmas Eve for this Orange County Int’l Raceway pit rat looking forward to the OCIR Reunion tomorrow at the NHRA Motorsports Museum. Even though I never got a chance to visit Lions Drag Strip, I…
More Garlits and 'Snake'
Wow, what a surprise. There are a few Don Garlits and Don Prudhomme fans out there among the Insider Nation. Who knew?
Yeah, so response to last week’s partially off-the-wall comparison of the similarities between the two…
Don-ning my Garlits-Prudhomme trivia cap
While I was writing last week’s column and doing research comparing the careers of Don Prudhomme and Don Garlits, it struck as kind of interesting that two of the biggest names in our sport’s history, two of our most iconic…
More on Six Seconds to Glory
Well, I devoured my new Six Seconds to Glory book during the race weekend in Las Vegas and found it to be every bit as tasty as I had imagined. It was packed with enough mouthwatering morsels to satisfy any Don…
Six Seconds To Glory
The original book (left) and the reissue
If I say the name “Hal Higdon” to any self-professed Don Prudhomme mega fan, the four words I’d better hear back from them are “Six Seconds…
The legend of "Big Mike" Burkhart
A couple of weeks ago, my weekly My Favorite Fuelers column on the National Dragster website centered on Top Fuel and Funny Car drivers from the great state of Texas. I purposely omitted known heroes, like Eddie…
Touching moments, toppled Trees, and fond farewells
After covering 14 national events in 19 weeks, we get a little breather this week, at least on the Mello Yello side, which conveniently will allow me to catch up on overdue business here from the last several columns. I didn’t travel to them all (…
Drinking in the Sparkling Burgundy story
It’s hard to imagine a segment of the NHRA family that Mike Lewis hasn’t touched in more than 40 years in the sport. People today know him as the high-profile face of the Don Schumacher Racing empire, where he serves as…
More Tree topplings
Last week’s first look at errant racers who clobbered the Christmas Tree was almost exclusively short-wheelbase roadsters, but as I mentioned, there’s plenty of blame to go around in all classes, as this week’s column well illustrates…
Chopping down the Christmas Tree
As you’ve read over the last two weeks, the introduction of the Christmas Tree wasn’t always met with warm embraces, especially by the old guard, who had honed their spidey senses to enable them to get a good leave on the flagman’s signal, and I…
More tall tales of the Tree
I got some interesting feedback and pats on the back from a number of people about last week’s column on the history of the Christmas Tree. For a…
Happy Birthday, Christmas Tree
There’s no doubt that this year’s newly rechristened Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals was a pretty darned great drag race, with lots of drama, close and exciting racing, Don "the Snake” Prudhomme as grand marshal, and…
Herm Petersen, Part 3
While it’s fun and exciting each week to reminisce about the great cars and moments in the wonderful history of our sport — and based on the continual feedback from the Insider Nation, it’s a weekly trip you all enjoy, too — the stories that seem to…
Herm Petersen, Part 2
Less than seven months after being severely burned over more than half of his body when his race car overturned and caught fire at Orange County Int’l Raceway in July 1973, the indomitable spirit that sustained Herm Petersen before and since had him…
Herm Petersen: 'I’ve Survived Damn Near Everything'
The button on Herman Petersen’s trademark brown hat pretty much sums it all up: “I’ve Survived Damn Near Everything.” It’s not an idle boast.
The Washington state nitro veteran, known as "the Northwest Terror," has…
Seattle: My kind of place
This is going to be a little short and sweet column, written earlier this week because The Man Who Never Takes Vacations is taking a couple of days off at the end of this week (two days counts as a vacation, right?) to refresh and recharge before we…
Remembering Paul Candies, Part 2
By the time you read this, I’ll be in Seattle for the big show there, but I wanted to leave you with a few more parting comments on popular car owner Paul Candies, who died two weeks ago Sunday and whose story I shared here…
Remembering Paul Candies
To some folks, Paul Candies was “just” the wallet behind the fabulously successful Candies & Hughes race teams that terrorized the strip for four decades. Leonard Hughes was the tuning mastermind, and guys like Mark…
Bernie Fedderly: A champion's crew chief
Of all the people I’ve come to know in the more than 30 years on this job, few have been as gracious and friendly as Bernie Fedderly, the Hall of Fame crew chief best known for his work with the likes of Terry Capp, Gary…
Real winners, faked photos, and more
Now that the four in a row on the NHRA Mello Yello “big show” stage is history — with a week off before the three-in-a-row Western Swing — I get a brief chance to catch my breath after a busy month. Norwalk was great fun, as it always is. It rained…
Running out of film
It’s a crazy time of the year for those of us who follow the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series, with a stretch of four races in four weekends that just reached its midpoint last weekend with the inaugural event at New England Dragway. I was…
Your X-ray submissions
If this X-ray thread continues much further, I’m going to have to hand out lead-filled vests to the readers who continue to increase the read-iation factor with a series of submissions of their favorite see-through photos and drawings, presented…
'The Man with the X-Ray Eyes,' Part 2
Welcome to Part 2 of our look at the “X-ray” art of Tom West. In Part 1 last Friday, West told about his introduction to the art form with which he has become synonymous and showed off five of his earliest efforts. Today, he’s back with an…
'The Man with the X-ray Eyes'
In the same vein as last week’s series of cutaway (or, more pointedly, see-through) photos I’m thrilled to be able to present an amazing body of artistic automotive work by Tom West, who many of you may know for his…