When Winston left IHRA in the late 1980s, the quality of the shows overall fell off. From 1984 to 1986, Top Fuel was not contested and Funny Car was the organization’s bread winner, largely because they had pushed the long skinny cars aside in national popularity. The sometimes trigger-happy boys in Bristol, Tenn., (where IHRA was based in those days) had jumped the gun, though, in regard to Top Fuel because from ’84-’86 Don Garlits’ resurgence and other factors led to the dragsters being in charge by the end of the decade, and by the very early 1990s, Funny Car, led by NHRA and the sport’s most popular racer, John Force, had captured that audience from IHRA.
Given the fact that IHRA wasn’t as big a money maker as NHRA, they looked for a way to trim costs, and right when Force and NHRA’s best were totally mesmerizing the nation’s Funny Car fans, IHRA slit the throat of the class, leaving just Top Fuel, mountain motor Pro Stock and the fledgling Pro Modified class to carry the mail.
IHRA stayed out of the Funny Car game until 2006 when they hosted the Amalie Oil Texas Nationals at San Antonio Raceway. When the organization returned to the front they were greeted by a moonscape. All of the class’s major stars had long been NHRA-ed and, with all due respect, it showed on their qualifying sheets. Oh, there was talent there, but nowhere near what was happening at the NHRA events.
Occasionally, a Tim Wilkerson, Gary Densham, Frank Pedregon, Scott Kalitta, Mike Ashley and such would drop by and make things interesting, but in general the line-up looked typically like this year’s season-opening Amalie Oil Texas Nationals. Bob Gilbertson, a good one-time NHRA national even winner, qualified one followed by Terry Haddock, Matt Hagan, Jeff Diehl, Division 4 stalwart Todd Simpson, Jack Wyatt, the 2006-2007 IHRA Funny Car champ Dale Creasy Jr, and Texas rookie Steve Macklyn. The alternates? Andy Kelley, Mitch King, Allen Middendorf, and Jason Duchene. With the exception of three racers, the rest of the field could have as well have been the bottom half of a PGA qualifiers list. Who are those guys?
Suffice to say, anybody who builds a nitro Funny Car, and races his or her ass off to the Nth degree, deserves respect and, in my case at least, attention. Call me crazy, but I’d pay money to see these low budget guys tangle.
Unfortunately, IHRA felt otherwise, and given the cost of supporting a program like this monetarily, they banged it.
So what do you do? The NHRA risked sacrilege and moved its two nitro classes to 1,000 feet this year and does not appear to have suffered from it. The IHRA is still going with a quarter-mile Top Fuel show last time I heard and, as one wag put it, probably because the cars aren’t going fast enough to be threatened by the longer distance.
Personally, I wish the times we’re living in were something a heartbeat away from a worldwide depression. Wouldn’t it have been terrific to have seen a great wrap-up for quarter-mile flops? A final quarter-mile Funny Car closing show near the end of the year that featured all the pizzaz of a Ben Christ or Doner/Evans production or hell, Billy Meyer!? One hundred Funny Cars, NHRA and IHRA and parts in between, lined up against a guard-rail, all lit at once, preceding a fireworks sendoff. Race ‘til three in the morning and drunk arrests by the dozens as the emotionally exhausted snaked out of the facility. Then close the door on the quarter mile.
What happened in these last coupla weeks feel more like a whimper rather than a bang. Certainly Funny Car and, for that matter Top Fuel quarter-mile racing deserved something other than a quiet closing of the ledger. Oh well, in a decade of disappointments and dire emergencies, it appears a parking lot of full of memories will have to suffice for the time being.
Say goodbye to IHRA funny car racing with our pictorial, here, and be sure to send us your favorite IHRA FC racing memories.
