“In those days, it was class racing, so I raced all the dragsters, the big fuel dragsters, and then I had to run a gas dragster, which was Joe Travis from Miami in his Oldsmobile, and I beat him, and then it was Wurtz in the coupe, and that was that. There wasn’t any money at all, it was just a little trophy. That’s all they gave in those days was a little trophy. I had low elapsed time -- a 12.1, 12.2, something like that -- and the class win and then Top Eliminator. I went 108 but there was a guy from Jacksonville in a tiny dragster that went 110 mph to beat me for top time of the meet. I won everything else, and that started my career.”
Wurtz had his problems at Lakeland too: a clutch went out. “We had to buy another one locally. My crew and I changed the clutch in one hour. I had to do it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be racing in eliminations. So I won my class, B/Altered, and raced Garlits for Top Eliminator.” He ran 101 mph to Garlits’ 108. The win probably wasn’t more than a car length difference.
“He had a carbureted flathead dragster with a roll bar in front. I have a photo of it, me and Don and the flagger. That was his first dragster. I beat him about half-way down, and then he passed me on the top end. He got me. I didn’t think I could beat him because it was a coupe
against a dragster. I thought that I couldn’t win unless he broke or missed a gear or something. But it was really neat. I enjoyed it. We took pictures of everybody getting their trophies in front of the timing stand for ‘Hot Rod’ Magazine,” Wurtz said.
You can see in the photo -- not from “Hot Rod” but another magazine that is defunct -- that Frank hole-shot Don by a wheel. There was a secret to his good start. “When we ran the drags around here, we always had a flagger, and you get in tune with that flagger. Now, at York Drag Strip in Pennsylvania, they had a traffic light, but in Woodbine, New Jersey, and at Vineland, New Jersey, we had flag starters, and you had to be sharp. He would point the start flag at you and then the other guy, then he would then put the flag down on the track, and when that s.o.b. moved his flag, I went. I didn’t pay any attention to him. I just watched that flag, and when it moved up, I’d go. If you jumped the flag, they’d disqualify you,” Wurtz says.
As soon as he came back from Florida, Frank pulled the engines out of the ’32 and the Mercury and put the overhead valve in the coupe, and from then on, he was undefeated until the next to last race in 1956. “I made some changes on the car and was going to try a different trans/rear combination, and it was wrong. That was at Woodbine, New Jersey, and I got beat,” he says. “The last race of the ’56 season was at York at U.S. 30, and I put my car back to what I had before. I won B/Altered. I beat a B/Altered Chrysler at Allentown and won class and Top Eliminator and won the top time of the meet, and that was my best.”
He got drafted in the Army at the beginning of 1957. He took everything apart from the race cars and piece-mealed them out. “I didn’t have any money, my wife was pregnant, and I almost retired then, in 1959. I started Wurtz Automotive in 1960. I retired for good in 1982,” Wurtz says.
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