1959 BAKERSFIELD MARCH MEET
This is the race that established Top Fuel firmly on the drag racing map. Again, so much has been written on this that some of the following is redundant. Don Garlits had won a big East vs. West race in Houston, Texas in 1958, and the westerners, clannish and guilty as hell of regional chauvinism, invited him and anyone else who thought they had a fast car to come out and race them. Art Chrisman in the Chrisman Bros. & Cannon dragster won the event in the wee hours of Monday morning on March 1, before 31,000 booze-sodden race fanatics. The Bakersfield event went on to become the biggest independent Top Fuel show in history and gave all drag race fans a glimpse of the future.
1965 SUPER STOCK NATIONALS
Remember the last two months of DRO? We did an article on this great event and the Super Stock Magazine Nationals races that followed. In a sentence: 21,000 fans showed at York U.S. 30 Dragway in York, Pennsylvania in August of 1965 to take in the first big "national-type" event for Funny Cars. It took on Woodstock proportions, as did the above two events and forever changed the face of drag racing. The Funny Car was here to stay.
1967 ORANGE COUNTY MANUFACTURERS FUNNY CAR CHAMPIONSHIPS
The West Coast was not as quick to catch on to the Funny Car as were their Eastern counterparts. The left coast had the Top Fuelers; the East Coast was the crib for the altered wheelbase, injector-stacked, resin-busting factory experimentals which became Funny Cars. The race that put the slow-to-be-won-over West Coast camp into the fold was the first Orange County (Int'l Raceway) Manufacturers race.
The OCIR management came up with a theme that consisted of four eight-car factory (Ford, Chevy, Chrysler, and Pontiac) teams battling it out for three 32-car rounds, with the two quickest elapsed times coming back for the final. In this case, it was Eddie Schartman's Air-Lift Rattler Mercury Comet beating Don Gay's Firebird in the final round.
However, the "who won" was more overshadowed by the real winners: the overflow crowd, estimated at nearly 20,000, that packed OCIR and completed the takeover of the country by the burgeoning Funny Car class.
1972 DON GARLITS PRA NATIONAL CHALLENGE
Until just recently, NHRA was a lean, mean fighting machine, but there was one time when they were as out of gas and soft as they are now. That was in 1972. NHRA had been on a fabulous run from its inaugural national event of 1955 through 16 years. Crowds grew, performance grew, name recognition grew, and so did ... I hate to say it, but ... NHRA's perceived arrogance. The sport's quickest and fastest racers, Top Fuel, were making $5,000 to win at Indy (the U.S. Nationals), and sometimes less at the other seven events.
The dilemma? The racers' cost to participate were badly outrunning the purses, so as to make said purse nothing more than an unfunny joke. It remained for Don Garlits to challenge this (hence the name) with a national event on the very same Labor Day Weekend of 1972, an event that featured only the top three pro categories. Most important was the fact that Garlits and the Professional Racers Association and AHRA (American Hot Rod Association) offered $35,000 to win for the two nitro classes and $25,000 for Pro Stock.
NHRA, confident that it had tradition on its side, downplayed the Tulsa, Oklahoma event, and went on with business as usual. It was not a business as usual thing. Garlits' Tulsa event drew a capacity crowd and took all the big names away from Indianapolis save for Don Prudhomme, Tom McEwen (who commuted back and forth between Indy and Tulsa, running both Top Fuel and Funny at the events), Jerry Ruth, Tony Nancy, and a handful of other NHRA loyalists. Tulsa had everyone else.
It developed that the Tulsa promoters didn't make money, but they did make their point. In 1973, NHRA's Top Fuel purse went up from $5,000 of 1972 to around $18,000 for 1973.
1975 BYRON CASH NATIONALS
Actually, I think Rockford (Ill.) Dragway promoter Ron Leek called his all big dollar bracket race, the Bracket Nationals. Essentially, it was not much to look at from the spectating standpoint. Bracket racing, after all, is a participant activity firstly, and a viewfinder secondly. The race drew a gigantic turnout of cars (in the neighborhood of 450-500 cars) with the events Top Eliminator winning a whopping (and it really was) $5,000. That racer was trivia question answer supreme Harold Hodge, and from that summer day forward big dollar bracket races captured the racer's fancy. As most know, there are now extravaganzas like the current million-dollar bracket races, and they can all trace their roots to Mr. Leek's bold venture of 1975.
1975 NHRA SUPERNATIONALS/WORLD FINALS
Ontario Motor Speedway in Southern California had developed quite a reputation for traction and, consequently, great times. In 1973, Don Garlits did the unheard of by breaking into the 5.7- and 5.8-second elapsed time zones at the event. Two years later, the biggest pound-for-pound, inch-for-inch drag race time orgy transpired.
In 1975 there had been less than a dozen NHRA five-second runs at national events. When qualifying ended for this one event, 24 cars had run in the fives -- and more than once. The field extended from Garlits' all-time record 5.637 to Stan Shiroma's 5.932 in the Lidtke-Zeller-Lidtke Chevy-powered dragster. Eight other cars ran fives but failed to get in!
Garlits (who won the event) saw his 5.63 last as the lowest e.t. in the sport until 1981, and Gary Beck's 5.69, the number two qualifying elapsed time, was the first run in the 5.6s.
Don Prudhomme won Funny Car in his U.S. Army-backed Chevy Monza and in so doing ran the first Funny Car "5", a 5.98 in a semi-final trouncing of Raymond Beadle's "Blue Max" Mustang II.
Everybody ran his personal best at this event.
