The images below, taken on the Friday qualifying runs, clearly show no visible distance between the bottom of the “diaper” and the racing surface especially in comparison to Chris Russo’s United Electric of Myrtle Beach ’63 Corvette which clearly conforms to the clearance rule with no items hanging below the lowest body panels. In Saturday’s two qualifying periods, Radford’s only run was a 4.07/180.84 with a 1.016 “sixty”. However, Harper hit a 0.979 “sixty” and a stout 3.95/185.99 in the most oppressive heat of the event. He produced a 0.997-second launch and shut-off when the Viper went everywhere but straight.
In eliminations, Oregonian Radford remained at 4.08/181.01 (1.017) but Harper won his opening match with an all-over-the-track 4.08/178.52 initiated by a 0.963 “sixty”. The duo met in round two and Radford’s coasting 4.45/141.02 (0.998) was obliterated by Harper’s record-shattering 3.917/186.79 which came with a 0.968 “sixty”. At that point, ADRL officials met Harper and Radford at the top end of the track to check the diaper’s ground clearance and again found it to be less than three inches.
The 3.91 elapsed time was disallowed for World Record points but Harper was permitted to remain in competition. In the last two rounds of competition, Harper ran 3.947/186.20 (0.984) and 3.930/186.67 (0.976) and both elapsed times were accepted as new ADRL Pro Nitrous World Records. Although neither officials nor fellow competitors publicly stated a belief that the “dragging diaper” was intentionally implemented to improve either driver’s eighth-mile elapsed time or to gain a starting line reaction time advantage, the entire episode brought forth the assessment that a full bellypan, used by several teams as an additional fluid containment system, seems to be a viable, (albeit expensive), solution to the “dragging diaper” problem. The incident also created heated discussions on the limit of believability for sixty-feet ETs by Pro Nitrous entries.
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Several Pro Nitrous drivers claim “sixties” as quick as 0.950 but admit they’ve never measured the sixty-feet distance at the tracks on which those numbers were recorded; sixty-feet clocks shortened by several feet have been a source of free publicity for some unscrupulous track operators for years. However, at no time did anybody question the distance of SGMP’s infrared beams and it should be noted that seven other Pro Nitrous drivers recorded sixty-feet ETs under one second during the event…and one other “dragging diaper” pass, (a 3.95/184.85 with a 0.920 “sixty” by Stan Allen’s ’68 Camaro), was thrown out during qualifying. Based on his 186-187 mph speeds, many competitors eventually conceded that all but the 0.887 sixty-feet elapsed time produced by Harper during the event were probably legitimate.