8/4/08
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Fond Memories Of ‘Animal Jim’ and AHRA
Burk, a wonderful story on Animal Jim. Jim was the true AHRA Pro Stock racer from the late ‘70s to the end of AHRA (’84). I admired his endurance of the class; a true pro. We raced the AHRA Grand American series in Stock and Super Stock from ‘72 to ‘84. I saw many Pro Stock teams come and go during that era. Jim was a true AHRA pro. We used to wait in the staging lanes or help each other with small tasks during the 3-day races.
We all lost something when AHRA was lost. AHRA was the true sanction to move up the ladder to the pro ranks. I was proud to have been a grand American touring sportsman, and to have known Animal Jim.
Everyone, do a great guy a favor, go to his website and read his history of the sport. You will be totally refreshed with our sport again, especially after you have watched an NHRA race on TV...how boring!
Don Spencer
Spencer & Knape ‘62 ‘vette
Houston, Texas
It works on lawn mowers…
Consider this: a lever, as part of the steering wheel, that you hold engaged as long as your hands were gripping the wheel. If you let go, it activates the chutes, shuts off the fuel pumps, grounds the mags, activates the fire bottles, and applies pressure to the brakes. I hate to call it a dead man switch, but it would help to keep making more of them. Vehicles that can kill their drivers in a split nano-second, should at least have similar safety features as a lawn mower.
Tim Rinkerman
Northeast
Cochran addendum
Scott, I would add one other change for the fuel classes; change the engine size to be no more than 400ci. This will result in a decrease of at least 20% and will help slow the cars.
Bill Bolton
Another Cochran fan
FANTASTIC! Real solutions to real problems.
Gary I. Anderson
Rosemount, Minnesota
Get the bloodhounds on the case
There is a way to get to Scott Cochran's EXCELLENT VISION of what NHRA drag racing should be. The root problem in drag racing is that the corporate parasites have to be dumped because they're only concerned about keeping the host organism alive or dead or barely alive just enough to maximize the money going in to their pocket.
These know nothing hacks should be replaced by a Lee Iacocca type. One of those wealthy people who got that way with talent and drive and leadership. A guy like this would slice through waste, make the big decisions to get a hi-tech solution to this overly explosive and becoming way to fatal paradigm we’re in now. And the goal of making nitro racing relatively safe again, and providing an environment that promotes entrepreneurial involvement to grow the sport so that it has an audience that would generate the big money the drag racing community to hire on NASA- and MIT-caliber folks to go in and solve the serious problems.
Do we have such a man in our midst? Articles like Scott’s could help sniff out such folks.
Jim Becktel
Barkhamsted, Connecticut