NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

My columns a few weeks ago about the transition from front-engine to rear-engine Top Fuelers brought a lot of email and a slew of interesting photos about more of the earliest rear-engine attempts as well as some who took the rear-engine design to…

I’m off this week to Charlotte for the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals, and the column that I had planned didn’t pan out. I’ve been holding on to the photos below for just such an occasion, so I made a beeline for them to share with you this weekend.…

Nellie Goins wasn’t the first female to ever strap herself into a supercharged, nitro-burning Funny Car – pioneers like Paula Murphy, Della Woods, and Shirley Muldowney all preceded her – nor the first African-American racer…

(Above) "Ollie" Morris' back-motor Smokin' White Owl debuted in 1954 and tore up Southern California strips. (Below) Morris, right, and sponsor Harvey Malcomson, of Harvey’s Auto Glass, worked on the car's flathead…

Last weekend, racers descended on Bakersfield for the 58th running of the March Meet, which now is part of NHRA’s Hot Rod Heritage Racing Series but for decades was known as one of the great fuel-racing events on the calendar. In 1959, the…

Don Garlits showed that the rear-engine design was here to stay with a powerful victory at the 1971 NHRA Winternationals. Although rear-engine Top Fuelers had found some limited…

Last week’s column about John Wiebe, one of the last and best holdouts of the traditional slingshot Top Fuel design, and our other discussions of the 1971 and 1972 seasons got me to…

Steve Reyes Ask someone on the street about Kansas, and you’ll probably hear something about wheat fields, The Wizard of Oz, or, for the rockers out there, wayward sons carrying on. Ask any longtime drag…

Fifty years ago this weekend, Don Prudhomme drove Roland Leong's Hawaiian Top Fueler to victory at the 1965 Winternationals, his first of 49 career wins. I had planned to publish today…

You do not want to piss off this guy. “You’re going to make me pull out what little hair I have left!” That was the way my Monday began. On the other end of the phone was Larry Sutton, and he…

Two weeks ago, when I started the 1975 thread with a report on Irwindale Raceway’s wild and wacky Grand Premiere, I mentioned the event’s Lions Drag Strip roots, a race that kicked off the fabled SoCal racing facility’s final season in 1972, and…

NHRA’s incredible 1975 season didn’t officially begin until the Winternationals in Pomona Jan. 21, but by then, a lot of nitro already had been burned. As I mentioned last week, Don Prudhomme kicked off what – at the time – was the greatest season…

James Warren (above) won Top Fuel, and Don Prudhomme (below) scored in Funny Car at the 4th annual Grand Premiere at Irwindale Raceway to help kick off 1975. Forty years ago last Sunday…

I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends A chance to share old memories and play our songs again. My Christmas present came early this year, in the form of an invitation to a party Dec. 5. For…

Ron Armstrong, standing, and Dale Armstrong pore over data printouts from an early RacePak data logger. “People ask me what was the single thing that made the biggest progression in drag racing…

There are no professional drag racing scouts who tour North America looking for the next Don Garlits in the way hockey’s headhunters in the puck-crazed western Canadian province of Alberta scour the area’s peewee leagues…

By the time this gets published, it’ll be the day after Thanksgiving, and some of you may be reading this on your phones or tablets in a line somewhere awaiting Black Friday stores to open. While I’m thankful I won’t be…

Last weekend’s 50th anniversary Auto Club NHRA Finals was steeped in nostalgia, with vintage-car displays, Cacklefests, and, the highlight for me, more Legends chats, this time involving “TV Tommy” Ivo, Ed “the Ace”…

I have to admit, I was pretty stunned earlier this week when online voting concluded for the Most Memorable Moments in NHRA World Finals history and Shirl Greer’s amazing comeback from a nasty fire in qualifying to win the…

After a two-week side trip down the memory lane of Raymond Beadle’s life, let’s return to our previous thread on photo hoarding. As noted previously, I believe that it’s a widespread practice…

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the loss of Raymond Beadle a week ago Monday has surely resonated within the NHRA community, and my request last Friday for your personal tales of what Beadle meant to you was…

ust last week, Insider reader Richard Pederson was reveling, with me, in the fact that last Friday’s column had been a joyous one, sharing great old photos instead of having to talk about another…

People collect all sorts of things, from cars to beer cans to movie posters and magazines, all of which require a lot of research and an outlay of dollars to build a substantial collection. For race fans like us…

Usually I write about racers in this column, most of them heroes of my youth whose exploits I watched from the other side of the magazine page, and all too much lately, I’ve written about not just their careers but their lives in the past tense, as…

A lot of race car drivers would describe themselves as “fearless,” but only one driver that I know of actually incorporated it into his name: “Fearless Fred” Goeske, who raced Funny Cars and rocket cars for decades and left…

Before the U.S. Nationals slips too far into our rearview mirrors, I wanted to share the photos below with you. They come from former NHRA Division 1 photographer Phil Hutchinson, who has been going to Indy for a long time…

If this is Friday, it must be Dallas, right? Well, a combination of Charlotte and Dallas, I guess. Yes, the weather gods decided to play more scheduling tricks on us, so just as it was in Indy, where we had to complete the balance of Brainerd…

John Farkonas, left, with Austin Coil, center, and Pat Minick at the Chi-Town Hustler reunion in 2011. (Dennis Mothershead photo) His was the first surname listed on the side of one of the…

I have to admit, the 60th anniversary Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals lived up to its billing for this reporter. While some people might have gone there to see the dramatic conclusion to the Mello Yello regular season…

If this is Friday, then I must be in Indy, enjoying my 32nd straight trip to the Big Go. Wish you were here. You may well be. Here’s Part 2 of Tom Kasch’s cache of Indy pics, these focusing on Top Fuel and other classes, from the 1960s and early…