NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

At this time next week, I’ll be at Pacific Raceways outside of Seattle at what remains one of my favorite national events. Today it’s called the Northwest Nationals and has been part of the NHRA national event schedule since 1988, when it initially was known as the Seafair Nationals (as it was held during Seafair Weekend, a Seattle-area tradition since 1950 and best known for hydroplane boat racing on Lake Washington).

Over the last three decades, the Northwest Nationals has been a key leg of the three-race summer marathon known as the Western Swing, but long before that, beginning in 1975, the track, then known as Seattle International Raceway, hosted an even more pivotal event, the Fallnationals, which was the second to last race of the season from 1975-80 before taking an eight-year hiatus and returning as the Seafair event.

Today, the FallNationals (capital N) is held in Dallas in the fall and, before that, the Fallnationals (lowercase) also had a five-year run (1985-89) in Phoenix, when it also was the penultimate event of the year before moving to its traditional early-season spot on the schedule roster and rebranded as the NHRA Arizona Nationals.

Here’s a year-by-year look back at the Seattle-based Fallnationals.

1975: Beck’s win leads to lawsuits; ‘Snake,’ Glidden also claim wins

For reasons that I can’t explain, NHRA did not announce the addition of the Fallnationals to the 1975 racing calendar until the Winternationals, and it became the seventh of eight events on the docket and helped fill the yawning chasm on the calendar between the early-September U.S. Nationals and the mid-October World Finals. The late, great Bill Doner was running the popular track, which had hosted NHRA national opens as well as the ubiquitous Fox Hunts and 64 Funny Car shows, and promised major improvements to entice NHRA to reward him with the track’s first national event.

When the event rolled around, Seattle born and raised Gary Beck, the reigning world champ, was in a tight points battle with Don Garlits for the 1975 Top Fuel crown, but the Seattle event was scheduled on the same Sept. 19-21 weekend as IHRA‘s season-ending All-American Nationals in Bristol, Tenn. Garlits and Beck reportedly both had some kind of appearance guarantees with IHRA to attend each one of its events, yet Beck decided to run the Seattle event while Garlits went to Bristol, kicking off some legal drama.

Here's how Richard Parks, son of NHRA founder Wally Parks, reconstructed and recounted the incident from his father’s notes, letters, and memos in his massive “We Did It Our Way” anthology.

Garlits brought suit in court with [IHRA President Larry] Carrier’s help for the amount of $50,000 for what Beck would take from him should Don not be crowned NHRA World Champion. Carrier brought a suit against the NHRA for “enticing” Beck to break his “contract” with the IHRA, for treble damages of the amount Garlits was suing for or $150,000. The attorney for the NHRA was Bob Gottlieb and he petitioned in the Federal Courts to have the suit thrown out. Judge Neece threw out the lawsuit by Garlits against Beck, ruling that Don was not a “proper plaintiff” … At a later date the courts declared for the defendant (NHRA), setting the precedent that an “entry” is not a “contract.”

Twenty-seven Top Fuel cars, including all of the Northwest greats like Jerry Ruth, Hank Johnson, Herm Petersen, Gaines Markley, Ernie Hall, Jim Plummer, and Terry Capp, vied for a spot in the 16-car field, but it was Beck who won the event, besting 1974 Indy winner Marvin Graham in the final. Beck went to the World Finals with a 148-point lead, but “Big Daddy” overcame that with one of his all-time great performances to win the championship anyway, putting the final nail in the coffin of any possible further legal ramifications.

The storybook Funny Car final between Don "the Snake” Prudhomme and Tom “the Mongoose” McEwen had likely been played out many times at S.I.R. match races and went to Prudhomme, for his fifth win of the season. Prudhomme had won four of the first five races of the year then was stopped cold in the Indy final by Raymond Beadle. Prudhomme won in Seattle and again at the Finals to complete a remarkable season of six wins in eight events.

In Pro Stock, Bob Glidden won the first of what would be four of six Fallnationals victories, driving his vaunted Pinto past Wayne Gapp’s four-door Maverick in the final round.

“Wild Wilfred” Boutilier won Pro Comp and “Miss Mighty Mopar,” Judy Lilly, collected her fourth and final title in Super Stock. Other Sportsman winners at the event were Wayne Clapp (Comp), Dick St. Peter (Modified), and Tim Ekstrand (Stock).

Northwest Funny Car favorite Twig Zeigler took this wild ride in round one of Funny Car. After Gary Rogers left before the Tree, Zeigler tried hard for second-round lane choice but smoked the tires and lost the handle on his Pizza Haven Satellite and plowed in the guardrail. He somehow kept the car on all fours but lost the round on the “first or worst” rule.

1976: It’s ‘Snake’ again; Allen, Booth take other Pro titles

Don Prudhomme won the Fallnationals for the second straight year, but this time it was his sixth win in seven starts after having again been defeated weeks before in the U.S. Nationals final, this time by Gary Burgin. After beating old pal Tom McEwen the year before, Prudhomme this time defeated Northwest favorite Ed “the Ace" McCulloch, who smoked the tires in the final.

Jeb Allen beat another local hero, “Gentleman Hank” Johnson, to win Top Fuel after earlier taking down a trio of the class’ toughest drivers in Richard Tharp, Jerry Ruth, and Frank Bradley. Allen claimed the win from the No. 15 spot, one of just a handful of times a Top Fuel driver has claimed victory from so far down in the field.

Wally Booth closed 1976 with a flurry of wins, scoring a hat trick at the U.S. Nationals, the Fallnationals, and the World Finals in his AMC Hornet. Glidden was not in attendance at the event, which no doubt eased Booth’s path, and he sewed up the Wally on Warren Johnson’s final-round foul start. Johnson also had lost to Booth earlier that year in the final of the Springnationals, and Johnson and Booth finished 2-3 behind Glidden in the championship battle.

Sportsman winners: Derry O'Donovan (Pro Comp), Raymond Martin (Comp), Mike Keener (Modified), John Lingenfelter (Super Stock), and Doug Grieve (Stock).

1977: Chevy’s last hurrah, Meyer’s bounceback

Like Roland Leong and Danny Ongais, Stan Shiroma was another Hawaiian import who eventually made it big on the mainland, and his big moment came at the 1977 Fallnationals, where he not only scored his first and only win but also the last Top Fuel win for a Chevy-based engine. Shiroma’s Rodeck-powered machine defeated Frank Bradley, James Warren, and Northwest favorite Ernie Hall to reach the final to take on Rance McDaniel, but McDaniel was unable to fire his similarly motivated “Valley Fever” entry and Shiroma soloed to victory.

Billy Meyer broke Don Prudhomme’s two-year stranglehold on the Funny Car title in no small part due to Prudhomme not returning after the race was delayed a week by rain. Prudhomme, fresh off of his sixth U.S. Nationals win, had an insurmountable lead of more than 3,700 points on his way to a third straight championship so he could afford to miss the event, and apparently chose instead to run some planned match race dates, including the upcoming Last Drag Race at Irwindale Raceway. Meyer defeated “Big Jim” Dunn for the crown just six weeks after suffering major burns in a Funny Car fire in Montreal; Dunn was appearing in his first final since his stunning win in his rear-engined car five years earlier.

Glidden returned to the Pro Stock winner’s circle, defeating Frank Iaconio in the final, as he also would do the following year.

The other highlight of the event was this sky-scraping wheelstand by Jerry "the King" Ruth during qualifying. Here's how it was explained to me during an interview for a Racers Scrapbook column I did with him in 2017: "Looks like I had too much gear in it; it was a quick-change rear end, and you could change ratios with the flick of a finger. I guess I was changing things I shouldn’t have been changing. I remember it actually going past center; I’m not sure how it came back down. I remember it landed hard and knocked both front tires off it and bent it up a bit, but we got it fixed and ran the next day. ” Long live, the King.

Dale Armstrong’s Pro Comp win clinched the annual Grace Cup championship (a $15,000 payday to the Sportsman racer to earn the most points among all classes). Margaret Glembocki won in Super Stock, becoming just the sixth woman to win an NHRA national event behind Shirley Shahan, Judi Boertman, Judy Lilly, Shirley Muldowney, and Charlene Wood. Joe Williamson (Comp) and Larry Kopp (Modified) rounded out the event’s Sportsman winners.

1978: Popular local Top Fuel win; Glidden bags Pro Stock again

A year before they won the Top Fuel championship, Washington’s own Rob Bruins and R. Gaines Markley stormed to the Top Fuel win in Seattle. Bruins had taken over the driving duties from Markley in 1976, and this was their first win together, clinching with a final-round victory over Dave Uyehara.

Ron Colson drove Roland Leong’s Avanti Antennas Monza to the Funny Car victory over Dale Pulde while, as mentioned above, Gidden again won Pro Stock over Frank Iaconio and, in the process, lowered the Pro Stock national e.t. record to 7.49.

Dale Armstrong (Pro Comp), John Lingenfelter (Comp), and Larry Kopp (Modified) all won their second Fallnationals crown, while Val Hedworth claimed Super Stock and John Ancona was the winner in Stock.

1979: ‘Big Daddy' wins Top Fuel; Beadle bags Funny Car

Don Garlits closed 1979 with back-to-back wins in Seattle and at the World Finals in Ontario, the latter being his last NHRA Top Fuel victory for almost five years until his comeback at the 1984 U.S. Nationals. Garlits stopped reigning Top Fuel champ Kelly Brown in the Seattle final. Brown was hot off of his U.S. Nationals win, the eighth and final of his great career.

Raymond Beadle took over the Funny Car points lead from surprise season-long frontrunner Tom Hoover, who had led the points since winning the Winternationals, largely on the strength of divisional wins. Before defeating Jim Dunn in the final, Beadle beat Hoover in round two in Seattle, and Hoover’s first-round loss to some guy named John Force at the World Finals completed a heartbreak two-race drop from points leader to a sixth-place finish, all behind Beadle’s first world championship.

Frank Iaconio got some payback for two straight final-round Seattle losses to Bob Glidden by beating him in the 1979 final on an 8.49 to 8.47 holeshot, but it didn’t stop Glidden from winning his second straight and fifth overall championship.

Sportsman winners: Billy Williams (Pro Comp), Bobby Cross (Comp), Don Bowles (Modified), Terry Esslinger (Super Stock), and George Williams (Stock).

1980: Shirley’s back; Beadle and Glidden, too

After winning her first Top Fuel championship in 1979, Shirley Muldowney stunningly went winless over the next two seasons — even failing to finish in the top 10 in 1978 — but hit the ground running in 1980 with a win at the Winternationals. She surrendered the points lead to Gary Beck after Gainesville, and Beck led all the way to the World Finals. Although Muldowney also had won the Springnationals, it was her Seattle victory over Beck in round two and her final-round win over Marvin Graham that put her back into title contention for the second championship she would win in dramatic fashion at the World Finals, passing both Beck and second-place Jeb Allen on the final day of the season.

Beadle and the "Blue Max" clinched his second world championship with his semifinal victory over Billy Meyer then beat Dale Armstrong in Mike Kase’s Speed Racer to clinch the Wally, his second straight at the event.

Bob Glidden also finished up his impressive Seattle dominance with another Pro Stock win, this time over season-long points leader Lee Shepherd, a key victory that, like Muldowney, kept his championship hopes slimly alive heading to the World Finals. Shepherd, leading by two rounds, bowed out early to breakage at the Finals, and Glidden won the event and his third straight Pro Stock championship. Glidden’s World Finals win gave him his 31st victory, the most in NHRA history, breaking the tie he held with Don Prudhomme. Glidden would hold the record as the sport’s winningest driver for almost 20 years until John Force tied him at 85 wins in the 2000 season.

Billy Williams and Bobby Cross repeated their respective wins in Pro Comp and Comp, while Terry Hoard won Modified in his rotary-engined ”Samurai Warrior”  Mazda. Terry Esslinger won in Super Stock, while Northwest favorite Cal Queahpama took Stock honors.

The end (for now) of the FallNationals

In mid-1980, NHRA announced that it was adding two races to the 1981 schedule, the Southern Nationals in Atlanta and the Golden Gate Nationals at Fremont Raceway in Northern California, setting up an end-of-season “Western Swing” as it were (though nobody called it that) from Seattle to Fremont to the World Finals’ new home at Orange County International Raceway in Southern California.

However, in December, NHRA announced that the Fallnationals had been “put on the shelf for ‘81 in anticipation of a new development which will ensure a more successful event in 1982.” I’m not sure what the development was – and there’s no further mention of the event that I can find and the name was not resurrected until 1985 for the new Phoenix event – but the fact that weather had impacted the race in four of its six years in Seattle no doubt played into the decision. The problems apparently ran deeper than that as, before long, the track had switched to AHRA affiliation and, according to the Insider’s Northwest expert, Al Kean, held a national event in 1981 (the Autumn Nationals; how clever) that was poorly attended, had just eight-car fields, and also was dogged by rain..

Despite the challenges of racing in the Northwest in September, for six years the Fallnationals played an exciting and often pivotal role in the crowning of NHRA world champions, and I’m glad that the NHRA returned to this hotbed of fervent fans and continues to race there to this day.

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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