NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

It’s the dog days of summer, and even here in California it’s getting unusually muggy, bringing back memories of sweltering July days spent at the NHRA Summernationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, N.J. The race is long gone now, discontinued when the Napp family sold the facility back in 2017, but the memories live on for the legions of fans who called “E-Town” their home for decades.

Alex Westner was one of those loyal fans and recently shared some of his late 1970s memories from the event with me.

For Westner, the road to a lifetime of drag racing fandom began sometime in the mid-1960s, when his older brother took him to his first drag race. That first visit left an impression that never really faded. Before long, Westner had a favorite: Bill Flynn and the Yankee Peddler, which he remembers as a '66 Plymouth Barracuda. Watching Flynn match race Malcolm Durham and his Strip Blazer IV was, in Westner’s words, “breathtaking to say the least.”

And one of those memories eventually came full circle. Among the photographs and magazine clippings he had once collected was a centerfold image of Flynn's Yankee Peddler. Decades later, Westner found that same image on the internet — and even managed to find a model of the car on eBay.

He kept track of the numbers, too, recording the speeds and elapsed times in notes that, along with photographs and magazine clippings, unfortunately disappeared over the years.

“Needless to say, if I can recall, the speeds were around 170 mph, with times around eight seconds in the quarter-mile,” he said.

But it wasn't just the racing that captivated Westner. In Englishtown, the entire ritual of a drag race was part of the experience. He remembers watching crews prepare the starting line, laying down rosin in the burnout boxes, and the combination of the rosin, burning rubber, and nitro became part of the sensory memory of those early trips.

“The smell lingered on, just as nitro does, and I could smell it on my clothes after getting home after each visit to Englishtown,” he shared.

As Westner's interest in drag racing grew, so did his desire to document what he was seeing. During the years he attended the Summernationals at Englishtown, photography became another part of the experience.

His equipment evolved over the years. His first camera was a Minolta SRT-201 that his brother gave him, followed by a Minolta SRT-202 and a Minolta XG-7. He also eventually owned a Nikon 8008.

His brother had also given him something even more unusual: a Nikon 8mm movie camera he had acquired while serving in Vietnam in 1967 or 1968. Westner used it once in Englishtown.

He also became increasingly selective about what he photographed, focusing on the drivers and cars that stood out in the NHRA community at the time. His photographic itinerary included shots from the grandstands and the pits and, in later years, attempts to collect autographs from some of the drivers and the cars he had photographed.

The 50-year-old photographs he has been able to recover decades later provide another connection to those days. Some were taken from slides and film negatives and converted into digital files.

Westner is quick to laugh at his own early photographic efforts.

“I was not the professional that I am now,” he said, adding with a wink, “Just kidding.”

Here’s a look at some of his images with my commentary.

One of the great things about Englishtown in the 1970s and '80s was that the guardrails were not right up against the track, making for great full-side photos of the cars (imagine the iconic Don Garlits blowover photos from 1986 partially hidden by rails or walls). The extra room, however, allowed more than one racer to overdrive the car and end up in the grass, sometimes resulting in a nasty rollover (looking at you, Doug Hearsum). But the sightlines were awesome until guardwalls were installed in 1990.

Gotta dig this up-close-and-personal photo of Don “the Snake” Prudhomme stalking the staging lanes at Raceway Park alongside the Army Arrow. Prudhomme won the Summernationals six times: 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1982, and 1988.

And here’s the pink beauty that was Shirley Muldowney’s car in the lanes in 1977 or 1978, judging by the paint scheme and because Connie Kalitta is clearly still with the team. I believe that’s a young Scott Kalitta he’s addressing.

More staging lane memories with Top Fuel racer Tony Ceraolo and his Traveler dragster, which was crewed by his young daughters, Kathleen and Tonia. They were the Maddi and Macie Gordons of the late 1970s. After he quit racing, Ceraolo earned a Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.) degree at Yeshiva University in the Bronx and went on to have a long, impactful career at the New York City Board of Education, serving others through his expertise in human behavior. Ceraolo passed away just three months ago, May 22, at age 84.

Hard to say exactly what this year is, but it’s Kenny Bernstein’s Chelsea King Arrow, 1978 or 1979. Bernstein, who cut his teeth on the Texas Top Fuel circuit back in the 1960s, then briefly ran Funny Car in the early 1970s, returned to the sport in 1977 after opening a successful line of Chelsea Street Pubs but did not run the Englishtown race that year. He raced there in 1978 with Leroy Goldstein tuning but fouled against Ron Colson and the Hawaiian in round one and also lost in round one in 1979 to Tripp Shumake in Johnny Loper’s car.

The Chelsea King was the chain’s signature sandwich and became the name of his Funny Car. It was a fortunate choice as in 1980 he landed sponsorship from Budweiser, the self-proclaimed “king of beers,” so changing the car’s name to Budweiser King was an easy choice.

And here’s “the Snake” again, and, from the location of the Cam2 decal and the addition of Pepsi sponsorship, I’m going to say this is probably 1978. Colson was a bit of a “Snake” killer at E-Town as, after Prudhomme won the 1976 and 1977 E-Town race back-to-back, Colson beat him in round two in 1978 and round one in 1979.

Billy Meyer’s Hawaiian Tropic Citation at the 1980 event. Images like this bring back great memories of how much more accessible the cars were back before the teams started pitting them between semi-trailers.

More of the same with the ATI Black Magic car, driven at this event by R.C. Sherman, but the car’s greatest magic moment at E-Town was with Al Segrini in the saddle taking on “Jungle Jim” Liberman in the final of the 1974 — Liberman's first NHRA final-round appearance — when “Jungle” did “Jungle” things, riding out a towering wheelie to midtrack before giving up the chase. Liberman would win the race the following year for his only NHRA Wally.

And speaking of the “Jungle”-man … That’s not him in the photo (I believe those are his arms visible under the body), but check out the guy in the background in the truck in the next pit. Everyone wanted to see Liberman in action.

Pro Stock pioneer “Dyno Don” Nicholson and his Mustang II. His semifinal finish in Englishtown in 1977, combined with wins in Gainesville, Columbus, and Indy, carried him to the world championship.

“Big Daddy’s” Swamp Rat (and crew) at rest. I’m going to say by the empty background that this is likely after the race. Garlits only won the Summernationals once, in 1985, but did win the Springnationals when it debuted in E-Town in 1968 before moving on to Dallas.

The Castronovo family’s Custom Body Enterprises cars were always first class and pretty, including this late 1970s Dart. Phil Castronovo drove the family car for years before handing over the seat to drivers that included Tom Prock (Austin Prock’s grandfather), Rick Johnson, Bobby Hilton, Tim Grose, Al Segrini, and Paul Smith.

The late 1970s were the era of the duallie crewcabs with fifth-wheel Chaparral trailers, but not everyone went that way, including huge E-Town favorite Bruce Larson, who was still rolling it old-school with his USA-1 Monza still riding on the back of a ramp truck.

The Chi-Town Hustler in full-smoke mode, performing the kind of burnouts that made the car and team legendary. This would be 1983, with the car decked out in Team Strange colors after sponsorship from the out-of-the-blue 1982 Funny Car champ, with Frank Hawley cracking the whip.

After unparalleled success in the alcohol ranks, Ken Veney, “the Wizard of Wadsworth," put together his first supercharged nitro burner, this Corvette Funny Car, in mid-1982. It was the first nitro engine to have billet heads, huge intake ports, and a roller cam and ran in the 6.0s the first time out; in its fourth race, the NHRA U.S. Nationals, Veney drove it to a record speed of 254.23 mph.

Speaking of nitro tech, here’s how they did it in the late 1970s and early 1980s: A single magneto with just one spark plug per cylinder fed by a single Enderle fuel pump that, at best, probably put out 20 gallons per minute, a far cry from today’s 120gpm units.

That’s it for Alex’s photos; thanks, buddy. But the Insider archives are full of Fan Fotos and other stuff from the Summernationals. Here’s a few more to check out.

The history of the Summernationals

Fan Fotos: 1970 Summernationals

Late-night finishes (Jungle's 1 a.m. win)

Summernationals Time Machine

Summernationals Time Machine, Part 2

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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