NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to the first DRAGSTER Insider column of 2012. I hope you enjoyed time off with your family, that all of your Christmas wish-list dreams were fulfilled, and that you’re ready for another year of shedding…

If Michael J. Fox can do it, so can we, so we’re going back to the future … er, back to the rear in the future – whatever. I should have known better than to call it Case Closed on the rear-engine Funny Car thread, cuz as soon as I did, here comes…

You don’t have to go to Disneyland to know that it’s a small world after all. Examples are everywhere around us, and the Internet surely has helped make it an even smaller world. Facebook is great, but me, I’m a bigger Twitter fan. It’s a fast way…

Maybe I’m overstating the case, but if you’re the kind of person who revels in the minute details of our sport’s history – and, hey, if you’re here, you probably are – I’m fixing to make your head explode like the…

The chassis for Ed Lenarth's Mid-Winder Funny Car. A Gremlin body was going to be used, but the car crashed in testing minus the body. Lenarth's powertrain layout…

Throughout the course of this growing rear-engine Funny Car thread, I’ve received several requests for more information on the Night Stalker Mustang that was the unlikely first Funny Car for the man who would become the king of the class, John Force…

When it comes to rear-engine Funny Cars, the engine may have been in the back, but the love from the Insider Nation is front and center, and the DI mailbag started overflowing. After…

If the high point in the all-too-short lifespan of the rear-engine Funny Car was Jim Dunn’s victory at the 1972 Supernationals, surely the low point was Dennis Geisler’s jaw-dropping backflip with Burt Berniker’s Hindsight Duster during qualifying…

It’s funny the things we take for granted. Most of the readers of this column have their own vast mental encyclopedias of drag racing knowledge, so I try not so much to regurgitate the history they already know by heart but to fill in the details…

One of those I heard from was John Largent, who was a race car painter “back in the day,” who was more than familiar with those works in progress and not a big fan of the unfinished look … for his own reasons. “Most of…

When Raymond Beadle famously lost the roof of his Blue Max at the 1981 Winternationals, it turned his Plymouth Horizon into a convertible. He had to tack the roof from Kenny Bernstein’s spare body onto his to make the final because the rules said (…

Last Friday, I promised a collection of Steve Reyes shots of primered race cars for today, but once he started sending me photos for our “ugly car” collection, it became clear that I had a big problem on my hands. Or, to be more precise, more than…

Drag racing machines have long been known as rolling pieces of art, with intricately designed paint schemes, pinstriping, gleaming chrome, and detail beyond what the outside world’s most obsessed might find acceptable, but (to borrow from the…

Forgive today’s later posting as I’m still sorting through the facts and figures from the great race this past weekend in Las Vegas and putting the finishing touches on my National DRAGSTER assignments from the event. I’ve also been…

Compared to those of other former world champs, Phil Castronovo’s Funny Car driving career was short-lived – spanning just a handful of seasons – but the recently departed 1971 NHRA class kingpin certainly left a legacy of…

 I had planned today to share – as promised Tuesday -- some stories behind the stories of former NHRA Funny Car world champ Phil Castronovo, who passed away Saturday, but, without boring you with details, one thing led to another, and I’m now…

Tuesday’s column about Don Nicholson bought out the love for the dyno man and a slew of those whose lives he touched. I’ll share some of those stories below as well as offer great additions to the Psycho Mustang tale I also wrote about earlier this…

I got an email from reader Derek Staples that, based on years of correspondence with the readers of this column, may well ring true with many of you. For many race fans of – ahem – advanced seniority, introduction to the sport sometimes came from a…

The return of Fan Fotos brought interesting feedback and fun stories to light. There were a lot of nice submissions about the Burkholder brothers, including the photo at right from Dave LeRoy,…

There has been so much to talk about lately that I’d forgotten how long it has been since I reached into the vault for Fan Fotos. In this column’s earlier years, I ran these pretty regularly as a way to thank everyone for their support and interest…

  First Top Fuel five: Missed it   First Funny Car five: Ditto   First 300: Not present  …

" width="100%" Welcome to Fan Fotos, the sequel! Steve Heuer – and quite a few others -- took advantage of my offer two weeks ago to display their 10 best fan photos, and here they are. Again, the purpose of this is to show off…

Even when you truly enjoy the subject matter, the reader response, and the thrill of telling a new story, writing a biweekly column can be tough. (I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I began this column more than four years ago as a thrice-…

As I knew it would, Tuesday’s column about early shutoffs elicited a few more head-slapping incidents of drivers lifting too soon or woofing the chute prematurely. So let’s take a look at a few more prime examples, then we’…

I coached youth hockey for my son’s teams for a number of years, and one of the things I always worked hard to remind the kids of was to keep playing until they heard the referee’s whistle; until then, the puck is live, and play is ongoing. You may…

Everyone who has ever owned a computer has a "my first computer" story. Whether your earliest experiences with the "ones and zeros" was a Commodore 64 that loaded programs from a cassette player or you just finally got wired and broke your computer'…

Back safe and sound and mostly caught up after the Big Go (my 29th straight!), and I thought I’d wrap up a few loose ends before moving on to our next topic. The 1977 NHRA U.S. Nationals Yearbook continues to be a favorite topic (I’m…

Whether you’re lost in the woods or tortuously filling and tying off scores of water balloons for your 4-year-old grandson’s “swim party,” it’s good to know you’re not alone, and when it comes to admiration for the 1977…

Drag racing fans still love the printed word (thank goodness for me!), which explains why a lot of us still have library-worthy collections of old drag racing magazines – Super Stock, Drag Racing USA, …

Lots of thumbs-up (and one thumbs-down, as you will read) for last Friday’s column about the Chi-Town Hustler and “Jungle Jim” Liberman, which I guess should well be expected seeing as how they’re two of a handful of surefire winning column topics…