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Keeping NHRA Fans Up to Date

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Fire destroys Famoso structure but not season

06 Jan 2016
NHRA.com staff
News
An early-morning fire Wednesday damaged the tower at Auto Club Famoso Raceway, an NHRA member track that is home to NHRA’s California Hot Rod reunion and the annual March Meet. The Kern County Fire Department responded to the fire, but due…
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Southland Truck & Trailer named official heavy duty truck dealership of NHRA

05 Jan 2016
News
Southland Truck & Trailer, a leading distributor of high-quality heavy-duty trucks and trailers, has been named the official heavy duty truck dealership of NHRA. “Through this great sponsorship, we hope to bring people and trucks together…
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Something to prove

05 Jan 2016
Brad Littlefield, National Dragster Associate Editor
Tuesday Morning Crew Chief
Teams are busy gearing up for 2016 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing season with no shortage of motivation. Be it the up-and-coming teams or the most successful of the established stars, the term “good enough” is not in the vocabulary of…
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Enders named 2015's top driver by Autoweek magazine

04 Jan 2016
News
Two-time NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Pro Stock champion Erica Enders was named 2015 Driver of the Year by Autoweek magazine as part of its inaugural Autoweek Awards. Breaking with a longstanding tradition of naming the Best of the…
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NHRA unveils 2016 NHRA J&A Service Pro Mod Drag Racing Series schedule

04 Jan 2016
News
NHRA officials unveiled the 2016 NHRA J&A Service Pro Mod Drag Racing Series schedule today. In 2016, the NHRA J&A Service Pro Mod Drag Racing Series will compete at 10 NHRA national events. Highlighting the schedule once again in 2016 will…
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New Year's Resolution

04 Jan 2016
National Dragster staff
Poll Position
Welcome to 2016 and all that it may hold. It's that time of year again to promise yourself some changes. What's your New Year's Resolution? What’s Your New Year’s Resolution Going To Be? …
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Crampton geared up after sophomore surge

02 Jan 2016
Brad Littlefield, National DRAGSTER Associate Editor
News
  Richie Crampton and the Lucas Oil Top Fuel team had an excellent follow-up to their 2014 campaign during which Crampton won the 2014 Automobile Club of Southern California Road to the Future Award honoring the season’s top rookie on the…
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What's it all about?

01 Jan 2016
Phil Burgess, National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
No real new column today – even the Insider deserves a week off to celebrate the holidays – but just a chance to once again express my thanks to the loyal visitors to this little cyber pit space. It seems impossible that since I rolled out this…
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A Christmas Letter to My Younger Self

25 Dec 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Seems like it’s all the rage these days, especially among sports stars and rock 'n' rollers – of which I am neither – to offer up a little something called “Letter to My Younger Self,” in which one shares the wisdom of a lifetime with one’s…
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Drag racing on the tee-vee, 1976-style

18 Dec 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
While I was researching my last couple of columns about Ontario Motor Speedway and the Supernationals and World Finals, I used my typical National Dragster and magazine article resources but also got sucked into…
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Ontario's World Finals, 1974-80

11 Dec 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
We continue our look back at the great facility that was Ontario Motor Speedway this week with a recap of the seven editions of the World Finals held at the Southern California race facility, beginning with the 1974 event. NHRA’s sudden decision…
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NHRA Supernationals, 1970-73

04 Dec 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
The 1970 season was, by many accounts, one of the most important in NHRA history. It marked the first season for a new class, Pro Stock, and the first time that a season champion would be crowned in a fledgling class known…
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Ontario Motor Speedway

27 Nov 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Last week’s column about Funny Car elapsed times and the number of class-best passes that were recorded on the quarter-mile at Ontario Motor Speedway, along with what we have learned over the years about the track’s ability…
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Funny Car performance, then and now

20 Nov 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
If you are a fan of the Funny Car class – and hey, who isn’t? – the 2015 season was a spectacular one, not just for its dramatic finish on the final day of the schedule last Sunday in Pomona, but also for…
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Dirt biking with the stars

13 Nov 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Don Prudhomme, left, and National Dragster's Leslie Lovett, two-wheelin' it Fred Mooneyham’s brief mention last week about dirt-bike riding with his nitro peers in the 1970s and motocross…
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Teen Terrors of the '70s: 'Fearless Fred' Mooneyham

06 Nov 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Teenage Fred Mooneyham with his father, Gene, and crewmember Larry Faust. (Above) Mooneyham cut his teeth in a front-engine Top Fueler in Louisiana. (Below) Mooneyham and brother Gene…
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The Perils of Billy Meyer

30 Oct 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
As I teased in last week’s column, Billy Meyer’s road to Funny Car fame was not without some painful bumps, a trio of which I will share with you this week. As you read in the previous column, the impressive start of Meyer’s Funny Car career came…
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Teen Terrors of the '70s: Billy Meyer

23 Oct 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Of the Teen Terrors of the ‘70s that I’ve profiled the last few months, there’s no disputing that Billy Meyer enjoyed the longest and most successful career of all of them. He won national events in NHRA (12) and IHRA (eight…
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Happy birthday, Texas Motorplex

16 Oct 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
By the time you read this, I’ll be in Dallas for my annual trip to the AAA Texas NHRA FallNationals at Billy Meyer’s Texas Motorplex, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this season. I won’t say I’ve been to every NHRA…
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Remembering Dave Beebe

09 Oct 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Another hole was torn in the fabric of our racing family last weekend with the passing of Dave Beebe, whose surname was one of the more famous in our sport thanks to the accomplishments of he and brother Tim in the Top Fuel…
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Teen Terrors of the '70s: The Allison Brothers

02 Oct 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Randy and Gary Allison, circa 1972. Imagine, if you can, two young brothers with zero nitro-racing experience deciding to try their hand at Top Fuel. It’s not a scenario you can even begin to…
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Bill "Maverick" Golden

25 Sep 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Before he became one of the godfathers of wheelstanding, Golden earned his "Maverick" nickname with a succession of highly successful Dodge doorslammers. The Little Red Wagon…
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Teen Terrors of the '70s: John Stewart

04 Sep 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
John Stewart will forever be remembered by drag racing fans of the 1970s as the teenager who beat “Big Daddy” Don Garlits in his first ever side-by-side competition, but the kid from Sacramento, Calif., with the long hair…
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Teen Terrors of the '70s: Bobby Hilton

28 Aug 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
A lot of kids are born into racing families and follow their fathers into the sport, but few can claim the quick start that launched Bobby Hilton into his career as a teenage Top Fuel driver in the early 1970s. His dad,…
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Teen Terrors of the '70s: Jeb Allen

21 Aug 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
This is the first in a series of articles on teenage nitro drivers of the early 1970s, beginning with Jeb Allen, the only teen driver to win in a nitro class at an NHRA national event. He was the sport's youngest…
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Drag racing's teen terrors

14 Aug 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Nitro teen terrors of the 1970s (clockwise from above left): Billy Meyer, Jeb Allen, John Stewart, Randy Allison, and Bobby Hilton When you think of today…
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'The Likeable Logger'

07 Aug 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
I don’t remember which of our zany cast of characters here at National Dragster in the 1980s first labeled Top Fuel racer Earl Whiting “the likeable logger,” but whoever it was nailed it spot-on. The Washington…
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Pro Stock wheelies

31 Jul 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Last week’s announcement by the NHRA concerning Pro Stock rules changes targeted the concerns of many about the class, covering everything from technological relevance – i.e., no “factory hot rod” today has a carburetor – to fan appeal, and to me,…
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Remembering Doug Nash

24 Jul 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
It’s one thing to create a legacy doing something and quite another to create two legacies while doing two completely different things, but that’s how Doug Nash will be remembered. Fans of this column certainly will remember…
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From the Quotebook

17 Jul 2015
Phil Burgess, NHRA National Dragster Editor
DRAGSTER Insider
Last week, I shared some of the interesting tidbits that I’ve gathered throughout the years, little random bits of flotsam and jetsam that otherwise would have just floated around on my hard drive. Those were from my notebook; today, we delve into…
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