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A challenging 'Challenge of the Sexes'
On Sunday, Alexis DeJoria came within just one round of becoming the third female to win an NHRA national event Funny Car crown before she smoked the tires in the final round against Ron Capps, yet it hardly made…
Leroy 'Doc' Hales: World's fastest doctor
WDIFL.com
In my early years here at NHRA, in the early 1980s, a lot of the staff spoke reverently of Leroy “Doc” Hales, a former Funny Car racer who had joined the NHRA team after his career and became an integral…
Fighting fires
(From above) Funny Car racers Jim Adolph, Shirley Muldowney, "Cogo" Eads, Barry Kelly, Ron Fassl, Butch Maas, and Jim Nicoll suffered nasty fires in '72-73.
(Top and bottom photos, Leslie Lovett; all others…
Force's fire-fighting flopper
John Force had quite a trial by fire in the early 1990s, including the famous incident in Memphis, Tenn. (below), after which he proclaimed, "I saw Elvis at 1,000 feet," and led to the creation of an over-the-top design…
Cleaning out the mailbag
Welcome to the day-late-and-a-topic-short DRAGSTER Insider for this week. I’m a day behind, like most of you are, after Memorial Day, and with travel Thursday to Englishtown for one of the greatest events on the tour precluding any chance…
Thirty years in heaven
(Above) Me, in 1985. Sharp-eyed readers will note the typewriter (electric at the time, but I started on a manual), the photo-sizing wheel (Photoshop? Ha!) and the pica-pole ruler by my left hand, and pen-and-paper method of…
Top Fuel blowovers, Part 4
It was more than two years between Shelly Anderson’s blowover at the 1996 Brainerd event and the next one to befall a racer, but Pat Dakin won’t soon forget when his number came up in Topeka in the fall of 1998. Racing Doug…
Top Fuel blowovers, Part 3
Like a Top Fueler flipping overbackward and returning to earth pointed in the wrong direction, I’m back for part three of the blowover chronicles, beginning with a little historical tidying up before we continue the chronological account of all…
Top Fuel blowovers, Part 2
At first blush, the twin blowovers in June 1986 and August 1987 by Don Garlits’ similarly enclosed front-end Swamp Rat XXX and 31 dragsters may have seemed to be a plague upon his streamliner design, but within a few years, it became clear that…
Top Fuel blowovers, Part 1
The streamliner series was, predictably, well-received, as I think we all have a soft spot in our hearts for experimentation and oddball efforts. As you may recall, very few of the streamliners or other aero-influenced Top…
Flying high: Harry Schmidt and the Blue Max
Harry Schmidt, right, with Raymond Beadle
(RayMar photo; Marc Bruederle collection)
Surprise. Bet you didn’t expect to see me this week, let alone on Thursday. Then again, I didn’t expect us to…
Remembering "the Bird"
Last Thursday, a strong turnout of the NHRA family came together at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum presented by Automobile Club of Southern California to honor our longtime friend Bernie Partridge, who died a week…
Top Fuel streamliners, the sequel
After Top Fuel’s streamlining experimentation phase in the mid-1960s burned out after just a few years, the conventional slingshot didn’t change much beyond the standard addition of a body to cover the frame of the “rail…
Streamliners of the '50s and '60s
With all of the talk about aero trickery that has been the natural byproduct of the wheel-pants thread, I’ve received quite a few requests for a more full accounting of Top Fuel streamlining efforts in the sport’s history.…
Your 'Grumpy' stories
Even a week later, it’s hard to believe that Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins is gone. His loss still resonates from garage to pit area, felt by anyone who called himself or herself a longtime race fan, and even among the racers…
Continuing the Breed-lovefest
(Above) Craig Breedlove, left, and engine builder Dave Carpenter with the new and still unpainted Spirit II outside of Quinn Epperly's shop
(Left) Breedlove held a model of Spirit of…
Farewell to the grumpy one
Everyone loved Bill Jenkins, but perhaps none more so than Linda Vaughn.
I had a whole other column ready to go – ahead of schedule even – when I got the news via text yesterday morning that we’d…
Smarty pants
Today’s history lesson on wheel pants comes out – literally -- of the clear blue sky from fellow drag racing history freak Bret Kepner, who pointed out that, “It was the airplane racers of the 1920s who, while competing in one of the top spectator…
Wheel pants: Aero aid, fashion statement, or dangerous duds?
In the early 1970s, I was a newly minted teenager in junior high, trying to impress the girls by styling in bell-bottom pants. Meanwhile, miles away geographically but never far from my brain, Top Fuel was going through its…
The first 300
Two weeks from today will mark the 20th anniversary of the breaking of one of drag racing’s great barriers, Kenny Bernstein’s shattering of the 300-mph plateau at the 1992 Gatornationals. While it took 15 years – 1960 to…
Readers Choice 2012
In the last two weeks, in addition to the normal writing that the National DRAGSTER editorial staff has been doing – Sportsman stories from Phoenix, previews for the Tire Kingdom NHRA Gatornationals presented by…
Welcome to No. 500
In May 2010, I reached the big 5-0, a milestone age for most males who begin to realize that maybe the ride they’ve been on has well passed its halfway mark. I’m more a glass-half-full guy and never thought much of it and…
The incredible Mr. Pickett
In 1974, I made my first trip to Irwindale Raceway for a Funny Car show. I don’t remember much of the specifics of the event, but I remember leaving with a crooked little grin on my 14-year-old face after seeing Pete Everett’s Pete’s Lil Demon Funny…
The flying doorstop
Dean Court photo
By basic appearance, today’s Top Fuelers haven’t changed much since “Big Daddy” Don Garlits debuted his successful rear-engine dragster at the 1971 Winternationals. The small…
Rocket roundup redux
The final buzzer had sounded on my weekly hockey game. It had been a hard-fought and heated battle with our longtime nemesis, each jockeying for the top spot in our division, that ended unsatisfyingly for both in a tie. Cross words (and crossed…
The Rat Roast: Who was roasting whom?
Photos by Jerry Foss
Celebrity roasts are always good fun, where friends and acquaintances take turns skewering the object of their affection, regaling the assembled multitudes with sordid stories, amusing…
Turns out, you're all rocketmen
Well, well, well … turns out the Insider Nation is full of closet rocket-car fans. I’ve never really written much about our hydrogen-peroxide-fueled friends before, but now that I have, the fond memories are flooding in.
The tale of “Capt. Jack”…
Pomona: SoCal drag racing's lifelong love
When you live in Southern California, you take for granted some sights not usually seen elsewhere. Movie stars in your local restaurants. Palm trees. Top-down convertibles in December. In-N-Out burgers. And, of course, NHRA Drag Racing in early…
'The Rocketman'
Even for a fan who grew up watching them in the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a lot that I didn’t know about rocket cars, but after spending time on the phone last year with "Capt. Jack" McClure and yesterday with “the…
Rocket roundup
In the interest of full disclosure – and many of my longtime column readers know this already – the two-part story on “Capt. Jack” McClure’s rocket go-kart was a long time coming. I did the interview about a year ago and –…