1001 Drag Racing Facts. Doug Boyce

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       Tommy Ivo proved that if two were good then four were better. Tommy toured the country with a young Don Prudhomme, referring to the Snake as his “tire wiper.” Four nailhead Buicks and four-wheel drive got the job done.

      38 Ivo debuted Showboat at the 1961 NHRA Nationals. Describing the build, Tommy says, “I built a twin-bank in-tandem four-wheel-drive car with the front and rear engines chained together. The two left-side engines drove the front wheels, and the two right-side engines drove the rear wheels. This arrangement, pairing what were essentially two V-16 engines, allowed both banks to torque inward and counteract each other. Unfortunately, what I feared would happen did. Weight transfer from the initial launch unloaded the front wheels, and they broke loose excessively. The second problem was that the car weighed almost 4,000 pounds, so it wouldn’t ET. And although it ran upstairs, it was no winner. But the NHRA didn’t know that before it was done. They were getting nervous. Their thinking was simple: If my four-engine car ran proportionally as well as my twin, other guys were going to build them. And if that happened, they might not be as well built as my cars were, and they could start crashing through that era’s flimsy guardrails. So the NHRA said I could only run it as an exhibition car, the first to be so designated, but it broke my heart. In retrospect, it has become my signature car.” It had a Kent Fuller chassis, Bob Sorrell body, Dodge 1 truck front end, and a 1,856-ci engine gulping 2.5 gallons per run. Don Prudhomme, who shared driving chores initially, complained that the car drove too nicely.

      39 TV Tommy was a bit actor who never had a contract with one single Hollywood studio. This worked out great for Tommy as it allowed him more time to enjoy his first love, drag racing. His movie career ended in 1965, and one of his last roles was in the 1964 flick Bikini Beach, starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. The movie featured Showboat and Tommy (in an ape costume) in an unaccredited role.

      40 Ed Garlits, lost in the shadows of his older brother Don, had an impressive, although brief, driving career of his own. Ed started racing 1952 with a Buick-powered 1932 Ford roadster. By the following year, the Buick found its way into a C/Dragster that he and Don had built and christened Banana. The car earned the Florida state championship on its debut outing. Ed won Top Gas at the AHRA Championship in 1961 driving Banana “C” A/GD, rewriting the class record in the process with an 8.72 at 169.17 mph. Ed sold the car shortly after, choosing the married life over drag racing. Between 1974 and 1978, Ed worked as Don’s crew chief. He returned in 1992 to work on the crew, but retired for good three years later.

      41 Connie Kalitta, Michigan state champion, walked into Long Beach in November 1961 to steal away Top Eliminator. This was the first time anyone from out of state had won the eliminator in the track’s six years of running. In the final go, Kalitta’s blown Chrysler put away the twin-Chevy Howards Cams’ Special driven by Jack Chrisman. Getting the jump off the line, Kalitta held on for the win with an 8.73 at 169.49 mph to Chrisman’s 9.05 at 136.95 mph.

       Red Goble in the Destroyer Two cranked out an 8.24 at 191.48 at Kent, Washington. The rear-engine rail was the old Coleman brothers’ car.

      42 Hailing from Elk Ridge, Maryland, Bill and Dave Coleman have been credited for building one of the first successful rear-engine dragsters. The guys ran the Chevrolet-powered rail between 1959 and 1961, and at one time, it was considered the world’s fastest Chevy, clocking 8.70s times at 180 mph in September 1961.

      43 Chris Karamesines, in his Chizler I, clocked an unheard-of 204 mph in 8.80 seconds at Alton, Illinois, in 1960. Powering the 90-inch-wheelbase Chassis Research dragster was a 392 Hemi gulping 90-percent nitro and more than likely a pinch of the highly explosive hydrazine.

      44 San Fernando, September 4, 1960: Don Prudhomme earns what is believed to be his first and possibly only career grand slam. Don took his ex–Tommy Ivo Buick-powered rail to Top Eliminator honors defeating Tony Nancy’s roadster with a blistering 9.10 elapsed time. In addition to the record win was a top speed of the meet of 160.71 mph, which he ran while winning B/Dragster class.

      45 In February 1961, at Pomona, Mickey Thompson clocked a record-setting 125.96 mph in 11.27 seconds with a Pontiac 4-cylinder Dragmaster rail. Always innovative, Thompson derived the four by chopping off the driver-side bank of a 389 V-8. The remaining bank ran a stock bore (and stroke) while a GMC blower was mounted to the blank side.

      46 The Belmont Boys, Jesse and Walt Schranks, held the Standard 1320 elapsed-time record in August 1961 at 8.65 with their 276-inch Hemi Chassis Research B/Dragster. They set the record at Half Moon Bay with a 183.28 mph (which stood for almost two years). With the car that weighed less than 1,600 pounds, the brothers defeated the likes of McEwen and Zane Schubert at Lions in 1962, earning a $500 bond. Around 2012, the brothers gathered the remains of the car and built a spot-on clone.

      47 At the 1961 NHRA Nationals, nobody questioned the clocks when Tom McEwen in the McEwen & Adams 475-inch blown Olds laid down low ET and top speed with a 9.01 at 170.45 mph. But when unknown Sneaky Pete Robinson rolled off the trailer with his 352-inch blown and injected Chevy AA/Dragster and dropped low ET of the meet with a 8.68, the times seemed so far out, the tower initially refused to broadcast them. Pete commented, “I was pretty burned because they wouldn’t show me my times for two days, but they weighed me five times.” Jack Hart eventually had no choice but to relent and show Pete the numbers, as his clockings were just too consistent to be incorrect. Pete opened Sunday with a 8.52 and proceeded to beat Jack Chrisman and Eddie Hill on his way to a final face-off against Tom “not yet the Mongoose” McEwen. It was a close race, until half-track, when Robinson opened a slight lead, taking the win with an 8.86 at 170.77 mph to an 8.90 at 168.55 mph. Yup, Pete Robinson had arrived.

      48 In an interview back in the day, Pete recounted that he had blown his engine about a week prior to the 1961 Nationals. “I had gone through something like five engines that year and had only been out of state once. I was pretty much unknown when we headed to Indy with junk, and I mean junk.” Not only had Pete won Indy with a junk engine, he had only been in the 8s once before the Nationals, at Brooksville, Florida, where Gartlits clocked a 176 mph.

      49 Garlits’ 176-mph run came in November 1957. Until that time, he had been running a flathead in the rail and hitting 110 in 12.5 seconds. Blowing the transmission one day, Don decided to run his coupe through the traps; he hit 114 mph in the 14-second bracket. With times like those, Don knew that the first person to install a Hemi in a dragster was going to be unbeatable. According to a Hemmings article, Don’s wife, Pat, suggested they install the Hemi in the dragster. Pulling the 331 Hemi from his tow vehicle, a 1939 Ford coupe, Don dropped it into his dragster and became the first to run in excess of 170 mph.

      50 Drag racers are a versatile bunch, aren’t they? How about Hayden “the Stocker King” Proffitt, dominating the Winternationals with his Chevy in 1962 and then hopping into the Proffitt & Jones Pontiac-powered A/FD to face Don Prudhomme? The pair faced off in April 1962 at San Fernando, where Prudhomme, in Dick Balfatti’s 454-inch Chrysler rail, passed Proffitt with a 9.12 at 172.74 mph. Proffitt failed to adhere to “the shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line” theory.

      51 The all-dominating Greer, Black, and Prudhomme A/FD dragster made its debut on June 17, 1962, at Pomona. Prudhomme, stepping out of the Prudhomme-Zuechel rail, won Top Eliminator, set top speed, and ran the low ET of the meet. In the car’s first eliminator final, Prudhomme faced Lefty Mudersbach in the Howards Cams Special twin Chevy and defeated the AA/FD with an 8.73 at 177.51 mph. According to Hot Rod, between its debut and 1964, the Greer, Black, and Prudhomme rail went on a phenomenal 200/7 СКАЧАТЬ