FAMOSO FUEL FINAL FRIDAY

John Keigley's Friday night fuel altered show July 15 in Bakersfield is shaping up to be quite an event. The final list of entrants includes two-time Night Fire Champion Greg Daebelliehn's "Fast N Forty" (shown), two-time AHRA Funny Car Champion Jeff Bennett's "No Mercy", former Nostalgia Top Fuel Champion Rich Howell's "Power Play", Dave Hix's "Hi Tech Racing", Jeff Deihl's "Witch Doctor", James Generaloa's "Impatient" and Ed Shwartz driving the beautiful "Estrus Racing" Fiat.

Also included are the alcohol cars of Dave Gruzen's "Malicious Mouse", Ron O'Haver's "Panic", Gil Valencia's "Mountain Raider" and Bob Murphy's "Wiley Coyote". Gates open at 5:00 PM and the fuel altereds start running at 8:30 PM. There is also a full bracket program on tap and there may be a couple of Nostalgia Nitro Funny Cars sneaking into the Bracket One staging lanes to test. (Bryan Ellis photo) [7-14-2005]

SOROKIN READIES FOR NITRO FC SEAT

Second generation driver Adam Sorokin is making the jump into a nitro funny car owned by Dave Smith. Sorokin drove for Smith in the California Independent Funny Car Association (CIFCA) where he was 2001 Rookie of the Year and 2002 F/C Champion. Smith acquired a Joe Gibbs car last driven by Tommy Johnson Jr. that now sports a late model Camaro body. Sorokin's dad, Mike, was driver of the legendary "Surfers" car with partners Bob Skinner and Tom Jobe in the mid-1960s.

The team will be testing this weekend at Famoso Raceway with a crew headed by Chris Nance and Dusty McWilliams and clutch maintained by Adam Rhodes. If all goes well in testing, the team hopes to enter up to five 2006 NHRA events and do some West Coast match racing. Sorokin needs to complete his license upgrade to Nitro Funny Car and will still be driving John Blanchard's Nostalgia Top Fuel Dragster at Goodguys events. [7-14-2005]

A DIAMOND IN GLENDORA

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If you've noticed some vintage drag racing video footage on the ESPN TV shows this season, it's a good thing. Last Fall NHRA acquired the former Diamond P library that had been in dispute for the past few years. The daunting task of sorting, categorizing and creating an inventory of our rich drag racing history is still going on with over 25,000 boxes of video and film now residing in Glendora.

Fortunately, another find among the boxes was some original film footage from the personal collection of NHRA founder Wally Parks that had been on loan for the old Diamond P productions.

The Agent cautions DO NOT call NHRA to order a VHS copy of your favorite Golden Gate Nationals memories. The video and film footage is not for retail consumer usage, but should continue to enhance the TV package in years to come. [7-14-2005]

NHRA AND IHRA NEED TO ADOPT TEN-WIDE FOR THE FUTURE

Drag racing's major sanctioning bodies have some major issues, not the least of which is that their core audience and participants seem to be getting "grayer" at a rapid rate. While drag racing's major competition for advertising dollars, sponsorships and media awareness, the circle track sanctioning bodies NASCAR, IRL and CART, find corporate-backed teenaged and early twenty-something drivers who can connect with and be related to by a much younger generation of racing fan, most of drag racing's stars are much closer to their 40th birthday than their 20th. (Read more in the most recent Burk's Blast)