THE GOLDEN YEARS

Funny Car's Greatest Drivers and Their Best Single Years.

by Chris Martin

In 1996, John Force's Castrol-backed Pontiac won an NHRA record 13 Funny Car titles along with that year's Winston season championship. Jeff Burk photo.

Predictably, when John Force won his record 86th career race at the recent NHRA Prestone Nationals in Joliet, Ill., a lot of fallout lay in this accomplishment's wake. Force's breaking of Bob Glidden's career mark was sort of like the fanfare that followed Tiger Woods win at the British Open where the 24-year-old golfer became the youngest man to win the Grand Slam and also claim his 24th tournament win in 89 starts. How does Woods' efforts stack up alongside those of a Jack Nicklaus and, in drag racing terms, how does Force's accomplishments stack up alongside what has gone on in the past?

In general, no one would debate Force's win total and nine Winston Funny Car titles as the topper of the class, but when the observer particularizes to the point of a single great year, we found the going a little foggier.

For example, in 1996 Force set the single season Funny Car event win total with 13 titles. That would appear to wrap up that package in terms of cold statistics. However, there have been other Funny Car racers who have not won as much, but who have nonetheless dominated every bit as much as Force did that year.

To wit, "Dyno Don" Nicholson's '66 Comet did not win a single NHRA national event (there were only four at the time) and only one AHRA national event, but there are those that say, no single car ever ruled Funny Car like his "Eliminator-1" Mercury Comet.

Nicholson's car was the first Funny Car to feature a tube chassis with a lift-up, single-piece fiberglass shell. After a minor disaster in its debut at the 1966 AHRA Winternationals where the body flew off the car on the top end, Nicholson began one of the great rampages in the history of the class.

"Dyno Don" Nicholson's 1966 Comet was probably the first genuine dominating Funny Car in drag racing history.

From April 10 to July 16, Nicholson posted 53 round-wins compared to two losses. There was no question that his fuel-burning, injected nitro, 427 SOHC-cid Ford was light years ahead of the competition. The radical Logghe Stamping Co.-built piece rendered all other Funny Cars obsolete save for his teammate "Fast Eddie" Schartman, who was also wheeling a similar Logghe mount.

Among the most impressive factors in Nicholson's skein were the fact that there were a lot more cars than now, and that the tracks varied widely in quality. In regards to the track's little backwoods emporiums like Lasater Mountain in Alabama, Atlanta Speedshop Dragway in Covington, Ga., the fifth-mile facility at Clarksville, Tenn., and the Union Hill 3/16-miler near Nashville were nowhere near the plants such as U.S. 131 in Martin, Michigan, U.S. 30 in York, Pa, or Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wisc., and yet Nicholson held the track record at all of these facilities when 1966 came to a close.

In fact, on Sept. 14 at U.S. 131, Nicholson's Comet defeated Schartman in three straight rounds, clocking a 7.96, the first seven-second run in Funny Car history.

When Nicholson's final season score was totaled up (again, this is based on what appeared in print that season) he had a won-loss mark of 77-14. Force's national-record, excluding a half-dozen match race appearances was 68-6.

Force's hero, Don "the Snake" Prudhomme, was the pre-Force era racer that all other Funny Car competitors was compared to based on his four straight Winston titles (1975-1978). In this span, his 1976 season stands out the most.

Driving his dreaded U.S. Army-backed Chevy Monza, Prudhomme won seven of eight NHRA national events losing only once to Gary Burgin's "Orange Baron" Mustang II in the final at that year's U.S. Nationals. In that year, Prudhomme not only scorched the national event trail, but he bludgeoned the match racers as well. His 1976 match titles include the Irwindale 64 Funny Car show, the Byron (Ill.) Manufacturers Funny Car Championships, the Super Stock Nationals, the Popular Hot Rodding Championships, the World Series of Drag Racing at Cordova, Ill.., and the Orange County Manufacturers Funny Car Championships.

He ruled with an iron fist, and it's understandable to figure what Prudhomme might have done with a 23-race NHRA schedule like the one Force dealt with. When one considers that the match racers of the 1970s were also national-event campaigners, it's hard not to believe that Prudhomme would've given Force's 13 national event wins a run for their money.

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