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The impact of the Comets arrival in '66 would be hard to overstate as during an era of modified stock frames and steel bodies with a few glass/alum body parts, the Comets were tube frame/fliptop all glass bodies and they were built to be racecars starting with a clean sheet of paper. The average blown FC of the day weighed about 3000-3200 lbs. and the Comets were under 1800 lbs.

I was with Beswick at the time and one look told us we were in serious doo doo with a 3200 lb., GTO blower or not. In fact all the blown cars had the same problem. Naturally we knew we needed the same tube frame/all glass body but with a blown motor, but it was a year (1967) before anyone did that. In the mean time we pulled Arnie’s '63 Tempest out of storage and started to build the lightest car possible with what we had to work with and were able to get it down about 600 lbs. from the GTO.

The tracks were calling every day wanting the GTO to match race with Nicholson and we were putting them off as we knew we had nothing for the Comets at that time. The Mr. Norm team took about the same approach as they bought a USED (the factory did not want a supercharged engine in their cars) factory injected car with the titanium K-member and light fender/doors/etc. and installed the blown motor from the old car.

Both the Nicholson (Earl Wade) and Schartman’s (Amos Satterlee) Comets were killing everyone on a weekly basis. Arnie had hired me from Mr. Norm’s with the promise of driving the second car, so I had been squirreling away parts for “MY” motor for months.

One of the more serious problems of running a supercharged Pontiac on nitro was the lack of available parts; we had been running more compression and less Nitro than I wanted because of the pistons we were forced to use. We got our new custom ForgedTrue low compression nitro pistons and I had our new high percent Nitro motor ready for the GTO as we were going to run our “standard” motor in the Tempest to start out with a proven combination.

Arnie got a call from a track in Nashville who offered him huge money to come and run Nicholson’s Comet. I will let you guess where “MY” motor went. I don’t believe Nicholson had lost a race with the new Comet until that Friday night when we beat him fair and square three straight, proving the independent blown cars could run with the Comets IF you got light enough.

I can recall at least two other times during that year ('66) we were able to take a modified Pontiac Tempest car with a real Pontiac motor and beat the best the factories had, but it was clear were this was headed—tube frame/all glass bodies, still a year away for the Independents.

The Sunday following our Friday night match up with Dyno Don, I drove the GTO against a new FC team from Chicago who at the time had an altered wheelbase car sponsored by Sedlak Plymouth. The following year ('67) this group would field a new car with a catchy name “The Chi-town Hustler” soon reached near immortal status as the “Father” of the 1000 foot smokey burnout. One of the crew has gone on to do well as a crew chief, don’t you think??

By the following year ('67) I was with Bill Taylor and his “Kingfish Barracuda.” This was a “killer” car from the start, as I believe this was one of the first nitro FCs to have all the pieces of the Funny Car puzzle together at one time--tube frame, fliptop glass body and a 426 Hemi blown on nitro. Taylor sold this car after a very short time but the performance of this car during the short time we ran it is what FORCED the factory cars to go to blowers.

I went to work for Nicholson ('68/'69) during the next big change as the factory cars went to blowers. This was the SOHC era for a couple of years, with Nicholson winning Indy in '68 in whatever they were calling the class that year and the Mickey Thompson/ Ongais/ Satterlee Mustang winning Indy in '69 in the new stand-alone Nitro Funny Car class.

The Pat Foster-built M/T Mustangs were another change and were the first of the narrow chassis/dragster roll cage/Zoomie header type cars. By mid-1971 the “hot setup” was the narrow chassis and body---Crowerglide clutch---Lenco or B&J 2 speed---butterfly steering wheel and a hand brake not too different from today.

From that time on the Nitro FC history I have read is pretty accurate so I won’t repeat what you have read other places.

The “Glory Years” of Nitro FC match racing was really in two parts as from 1965-1968 there was no Nitro FC class at major events. During this time their were at least 30 cars running 30 dates per year, three runs per date—that’s 2700 runs per year for several years. There were NO RULES/NO LICENSE/NO TECH and no need.

From 1969 to say 1982 you did need to have a Nitro License and meet some safety rules but on the match race circuit there were NO RULES for engine size, weight, blower size/overdrive, nitro percent, gear ratio or anything else for that matter.

How could we have had thousands and thousands of runs and the BEST NITRO FC RACING OF ALL TIME under these conditions you ask? Hey, maybe we have too many rules now, just a thought from someone who started racing Nitro in 1958 and made a living at it for over 30 years.

Stay tuned for Part 3!