Why not B/ND, C/ND, D/ND?

Let's open up the Nostalgia
Dragster classes

Photos by Dale Wilson
9/8/03

Dale Wilson is a bracket racing "retiree" who was editor of Bracket Racing USA from 1991 to its demise in 1998. His latest dream is to return to racing in either a front-engine dragster, a slow motorcycle or the family Mazda wagon. Everything else he has is for sale.

sent NHRA's tech man, Jim Skelly, an e-mail of which I haven't received a reply as of three weeks ago. Actually, it was a suggestion, and the suggestion was this: Why not, for the year 2004 and beyond, have a B/Nostalgia Dragster, C/Nostalgia Dragster and D/Nostalgia Dragster for your Competition Eliminator classes?

Maybe Skelly was the wrong man to ask, maybe he is too busy, or maybe the question is dumb. Of the latter, I think not. Here's why I think not.

NHRA now includes A/Nostalgia Dragster in Competition Eliminator. The class is for front-engine dragsters that are limited to an engine size (400 cubic inches), steel heads and block, and injected alcohol for fuel. Substitute the designation "A/ND" for "Jr. Fuel" and you get the idea. When the class was born three or four years ago, I thought that was the neatest thing I'd ever heard about, in addition to the inclusion of Pro Modified cars, blown and unblown, and former Pro Stock Trucks, in the Comp Eliminator ranks.

You can figure out what happened next. Since A/Nostalgia Dragster competes in Comp, the cars race off an index. The first A/ND index was something like 8-flat, and the record was set at around 7.50 or 7.40, somewhere around there. Today it's a 7.03/190-plus mph record, set in July 2003 at the track in Sonoma, California by Wayne Ramay of Simi Valley with (I presume) a Bill Maropulos-built engine, Maropulos being an ace Competition Eliminator engine builder and a past NHRA world champ. The index is 7.70 and 4.90 (eighth-mile). I figure that in order to be competitive, I'd have to run a 7.20 at least, and the class, for guys like me, is unreachable. I ain't rich.

I'm having a front-engine dragster built as I write this. It is being put together by Tommy Harris of Fabrication Concepts in Hiram, Georgia, an hour's drive from home, and it will feature a plethora of parts goodies, such as a 355-inch Crane-cammed, B&M-blown and MSD-fired engine, with Wilwood disc brakes, Shoquist cooling, Barry Grant fuel system, Mickey Thompson slicks, B&M shifter, Dedenbear electronics and Auto Meter gauges, backed by a CSI trans-shielded trans and Strange rear end. We may put a Suncoast Race Cars/Richard Earle body on it just for laughs, or for the 2004 NHRA Hot Rod Reunion at Beech Bend/Bowling Green.