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DALE ARMSTRONG

By Darr Hawthorne.
DRO file photos by Jeff Burk, Ron Lewis and Tim Marshall.

Into each great career, a little rain must fall. It's no secret that Dale Armstrong, one of the sport's greatest innovator/driver/mechanics, is in a bit of a slump with Jerry Toliver's WWF Funny Car team. However, anyone remotely familiar with Armstrong's career knows that this down period is only a temporary respite.

Armstrong has been racing high-powered nitro machinery dating back to 1966 and his "Canuck" Chevy II roadster Funny Car at Lions Dragstrip. The Canadian native became Pro Comp's (AA/DA, BB/FC, A/FC, A/FD) first superstar when he won the 1975 NHRA Winston World Champion and the W.R. Grace Sportsman Cup (the best NHRA Sportsman racer overall) with Jim Foust's "Alcoholic" Plymouth Satellite BB/Funny Car. In 1976, he followed by becoming IHRA's first dominator in the class when he won seven of nine IHRA Pro Comp National events for that league's world championship.

He won 12 NHRA Pro Comp national event titles in his seven-year Sportsman career, including three U.S. Nationals championships (1974, 1975, 1977). In IHRA action, Armstrong netted 14 IHRA event wins and two of their world championships.

In 1978, he switched to nitro, highlighting his driving career with membership in the eight-car Cragar Five-second Club in 1981 and the first NHRA Funny Car national record in the 5.8s with a 5.89 at the Winston World Finals the same year. He joined Kenny Bernstein's Budweiser operation as the crew chief and tuned his boss to four NHRA Funny Car world championships. He later tuned Bernstein to the first 300-mph run in a Top Fueler at Gainesville, Florida in 1992. After the 1995 season, Armstrong left Bernstein and crewed for racers like Don Prudhomme and his current driver Toliver.

Darr Hawthorne sat down recently with the father of the drag racing lock-up clutch and today's low profiled injector scoops for the following.

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