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35 YEARS AGO ...
In mid-August, the two strangest-appearing and yet fastest (if not quickest) Funny Cars of the time met in a best of three at Cecil County Dragway in Md. Emery Cook wheeled Don Garlits' Dart (actually a '66 Dodge Dart roadster shell with Marvin Schwartz's old TF car dragster chassis on top) past Walt Stevens in the AMT model kit "Piranha" (a rear-engine "bathtub" roadster -- that's what it looked like), two out of three times. Cook's best lap was the best of the event, coming in the final with an 8.39/189.46... The country's quickest conventional Funny Car, Don Nicholson's Eliminator I Mercury Comet, set the elapsed time for the breed when an 8.16 popped over the Detroit Dragway p.a. That came in a winning match with John Dalliafor in the "Golden Commandos" Plymouth. Nicholson's best speed was 174.46 mph. ... The NASCAR Summer Championships were completed at Dragway 42 in West Salem, Ohio with Nick Marshall wheeling the Marshall & Vermilya dragster past Pete Robinson in the final. Hubert Platt's Mustang won the Heads Up Funny Car competition. Robinson had low e.t with a 7.48 lap; Marshall got speed at 216.86 mph ... Thweatt's Automotive in Long Beach, Calif., had a half-page ad on the back of Drag News, touting chrome-reversed wheels for $49.00. 25 YEARS AGO ...
Don Prudhomme's incredible 1976 season with his Army-backed Chevy Monza Funny Car rolled on impressively in August. He highlighted the month with wins at the NHRA Le Grandnational Molson, the Popular Hot Rodding drags, and both days of the Cordova Dragway World Series ... On Thursday of the U.S. Nationals at Indy, the very tail end of August, Prudhomme ran the year's only sub-six-second Funny Car run with a 5.97 qualifier ... At the aforementioned Le Grandnational, eventual NHRA Winston Pro Stock champ Larry Lombardo guided Bill Jenkins' Monza to the win. What was possibly more important was the runner-up. Wally Booth's AMC Hornet took second that weekend, but at NHRA's next biggie, he won the U.S. Nationals. The IHRA Springnationals at Bristol, Tenn., produced a big surprise in the Top Fuel final, when relatively unheralded Billy Graham took a 6.16 to 6.15 win over Don Garlits. Bob Glidden cleaned up in IHRA Pro Stock competition and was virtually uncatchable in the points with five of six races at the time. ... Glidden did all the IHRA damage with a Pinto. The long-term Ford racer showed at Indy with a Chevy Monza Pro Stocker and didn't have that good an outing. Like in DNQ. 15 YEARS AGO ... Don Garlits' first and only win at the NHRA Brainerd race in August
came in 1986 when he defeated Dick LaHaie in the final round ... For
one year, Popular Hot Rodding magazine hosted their annual August bash
under IHRA sanction. It was the only year that the race didn't produce
a Top Fuel winner of any sort, largely because the association had abandoned
the class a few years earlier. Hence, the big nitro winner was Kenny
Bernstein's "Budweiser King" Funny Car and Pro Stock went to Rickie
Smith ... The big PHR affair returned to the NHRA fold in two somewhat
feeble closing events in 1987 and 1988. |
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