Drag Racing Online - "Martin Chronicles"

HEY NILES!
This one's for my drag race buddy, Niles Smith, whom I haven't been to a race with in at least a year. That's the longest raceless span I can recall since I've known him and we've known each other since roughly 1954 or '55. Necessity was the mother of prevention, in this case.

When Jeff Burk decided to pull up my California roots and ship me to St. Louis, I had to concentrate on the task at hand when I was at this year's NHRA Winternationals. An occasional yak with a guy I'd been going to the races with for over 30 years and then back into the jungle to ferret out the jazz for our fledgling Drag Racing Online. Smith and I have done everything humanly possible at a drag race since we started going, and it bugged me that I was now in a survival mode and had only limited time to bounce stuff off a guy who's opinion meant a lot to me.

When Niles, as big a diehard drag race fan as I've ever met, had found out about NHRA's 90-percent rule, he was shot to the curb. I'm sure he thought, "After 50 years, we've got governors on the Top Fuelers, to hell with it." He didn't like it at all and "That's it for me," seemed to be the hit I got off his reaction. At first, I thought, it was an over-reaction and to some degree I still do, but that sense of knowing it all on my part, has flabbed out quite a bit since February. Top Fuel 2000 does, in a large part, suck. Not only that, but goddamit, the corporatization of the sport, necessary as it is, has given a lot of racers the temperments of old bridge club biddies. They're mad at everything it seems; and so it seems that nearly no one is having any fun.

Well, Niles, if you're reading this, and others who share similar prejudices, there is a small oasis in the desert of tassel-loafered lames who threaten to highwall this beloved activity of ours. Drag racing has been arthritic lately, I mean, c'mon, wow!, a 4.69 edges out a 4.74, big deal. But….

Smith, I went to the 47th annual World Series of Drag Racing at bucolic, farm-encircled Cordova Dragway in Illinois, the weekend before Indy and I feel rejuvenated. You didn't see anything as quick as a 4.69 to 4.74, but it didn't matter. The ghosts of drag racing's storied past and its most radical descendents held sway. You had the spirits of Bill Doner & Steve Evans, "Broadway Bob," Ben Christ and others flapping their leather wings in the canyons of your mind (apologies to Bob Lind and his hopeless "Illusive Butterfly of Love" 1960s hit record).

This three-day drag race (two of them for 54 booked-in Pro cars) featured the cool and the crazy, wild cars you would not believe, and high drama ala Shirley Muldowney whipping NHRA Winston Top Fuel boss Tony Schumacher in a Top Fuel two out of three, calling up images of the street-level, ultra fan-oriented match-race drama that hooked so many of us on the sport. I watched this race and thought, "Jeezus, now, you've got it."

UDRA Unlimited Pro Stock is so unlimited that blown cars and nitrous 700-cid '55 Chevys are allowed in eliminations. Two out of three match races involving (in a few cases) somewhat unexperienced Fuel Altered drivers on the verge of certain disaster, four top-level NHRA Funny Cars, and one incident where a driver bolts out of his exploding Fuel Altered on the starting line, only to watch it lumber down track to the 1,100-foot mark where it sideswipes the wall. Jets in the 5.40s at 290-mph, wheelstanders side-by-side at 9.20s and 150-mph, and eight-second, manually shifted and clutched 60's Camaros that run 8s at nearly 150-mph.

Top off the tank with $1.00 beer, $1.50 hot dogs, $2.00 cheeseburgers, and boisterous but non-violent fans in 20-row aluminum bleachers and it's Orange County International Raceway all over again. Orange County in a soybean field, though, rather than buttressed by the Santa Ana Freeway. Cordova, the town, is a tiny Mississippi River berg that was formed in 1836 and now has 436 people living it. With this race that number goes to 10,436. As the town grows in size, it kinda conjurs up the spirit when the Boozefighters and the Pissed Off Bastards of Burlington (one-percent motorcycle clubs) took over Hollister, Calif. in 1947. It's not that over-the-edge, but there is this feeling of drag racing being king for a day, the big deal in the neighborhood.

Niles, you remember Bret Kepner. He said the World Series of Drag Racing is the only drag event he announces anymore. Turned off by IHRA, the only reason he comes back to this race, is because it's his idea of what a drag race should be. A huge-ass fun extravaganza where the fans are put on a loose leash, but work on the honor system when it comes to behavior.

In fact, the only misbehaved guy I saw all weekend was a flippin' sponsor. The guy had either drunk too much or got decked by some guy next to the Andy Gumps just behind the timing tower, a lovely 1960s two-story, wooden job. The guy was prone on his shirtless back, speaking in tongues to the medics. NHRA and IHRA oughta learn from this. Give each sponsor suite a toughman cage, beer girls, and ringside seats. Other than that, Cordova was full bleachers, five deep on the fences, and fireworks both on the track and off the track.

I, and I think you too, like cars that have an edge to them. Cars with nicknames like "the Heckler" alcohol funny car, the "Twist and Shout" Dodge, Dennis Maudsley's "Crazy Critter" Fiat, the"Chicago Fire" fuel Fiat, the "Deranged" Fiat Fuel Altered, or cars with twin blown and injected fuel iron Chryslers behind the driver like Rico and Dom Paris's 1971 Top Fuel dragster. They don't always go straight, but neither did "Wild Willie" Borsch or "Jungle Jim" Liberman, but the show…ah, the show, they put on.

The World Series of Drag Racing was initiated in 1954 and introduced to Cordova Dragway Park in 1957; it's the oldest independent drag race in the world, and I, for one, want to see it go on forever. Just like the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Florida Marlins, or just about any other pro sports franchise, the straight-A students, the ducks, the bottom-liners, are calling the tune when it comes to drag racing and the fun, while not extinct, has taken it in the shorts to a significant degree. These big city hayseeds are of the same type mentality that would have us believe that everybody in the world holds up Harry Potter, the Back Street Boys, Christina Aguilera and other squirrel cage entertainment as the flowering of western civilization. Unhip, square stuff for square people. What horseshit.

Regrettably, these hustlers and their brethren have seized the key positions and, to a large degree, control drag racing. But Cordova is one of the outposts that has avoided this new virus. This is the last leg of the midwest super berserker shows where anyone who had a car that would not kill them while parked, could run.

Dude, I know it would take a huge effort on your part to get to Cordova from Canoga Park, Calif. The nostalgia races at Bakersfield, the GoodGuys shows and the like are fun, but not like the wild-ass mania at Cordova. The World Series is the past, the contemporary and the drug damaged thrown into one huge mixmaster, creating a creature that nearly devours its maker. I can't recommend this race highly enough.

The World Series has the heart and soul of Irwindale's 64 Funny Car show, the Orange County Manufacturers Meet, and the old Lions UDRA meets wrapped into one. In fact, UDRA brought its Unlimited Pro Stocks, and Alcohol Dragsters and Funny Cars.

It's 2000 and there are not that many shelters in the storm, but Cordova will do for now. Check out the stories and the pix on this race, and if Burk and I become millionaires or hundred thousand dollar-aires, Niles, I'll put your ass on a plane and we can watch this race like we used to do so many times before.

photo by Jeff Burk