Photo by Jeff Burk

8/20/03

A Drag Racing Event Turns 50

ifty years ago, 1954, there were just two real drag races of any stature at all. In 1953, NHRA and the Pomona Valley Timing Association began an event called the Southern California Championships and hosted them at the site of today's NHRA Winternational and World Finals, the L.A. County Fairgrounds.

A thousand miles and change to the east, and a year later, in tiny Lawrenceville, Ill., the Automobile Timing Association of America (ATAA) hosted what was called the inaugural World Series of Drag Racing. This was held at an old World War II airstrip and remarkably enough the event drew 350 entrants and 7,000 fans.

Keep in mind that both of these races pre-dated any National Hot Rod Assn. or American Hot Rod Assn. national events (the first NHRA Nationals was held in 1955) or Bakersfield or any of that ilk. What is truly remarkable is that one of these two races is still run today and, of course, that's the World Series, which turns 50 this Aug. 22-23 at Cordova Raceway Park in extreme northwestern Illinois.

In some respects the race, if humanized, is kind of the Bob Hope of drag races, certainly the match race drag races. It is an event that one can truly say "Thanks For the Memories."

In just its first three years of existence the race produced one of the great historical runs when Lloyd Scott's "Bustle Bomb," (Cadillac in front and Olds motor behind the driver) won the 1955 race by running the sport's first 150-mph run. In the two that book-ended Scott's charge, Art Arfons, the great Bonneville racer, won with his "Green Monster" airplane-engine powered dragster, marking the only time a non-automobile-engined entry won a big drag racing event.

After those three events, it was decided that Lawrenceville was no longer big enough to hold the building crowds for the event, so local racer Bob Bartels bought some farm land, facing the Mississippi River, and built what is now Cordova Raceway Park.

The first Cordova World Series was another history maker because it established an emerging young Florida racer as someone to watch in drag racing. Don Garlits brought his "Swamp Rat I" up from Florida and during the course of eliminations, defeated the toughest fuel dragster in the land, the Emory Cook and Cliff Bedwell dragster out of San Diego, Calif. Although, Garlits lost in the final when he broke against Serop "Setto" Postoian's dragster, he proved that he would be a force in the sport.

The Scott and Garlits' episodes are just a few tales that have spun out of this remarkable old event. Virtually every name pro racer, with maybe just the exception of the last 5 or 10 years, has done something memorable here. Illinois' own Chris "the Golden Greek" Karamesines won two of the World Series' events in 1961 and 1963, and ran the event's first legit 200-mph run at the latter. Actually, the famed Speed Sport team of Lyle Fisher & "Red" Greth caught the first 200-mph time slip in 1960 aboard a fuel dragster sporting "the Greek's" crew chief Don Maynard's motor. They logged a questionable 204.54 in eliminations, but it might've not been all that fanciful as Maynard horsepower put made Karamesines the first driver over 200-mph five months earlier in Alton, Illinois.

All the greats of the past ran here; in addition to those mentioned above were the late "Sneaky Pete" Robinson, Bob Sullivan, Connie Kalitta, Bobby Vodnik, "The Guzler" of "Bud" Roche and Don Mattison, Don Prudhomme, Leffler & Loukas, all the great Funny Cars, including "the Chi-Town Hustler", Don Garlits' Dart roadster, Don Nicholson, and even John Force, showed up at Cordova the weekend before Indy. Virtually everybody.