10/8/04

A GENUINELY SUPER RACE

I don't think I'm sticking my neck out too much when I say this, but the greatest "doorslammer" race ever held was the first Super Stock Magazine Super Stock Nationals in 1965 … no contest.

This event, held on Saturday, August 7, 1965 at York U.S. 30 Dragway, changed the drag racing universe. When it was completed at a little after 3 a.m. the following Sunday, the sport was no longer the exclusive dominion of the fuel dragsters; there was a new game in town. Much like the effects that Elvis had on popular music or Charlie Parker on jazz, this spontaneous explosion in the Pennsylvania farm country had repercussions that are felt today. Without the first Super Stock Nationals, the advent of the Funny Car would have been greatly delayed. Hot stockers were always big in the south and to a lesser degree in the Northeast, but they didn't even begin to approach the allure that the Top Fuel cars had for the fans.

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I was a hardcore Top Fuel devotee. I grew up at Lions, San Fernando, Fontana, Irwindale, Pomona and Bakersfield and while I respected the doorslammers, to me, they were just the warm-up band before the big, featured act. After I read the coverage in Super Stock magazine, I felt in my bones that I had missed something very important in the sport. It was like being a rock 'n' roll buff and not being able to make it to the Monterey Pop Festival or Woodstock.

I wasn't kicking myself on this point; my chances of getting to York, Pa., in 1965 were about as stout as being an observer at the Iditerod sled dog races in Alaska. However, those altered wheelbases, the injector stacks through the hood, the nitro-methane, the primitive early blown Funny Cars, and the gigantic spillover-onto-the-track crowd, numbering 21,650 fans officially, tipped me that I shoulda been there. A mob like that can't be all that misguided; these cars had to be something really off the map.

That publicity affected me because when AHRA held their Nationals at Lions later that month, I had no plans to attend both weekends of that race. The first weekend was going to be the province of the Funny Cars and stockers and originally I was going to pass on that. The fuel cars were an entirely different deal. A 32-car field with Southern California's best; you're damn right I'll be there.

After the Super Stock race, both were on an even keel as far as my interest went.

But to return to York …

Like all first-time experiments, this race was not without flaws, but how could it be otherwise? On the surface, no one expected 21,000-plus to support this pioneer effort. And of course, the format and its newness created some trouble.

The Super Stock people broke it down this way. There would be four classes of competition: The top-billed unlimited class for nitro-burning Funny Cars, rear or front-motored, with no weight or cubic-inch restrictions, then a 2,700-pound class for all gas-burning injected, altered wheelbase cars, a 3,000-pound class for altered wheelbases with gas, carbs and injectors, and finally the 3,200-pound class with a 427-cid limit, a 105-inch minimum wheelbase and no injectors. After these eliminations, the class winners and the next 11 best elapsed times regardless of class would run in the Top or Heads Up Eliminator bracket. In the other finale, Handicap Eliminator, the class winners and the next two best elapsed times of each class and three from the 3400-pound group would tangle for that trophy.

By my count of the information available, there were roughly 50 cars on the property that filled this bill. As one could see by the format, if everything went off without a hitch, there shouldn't be too much in the way of stress. But …

Things happened. In the 2,700-pound class, Ronnie Sox and the Gate City Motor Company '65 Plymouth and Dave Strickler's similar mount suffered a bad start and the race had to be rerun. Because of the lateness of the hour, the two had to split the prize money and the race was never attempted.