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MR. NORM vs. DON GAY, 1965
I can think of only one race with more pre-race vitriol than
this one and that was the 1964 Stone-Woods-Cook vs. "Big
John" Mazmanian best of three at Lions.
For months previous to the September 1965 blown Funny Car
race, Drag News' editorial pages had been filled with WWE-like
insults between the two blown nitro Funny Car powerhouses.
Both camps had huge high performance dealerships. Norm Kraus,
who owned Grand Spaulding Dodge in Chicago, was likely the
undisputed king for dealing muscle cars. Want a 426, with
a Gary Dyer-tuned, dual quad gun packed into a '65 Dodge Polara?
Come on in, I got just the car.
Carl Gay ran the Gay Pontiac dealership in Houston, Texas
and had a long history of winning high-performance Pontiac
Super Stocks. His 17-year-old son Don was the driver and when
they went to the blown Infinity '65 GTO, the good-looking
kid came out of the box ripping.
The letters in the trades were done sort of tongue in cheek.
Mr. Norm, who always dressed to the nines when he showed at
a track, looked the part of the high-rolling Chicago sharpie,
while Gay looked the roll of the wide-eyed, well-intentioned
kid trying to unseat the big noise from Illinois.
Mr. Norm had to be the favorite. In the few months that the
car existed he was able to handle a lot of big cars and terrorized
the Midwest. The match was a natural and it remained for Hall
of Fame promoter and one of the world's great natural wonders,
"Broadway Bob" Metzler of Great Lakes Dragway in
Union Grove, Wisconsin, to finally get these two side by side
on the race track.
Even though I couldn't be there, I was licking my chops, drooling
with envy at all the fans that were going to see what really
was either the first or at least one of the first great nitro-burning
blown Funny Car shows. I believe the date was September 14
and the race did take place ... but hardly anybody knew the
outcome.
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Drag racing journalism was in its infancy and Union Grove
just flat didn't file a report. The only thing I saw was Bob
Kruse's Midwest Notes, which gave a couple of graphs to the
event, reporting that Norm had won two straight over a breakage
plagued Gay. The only elapsed time that made print as far
as I know was an 8.98 by the Chicagoan and that was it.
Talk about a letdown. No photos, no nuthin.' (Said Jessica
Simpson NOT O.J. Simpson.)
Oh well. I did get a measure of revenge, because two months
later I got to see Mr. Norm run his historical 8.63 in pounding
Gay two straight. Still ...
Okay, I gotta break the No.1 rule in newspaper writing, it's
so sacrilegious to say, BUT,
needless to say (there I said it) there are other races that
I wish I had seen, but time, space and energy prevent me from
going any further.
I will say, along with holiday greetings, that anyone with
insider info on these races or others can contact me at our
headquarters in O'Fallon, MO. And there you go.
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