Bakersfield Or Bust!
3/8/06
akersfield’s March Meet is the last great independent event.
No, it’s not the oldest; that distinction belongs to the World Series Of Drag Racing, which predates even the U.S. Nationals. Having been fortunate enough to attend Cordova’s 50th-annual celebration in 2003, this West Coaster learned firsthand that the World Series is worthy of the accolades annually tossed its way by my Midwestern counterparts (especially Bret Kepner and Jeff Burk).
The March Meet was created when the Bakersfield Smokers guaranteed Don Garlits $1500 to appear at Famoso Drag Strip (where he blew his carbureted Chrysler qualifying, then broke a rebuilt engine while
staging for Round One). Garlits supplied this 1959 photo of his
disappointing West Coast debut, shot by a fan. Dig the "driving suit" and huge crowd. (Photographer unknown)
To Cordova’s credit, the World Series honors its proud heritage by attempting to run modern Top Fuel Dragsters and AA/Funny Cars, along with fuel altereds, jets, front-engined fuelers, fast doorslammers, and two of just about every other type of contraption that you can imagine. The pits look like Noah’s Ark!
The March Meet, in contrast, is an exercise in pure nostalgia, forbidding body styles newer than 1972, except on fuel coupes (1979). Bakersfield is stuck in the past, and proud of it. Again this year, no one will run in the Fours at Famoso Raceway, nor break the 300-mile-per-hour barrier. Any five-second or 250-mile-an-hour scoreboard display will earn responsible crewmembers big cheers on the return road. Nobody brings 7,000 horsepower because all they’d do is blow off the tires — like Tony Schumacher did last summer while “winning” the World Series title.
Why, then, rank Bakersfield first in the independent sweepstakes? In a word, it’s all about competition; true competition. Whereas Cordova’s few feature cars are “bought in” to engage in meaningless match races, Famoso’s 90-plus nitro-burners and blown-alcohol cars must battle through three qualifying sessions of serious bumping just to make the Top Fuel, Funny Car, A/Fuel or AA/”Gas” show, followed by two days of real, ladder-style eliminations. By Sunday afternoon, finalists will have made six or seven runs, all of which potentially affected the ultimate outcome — and definitely affected how much money was earned, as this is still an open show; no guarantees are paid. Old and hardcore fans appreciate that difference. They also appreciate the superior sound and smell of 90-plus-percent loads of nitro.