CORDOVA NOTES

by Chris Martin

STRRREETTTCCCCHHHHH

Is there any car in drag racing longer than Jim Neilson's 30-foot Sportsandtravel.com "Limo" jet dragster? 30 feet is 360-inches. I mean, you could put Gary Scelzi's Winston car in the trunk of this thing.

MATCH RACE MADNESS
The first round of five separate match races on Friday night was as chaotic and nuts a first round of anything we could remember. UDRA management decided to forego its usual Combo Eliminator (for Fuel Altereds, front-motor Top Fuel dragsters) and have the drivers draw names out of a hat to determine best of three opponents for the weekend.

In round one, Scott Burton's "Deranged" '38 Fiat and Mike Bickett's '23-T Ford left way before the Tree was activated and then proceeded to get badly out of shape at half track and mercifully shut off. In the next race, Dennis Maudsley's "Crazy Critter" '48 Fiat took a 13.34 all-over-the-track single when Tim Board shook the parachute out of the Board & Parlier/MATCO Fiat and backed over it, cutting off airflow to the rear end.

DID MY CAR JUST COME BY HERE?

The Speed Sport Roadsters iron 392 grenades on the burnout. Driver Rex Stevens jr. watchs as his car motors down track. A speechless Bret Kepner watchs the scene. Kepner interviews Stevens after the event. photos by Vickie Kluge

Sometimes things happen at a dragstrip where all the fan/recipient/listener can do is query, "What the hell did I just see?" Don Garlits' overbackwards wheelie at the 1986 Summernationals, NHRA starter Rick Stewart's sliding on his back behind his 214-mph Top Fuel dragster at Bakersfield are just two. The following could easily be considered number three.

Staging for the third race of the match-race round on Friday night was Dom Paris in father Rico's twin rear-engine, blown and injected Chrysler-powered Top Fueler (the only one of its kind) against Rex Stevens Jr. in a perfect copy of the original rear-engine, wedge-shaped Fisher & Greth/Speed Sport roadster. After Paris did his burnout, Stevens attempted his, which led to a fireballing of the blower just past the water box. The car stopped quickly, about 20 feet past the line. However, the engine was still running, rpms up to a degree, and lurching forward. To the amazement of all, Stevens hurriedly unbuckled and jumped out of the car, which then rolled forward and motored down track to about the 1,100-foot mark where it parked itself on the wall. The image of the driver with his hands on his hips at the starting line, staring down track at his car leaving without him will be etched in the minds of all who saw it. Announcer Bret Kepner went totally slack-jawed and couldn't have been more stunned if the Mississippi Belle starting line hut had been carried away by a giant river moth.

Photos by Mike Garland

The kicker to this whole deal had to be what the Cordova Safety Safari radioed back to the tower when they arrived at the dead car. "Hey, you guys, you're not going to believe this, but there's no driver in this car."

Stevens approached this reporter late Saturday night and said (to paraphrase), "I was hoping we could've made a little better impression than that," and I thought to myself, 'No way in hell you could've improved on that psychic connection.' Un-flipping-believable. Drag racing from a different perspective. You best believe it, amigos.

CREASY GOES 290-MPH
Anyone who has been to Cordova Dragway for any length of time knows that it's not a Funny Car track. The Top Fuelers run okay (witness Shirley Muldowney's 319.22-mph blast at the IHRA Summer Nationals), but the "floppers" just don't hit it there for some reason. Both ends of the track record fell with Gary Densham's 5.27 netting the new e.t. mark, and Dale Creasy Jr., 290.32 turned in a winning final with Densham. The 290 obviously was the first of its type for the track and broke the old record by more than 10-mph.

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