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Paul Smith: A small oversight on the
part of TNN was not to have interviewed kingmaker Paul Smith after Gilbertson’s
big win. Given the fact that Toliver was such an overwhelming favorite,
they probably figured on interviewing Armstrong if they had crew chief
interviews planned at all. As stated above, Smith tuned Jeff Arend to
possibly the class’ last upset NHRA Funny Car win, and probably
does more with less than any nitro tuner out there.
Smith, who has driven Funny Cars and occasionally Top Fuelers since
1969, has always been under-financed, but overachieving. In 1975, Smith
and the independent Wilson-Franklin-Greer Monza finished third in the
first NHRA Winston top 10 Funny Car points standings, and in 1980 finished
10th after leading at midyear with Larry Coogle’s “Sting”
Trans Am. While never a winner as a driver of NHRA Funny Cars, Smith
has wrenched a number of national-event winners, one of the first being
Chuck Etchells’ first-career win at the 1990 Summernationals. Among
other drivers benefiting from Smith’s expertise were Jim Epler,
Danielle DePorter, his sons Mike and John, Arend, and now Gilbertson.
On the IHRA side of the ledger, Smith won two national-event Funny
Car titles in 10 final-round appearances and finished as high as second
place in the IHRA Winston Funny Car standings in 1986.
Gilbertson Amongst the Upsetters: While
it would seem that Bob Gilbertson’s Houston win would rate among
the all-time greatest NHRA upset Funny Car winners, he does have some
competition in that regard. True, John Force, and to a lesser degree
Cruz Pedregon, Chuck Etchells, and Al Hofmann so dominated the last
decade that almost anyone winning other than them would constitute an
upset. However, here are some that stood out to us.
| Jeff Arend |
1996 |
NHRA Keystone Nationals |
| Phil Burkart |
1999 |
NHRA Springnationals |
| Gary Clapshaw |
1995 |
NHRA Mid-South Nationals |
| Jim Epler |
1992 |
NHRA Winternationals |
| Craig Epperly |
1981 |
NHRA Springnationals |
| Sherm Gunn |
1984 |
NHRA Winston Finals |
| Sam Miller |
1971 |
NHRA LeGrandnational-Molson |
| K.C. Spurlock |
1990 |
NHRA Winternationals |
| Del Worsham |
1991 |
NHRA Summernationals |
Prudhomme’s Hall of Fame Clip: The
last minute of TNN’s Houston coverage involved a salute to Don
“the Snake” Prudhomme, who owned the winning Top Fuel car
at the event and a week earlier was inducted to the Talladega (Ala.)
Motorsports Hall of Fame. The footage was nothing that we haven’t
all seen before (it looked like Diamond P library material) but it was
the words from Prudhomme that stuck.
This is a paraphrasing, but Prudhomme said to interviewer Steve Evans,
“I really didn’t think what I had done was so great given
all the other guys out there, but It’s nice that people, your peers,
thought enough of me to do this.” It was something like that, and
was a nice closer for a good, as in B grade, show.
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