NHRA at Chicago By Susan Wade Photos by Jeff Burk 5/25/04

Heartland Park Topeka has a tough act to follow, after NHRA accented the “go” in Chicago.

Despite daily thunderstorms and tornado scares, Route 66 Raceway showed off its glassy perfection May 21-23 for the eighth stop in the NHRA Powerade Drag Racing Series. No fewer than five nitro-class drivers set superlatives as they spent the weekend outshining each other and rewriting national records.

However, the unfortunately unsponsored Route 66 Nationals was not without its soap-opera scenarios of vindication, threats made good, wild car rides, near catastrophies, sickening fraction-of-a-second mistakes and at least one sarcastic jab at NHRA policy.

Doug Kalitta put an exclamation mark on the event with his $40,000 Top Fuel victory over Brandon Bernstein. He said against Bernstein and the Budweiser/Lucas Oil Dragster “you have to make sure you have something to get by him.” Kalitta most certainly did. He drove the Mac Tools Dragster to a stunning 4.420-second elapsed time at 328.22 miles an hour.

It registered as the quickest lap in Top Fuel history, but he did not back it up within the required one percent. He missed the accomplishment by one-thousandth of a second. Still, he defended NHRA’s back-up rule: “It’s been there forever. It has some merit. My vote would be to keep it.”

One can only imagine what Kalitta could have clocked had he not experienced some glitches. “I was just about to the finish line and I threw the (blower) belt off,” he said.

Doug said that Rahn Tobler, who helped wife Shirley Muldowney to three titles, has provided consistency as his new crew chief. “He adds another dimension. He brings consistency to our tune-up and doesn’t always swing for the fence.”

In that final round, Bernstein was doing just that. Kenny Bernstein said that he and crew chief Tim Richards decided to “put a lot of horsepower into the car because we knew it was going to be a tough match.”

Brandon Bernstein was not going to coast after setting the national speed record at 333.41 mph in the first round and backing up the run up in the semifinals at 332.26. He is now known as the “Prince of Speed.”

But the sophomore Top Fuel driver was too busy trying to tame his unruly car to offer Kalitta a response any better than 5.283 seconds at 182.08 mph. The famous red car, which had carried both father and son to victory in six of the previous 11 races, launched stubbornly, then did a wheelstand at about half-track.

“It left extremely hard,” Bernstein said. “It was marching along and it set the front end down, and when it really started to pour it to it. It (the front end) picked it up so fast, it just kept going. It wasn’t going to go down. There wasn’t anything I could do but lift.