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11/8/05

atching the restored Blue Max nostalgia Funny Car click off a sub six-second run at the NHRA Fall Nationals was certainly most bitchin', but also struck a dissonant chord that echoed around in the vast chambers of my noggin for a few seconds after the run. When the echoing finally calmed down a little the big question came up loud and clear.

Why is it that I dig seeing Del Worsham run the restificated legend of Raymond Beadle down the 1320 more than I dig seeing the big show? Thanks to the miracle of TIVO, I got to re-evaluate the run a few times and do some ciphering. The first thing I noticed was the sound. That cackling beast sounded like a funny car should. Mean. Nasty. Dangerous. One bad hombre.

Second was the pageantry. Even though he was out there by himself running a single, the dry hop before the beams brought cheers from the crowd. It's all in the delivery, such as it is. Add a couple guys laying out the rosin and the trip through the time machine would have been complete. That single run at a national event brought additional notoriety to a segment of vintage drag racing that is gaining some serious momentum. With longtime nostalgia Top Fuel dragster drivers Jack "The Sheriff" Harris and Lee "California Trucker" Jennings putting together Funny Cars for next year, the action can only get hotter.

Enter Larry Pettit at the Goodguys Fuel & Gas Finals. Larry evidently witnessed the five-second run on the glass-smooth prepped track and said "watch this" as he clicked off a series of five-second runs on the legendary but certainly less than glass smooth track surface of Famoso raceway in Bakersfield. Lifting the front wheels of the Crazy Horse funny car out of the box he clicked off a beauty after beauty. Back in the pits after qualifying Larry and crew were all smiles, having merely nipped a piston or two. They prepared to take the win for the event, and the Championship for 2005, which they did.

Pettit and crew are an all-volunteer force. They all voluntarily spend an inordinate amount of time and money on getting a handle around messing with nitromethane. Off the track the body of the Crazy Horse stays at partner George Doty's Harleys and Hot Rods shop, and the rest rides over to Larry's two-car garage at home for maintenance. Larry and son spend available Saturdays banging in new sleeves and getting ready for the next time around.

Congratulations are most certainly in order for the first Goodguys VRA funny car to bust thorough the six-second barrier. No oildowns. No NHRA secret sub six-second run agents shutting down the show. Most important Larry Pettit, George Doty, and everyone involved went through great lengths to make certain the Crazy Horse looks like a nostalgia funny car should. When they were building the car, crewmember Ed Dugan brought over all his drag racing magazines from back in the day, and the entire crew poured through the pages to agree on the right look.

"The whole thing was to make it period correct. That's what we wanted to do," said Larry.

This brings me back to that dissonant chord echoing around in my noggin. The fact that Larry Pettit and everyone else have taken the time to make these Funny Cars look the way they do is what gets me and a bunch of other people back out to the middle of Bakerspatch to witness these guys toss header flames back and forth. While breaking into the fives is a stunning achievement, the real reason that folks come out to the nostalgia drags is to catch a bit of the drag racing legend, which certainly involved people running a nitro ride out of their two car garage, and definitely involved some bitchin' looking rides boogieing down the 1320.

Despite the obvious financial difficulties that lie behind fooling around with nitromethane, folks can come out to the nostalgia races and think, "hey, I could do that too." Witness the popularity of the NHRA Cacklefest. Here are people that have lovingly restored slingshot dragsters and put them on display for everyone to enjoy. These slingshots, whose sole original purpose was to motor down the strip as quickly as possible, don't go very quick at all. As a matter of fact, they post no ET whatsoever. Despite this folks really dig seeing them.

And while there's a large part of me that cringes at the very idea of cars originally designed to go as fast as possible going nowhere fast, the fans truly dig seeing the old slingshots restored to their former glory. I'm one of those fans. I dig the big NHRA show for the insane speeds and ETs, but not as much as I dig seeing recreated Funny Cars tossing it up in Bakerspatch. To each his or her own. There's a difference between the two shows, and that's a good thing. Let's hope this difference isn't lost as the nostalgia Funny Car scene gains momentum.

Retro Rant [10-7-05] Welcome to Mike Bumbeck, our newest columnist