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For example, both associations utilized the talents of the world’s best drag racer, Don Garlits, whose heart was more likely in the Kansas City, Missouri camp than California., but NHRA still ran a better publicized, a more professional, and competitive show in general. AHRA held twice as many shows, but their biggest race, the AHRA Nationals, was not seen on network television like ABC’s Wide World of Sports’ annual coverage of the U.S. Nationals. NHRA truly drew the best cars in all classes of competition for the most part. Oh, every great once in a while, a national event produced an upset, but by and large, the best pro racers won at the four annual NHRA nationals races. AHRA, on the other hand sanctioned a number of national events where the winners were veritable unknowns. Consider the following 1960’s Top Fuel winners at these respective national events:
These are all gutsy game competitors, but not on the level of the Garlits’, Don Prudhommes, “Hawaiians,” and Bennie Osborns of NHRA. It would be considerations like these that would sway the corporations in the mid-1970’s, to go one way or the other when it came to spending their marketing buck. Certainly, they figured (among other considerations) in R.J. Reynolds and its Winston brand of cigarettes’ decision to back the NHRA and IHRA racing series in 1975 rather than AHRA. Still despite occasional unknown winners, AHRA had a reputation for quality shows entering the 1970’s, ones that also produced winners like Garlits and Prudhomme. And even lacking television for the most part (the 1966 AHRA Nationals Funny Car / Super Stock show at Green Valley in Texas was televised by an independent company), the organization’s shows were eagerly awaited and supported at all stops on their tour. AHRA was hardly losing money by December of 1969. So what could the organization do for an encore at the dawn of the new decade? The midwesterners had two more aces up their sleeves as history shows.
The first card involved the AHRA grand plan at the beginning of 1970 calling for the introduction of the Grand American Series of Professional Drag Racing. AHRA president Jim Tice Sr., and his staff put together a program for a season-long points competition which would produce a World Champion for each eliminator. The pro classes would get the biggest hit with the Top Fuel winner earning a year-end check of $25,000. In addition, Tice gave himself and his organization a wedge to make money off the individual races. Unlike NHRA, Tice booked in eight top-draw Top Fuel and Funny Car drivers for every show, with each contract being negotiated independently. For example, Garlits represented a lot at the gate for Top Fuel fans, and he likely would make more per show than the King & Marshall team, a quality outfit themselves. Tice haggled it out this way with each of his 16 star drivers on pay scale. Garlits recalled that he received something on the order of a $2,500 guaranteed against his winnings per race in 1970. In other words, if Garlits entered a particular race and lost in round one, all he’d get was the first-round loser money. However, if he won the race and it paid $5,000, AHRA would give him $2,500 plus another check for $2,500. This represented a genuine upping of the ante for professional drag racing. The friendly weekend card game that drag racing had been playing in the fifties and sixties would shortly turn into a high stakes poker showdown, and given the eventual outcome, it was highly ironic that AHRA dealt the first hand. The invention of the Grand American Series and two years later, the big-dollar $35,000-to-win-Top Fuel / Funny Car Don Garlits PRA National Challenge, began a process that would change drag racing forever, and, unfortunately as a bi-product, would wind up driving a stake through the heart of AHRA.
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