Still the popularity of the Funny Cars was cutting into the altereds noticeably. Crowd turnouts were not huge for the Fuel Altereds. That year, stars like "Jungle Jim" Liberman and Harry Schmidt's "Blue Max" booked close to 100 dates, a figure that dwarfed all Fuel Altered shows held in the country that year.

Worse than that, there were key defections from the ranks. There was no Mondello & Matsubara Fiat in 1970. Joe Mondello kept with his manufacturing company and Sush Matsubara signed up to drive Joe Pisano's Camaro. Dale Emery moved back to Texas drive the Rousin and O'Hare/"Wild Cherry" Top Fueler, and soon after Rich Guasco put the "Pure Hell" name on a Dodge Demon Funny Car. Others would follow.

THE LAST HURRAH FOR FUEL ALTEREDS
The last really great year for classic Fuel Altered competition was 1971. Only 18 shows were held in the Southwest that year, but, for the first time in a number of years, the eastern United States developed local talent of their own. Chief among these East Coast bombers was the blown 426-powered "Bad Habit" '48 Fiat of Charlie Hill and driver Bob Parmer from Wrightsville, Pa.

On May 29 at Maple Grove Raceway Park in Mohnton, Pa., Parmer and Hill stunned the sport with a 7.01/182.18 while beating Dan Collins in "the Rat Trap" at an East Coast vs. West Coast Fuel Altered show. Prior to that race, the first 6-second run appeared to be a cut and dried West Coast thing.

A week earlier at Fremont in Northern California, Harry Burkholder and the Burkholder Bros. Fiat ran the sport's first 7.0 with a 7.06 low e.t. Not only that, but event winner Yoshioka's "Stone-T" had run 7.10 twice. Then, from out of nowhere, some guy from Pennsylvania nearly aces them all out a week later.

THE FIRST IN THE 6's.
West Coast honor was upheld in the race to the first six when Leroy Chadderton booted the J&M Speed Center roadster to an astounding 6.89 at Tri-City Dragway in Saginaw, Michigan on (or about) August 2. Parmer and Hill showed they were no flukes as the next week they charged to a 6.96 at Maple Grove. At Indy that year, Leon Fitzgerald won the AA/FA class, but he needed a little luck and, of course, horsepower. Fitzgerald's Bantam ran a final-round 7.25/212.26 to beat the Fiat's out of shape 7.59/168.53. However, Parmer and Hill didn't go home empty handed. They ran NHRA's first Fuel Altered six, a 6.91, which backed up a 7.01 for the hot rod association record.

Chadderton didn't sit around during this period. He returned to Southern California and blistered the Orange County timers on August 21 to a 6.77/201.34.

It was Chadderton, in the opinion of this writer, who won the last great classic Fuel Altered show, the 1971 Irwindale Grand Prix 16-car blaster on October 2. In addition to the size of the show and the $1,000 purse, Irwindale Raceway management put up $1,000 for the first Altered driver in the sixes. Chadderton won it all, but Gary Hazen aboard the Velebil & Hazen/"Panic" roadster left everyone gasping for breath when he red-lighted away the best Fuel Altered run in history a 6.71/216.86 "loss" to the Lewis-Perry/"Yellow Submarine."

And that was it. Fuel Altered shows did not disappear, but Southern California for the next couple of years was no longer the hub for this type of racing. The first Fuel Altered show in California wasn't hosted until April 16 and that was at Fremont. From scanning the pages of Drag News, only three headined Fuel Altered shows were run.

At the 1972 Orange County Nitro Championships, just three cars (of a pre-entered 10 cars), Lee LeBaron's Fuel Altered and the alcohol-motivated AA/A roadster of the Lawce Bros. and Sherm Gunn, along with the similarly classed Greg Bellemeur's "Easy Rider" Fiat were the only cars to show. Small wonder as to why.

DRIVERS LEAVE ALTERED RANKS
By January 1972, the following ex-Fuel and alcohol altered drivers had moved to Funny Car. Jim Dunn, Sush Matsubara, Dale Emery, Leroy Chadderton, Gary Hazen, Tom Ferraro, Dave Bowman, Gary Southern, Ron O'Donnell, Henry Harrison, Harry Burkholder, Bob Hankins, Gary Read, the Trillo Bros., and even Top Fuel standout, Dave Beebe (who drove the J&S Speed Center roadster) had crossed over to Funny Car and a few to Top Fuel. Swallowed up in this exodus was the Fitzgerald Fuel Altered tour, which fizzled out at midyear.

Copyright 1999-2001, Drag Racing Online and Racing Net Source