John Lindsay's "Impulse" roadster is escorted down track by (we think) Ed Moore. DRO file photo.

AN ALTERED FUTURE
All was not lost, however. On the same weekend of the 1973 U.S. Nationals, there was another race some 2,000 miles away that was just as much of a harbinger of the class' future, the inaugural Coca-Cola Fuel Altered Nationals at Tucson Dragway. Bob Hough's Arizona race track went out on a limb and held a qualified eight-car show for the diehards of the breed. Taking part were Sullivan, Dave Hough, Ed Moore in the Moore-Oates-Bradley/"Mob" roadster, Lee LeBaron, Leon Fitzgerald, the Lewis-Perry/"Yellow Submarine," Dennis Geisler's "Instant-T", and the event winner Howard Haight in the Wilson-Hazen-Haight '23-T. The annual Labor Day show would go down in history as the post-classic period's biggest Fuel Altered race until the track folded in the late 1980s.

It would be tracks like Tucson, Bill New's Firebird Raceway in Idaho, the Bonneville Raceway plant, the Las Vegas Speedrome, Sacramento Raceway, Los Angeles County Raceway, and later Bandimere Speedway that would book the Fuel Altered and keep the class alive to the present.

Moore, who would win five of the 12 Tucson Fuel Altered Nationals races (by his memory) said, "By 1973 and 1974 we were kind of an 'underground.' The Funny Cars were the king, but Dave Hough would book our group and I'd guess that we were good for a dozen maybe a few more dates a year, from 1975 until the 1980s. Of course, the dates weren't all eight-car shows, sometimes a track would only go with four cars, and sometimes just book a two out of three with a pair."

Complicating the picture for the altereds was the fact that they were all out-of-pocket racers: No big Funny Car-type sponsorships here. This slice of reality wound up hurting the Fuel Altereds when they performed. A car would run hard, but blow an engine and fail to make the next round. This brought in an alternate (if he could repair) or created a situation where a single run would crop up more often than not on the ladder. As far as DNQs went, there were none because there were probably a dozen (at best) Fuel Altereds that ran in the western U.S.

New faces did appear as the 1980s came up. Bill Pratt's Drag Racing List collected the names of 28 active or semi-active Fuel Altered racers from around the country at the beginning of 1988. Among the stars were the late Ray Higley, the former driver of the Higley-Hubbard-Halstead altered of the early 1960s, who came up with the Harding Moving-backed Fuel Altered, and "Impulse" Funny Car racer John Lindsay and his driver, former Funny Car match racer Bryan Raines (and later Moore). John Aleman of Arizona ran his "Sheepherder" with success, utilizing the skills of former NHRA Funny Car national-event winner Tripp Shumake and former classic era driver Henry Harrison, midwest circuit racer Mac McCord's "Gorilla", engine builder Dave Benjamin, and the guy who started this article, Ron Fassl also came in during this period.

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