EVENT’S GOOD and BAD POINTS

Good

... Knowing you were attending the sport’s biggest race and having it proven to you

... Seeing obscure eastern cars that you’ve only read about

... Staging lanes that really did hold 100 Top Fuel dragsters

... Chris Karamesines’ low e.t. histrionics

... Top Fuelers being push started in the parking lots as late as midnight, the mechanics frantically trying to dial them in

... Annual showing of the Hell’s Angels, Satan’s Slaves, Galloping Gooses, et. al. In 1964, the one-percenters had their own bleacher

... Great parking lot fights

... Great pit and parking lot parties

Bad

... Rickety wooden bleachers that went right down to ground level

... Mediocre P.A.

... Andy Gump overload

... Roll-of-the-dice food, sometimes you eat it, and sometimes it eats you

... Waiting in near freezing a.m. temperatures for gates to open, and then having to bum rush the seats

... Oppressive heat

... Terrible exits

... Rain

NOW

At the conclusion of the original U.S. Fuel & Gas Championships in 1988, Bakersfield lay dormant for the most part until former NHRA Top Fuel World Champ Jack Williams took over the lease in 1993. Williams proposed to the Alamo, Calif.-based Good Guys, the country’s most prestigious nostalgia / street rodder operation, a plan to revive the old March Meet. Rather than utilize the services of contemporary Top Fuel cars, the Good Guys and Williams elected to run a front-motored blown nitro show according to nostalgia rules.

It’s a safe bet that most readers are well aware of the Goodguys races and car shows. They put out their own magazine, the Goodguys Goodtimes Gazette, and their events have been televised and filmed for video. Below we have put together a mini-compendium of modern-day Bakersfield March stats for your dancing and dining pleasure.

THE WINNERS (and final-round times)

^* - Just in case you didn’t know, Romine pushed his Clayton Harris-tuned dragster to nostalgia and front-motor Top Fuel’s first five-second run when he ran a 5.98, 237.46 in a first-round win over Mike McLennan at the Goodguys Summer Nitro Nationals at Sacramento Raceway Park in Calif., on July 13 of ‘96.

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