LOWEST PRE-5 BAKERSFIELD TIME / GOODGUYS:
Ted & Larry Gotelli — Ted Taylor — 6.00

FIRST, LOWEST (and only)
BAKERSFIELD / GOODGUYS FIVE:
Champion Speed Shop — Sammy Hale — 5.87 (1999)

THE BEST EVENT SPEED:
"WWII car" / Jim Herbert — Jim Murphy — 250.00 (1997)

THE CARS THEN AND NOW

At the 1988 Bakersfield race, the majority of cars were 300 inches long, take a few inches here and there, packing 500-cid aluminum engines, direct drive transmissions, twin magnetos, and turning 15-inch wide Goodyear rear rubber. Obviously, all were rear-engined.

Today’s nostalgia Top Fueler is a smaller caliber hand cannon. The wheelbase limit is 225-inches with a front-engine maximum cubic inch displacement of 470 inches. A single magneto is allowed and blower overdrive is 18-percent for aluminum motors and 25-percent for steel. Eleven-inch M&H spec tires launch the car.

THE SHOW THEN AND NOW

In its heyday, Bakersfield probably never held more than 20,000 fans on any day. The bleachers probably sat, in the most liberal of estimates, 10,000 fans with nearly double that amount standing. Of course when you add in Friday and Saturday qualifying, the crowd in general fluttered about the 30,000 mark. From the glory days of 1963 through 1966, it was indeed not unusual to draw 100 plus cars. (The 1966 show reportedly featured 112 cars.) In the early 1970s, the fields were still stout numbering anywhere from 40 to 50 cars for the 32-car show, which disappeared in 1979.

The modern Goodguys show is smaller in scale in everything except crowd. According to the organization’s PR chief, John Drummond, the 1999 Bakersfield March Meet drew easily 30,000 fans with 20 front-motored Top Fuelers trying for eight spots in what may have been the best of the modern shows. Below is the qualifying for that show and it takes little in the way of imagination to see that the racing was competitive and fast.

Veteran spectators obviously recognize Hale (drove for Ted Gotelli and Masters & Richter among others), Harris (the "Mountain Raider" TF), Jennings (Jennings Trucking AA / DA), Steiner (a variety of No. Calif. fuelers and funny cars), Alexander (Jim Brissette, Bill Wishart TFers, Ernie’s Camera TG), Schutz (Skinner Bros., Mr. Ed, Terry Hudson, "Raisin Express"), and Murphy (the "Holy Smokes," FC, Birky & Trappe TF, and Norm Hudson FC) as star-line competition, so the presentations obviously feature talented drivers and crews, racing at about1974 Bakersfield performance levels.

And what’s wrong with that? In 1974, Carl Olson wheeled his and Mike Kuhl’s “’Da Revell Fast Guys” fueler to the event’s only five, and then went on to outlast a bunch of 6.0 cars to win the race. It was performances like those that helped build the Bakersfield reputation. Given that Hale’s 5.87 came from a Chevy small block, making it the quickest run ever for that engine / motor alignment combo, and one can see that the new Bakersfield gladiators can only add to the event’s legend.

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