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| Although this photo was taken
at a different track, Jack Williams was the 1964 Top Fuel winner
at Riverside. (DRO file photo) |
Top Fuel went to the eliminator's hottest West Coast team, Crossley-Williams-Swan
out of Bakersfield. Their driver Jack Williams defeated Don Prudhomme
in the Greer-Black-Prudhomme dragster during Saturday's AA/FD class
eliminations and earned the right to sit out Sunday's eliminator race
and take on the winner.
Tony Waters, another Bakersfield driver, made the final that day on
a single when Prudhomme, who was driving the event's strongest car,
damaged the bearings from the previous round and couldn't make the final.
In that heat, Williams had it easy when Waters jumped the gun in the
Ernie Hashim Automotive dragster and red-lighted, netted him $2,000
plus a new Mustang.
The elapsed times and mph were better than average. Low E.T. and the
recent Winternationals had been a 7.85 by Jeep Hampshire and the Bakersfield
low e.t. was a 7.84 by Chris Karamesines. Prudhomme's 7.82 compared
nicely alongside those efforts.
As it was, both ends of the NHRA AA/FD national record were set. Zane
Shubert's low qualifying 7.91 in Chet Herbert's Chevy dragster was the
new elapsed time standard and Connie Swingle's 193.54 in Don Garlits'
Swamp Rat held up for speed.
And like any NHRA production, there was a full slate of eliminators.
The winners at the first race were Williams, Danny Ongais (Top Gas),
Ed Terry (Street), Ed Weddle (Comp), Gas Ronda (Stock), and Ron Mandella
(Junior Stock).
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| Here Jack Chrisman competes in 1967. (DRO
file photo) |
If there were any complaints, it was one voiced and echoed by this spectator,
who had the pleasure of attending five of the six Hot Rod meets.
The line-of-sight distance from the grandstands to the track was formidable,
not nearly as intimate a setting as Pomona, Lions, Fontana or San Fernando.
Also parking was a long way away, well past the top end traps, but other
than that the event smacked of a tradition waiting to happen.
From 1965 on, the Hot Rod show's big feature was a qualified
32-car Top Fuel show. Overwhelmingly, it was one of the big to-dos of
any of the years until its 1969 demise. The cream of the West Coast
fuel crop always attended, and beginning with the '65 program, Funny
Cars put in an appearance. Of course, the NHRA standard of a full complement
of Sportsman eliminators was maintained as well.
Of all the Hot Rod Magazine shows, the two best were probably
the 1965 and 1966 events, and the reason was performance.
The 1965 event was highlighted by the biggest upset in the series and
one of the largest in major competition. Little known Nando Haase wheeled
veteran campaigner John Smyser's Rader Wheels Spl. to the Top Fuel title.
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