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The last three years of the Hot Rod drags produced great entertainment, but not at the above record clip. Mike Snively drove Roland Leong's week-old, unpainted "Hawaiian" Top Fueler to low e.t, top speed (7.07/221.66) and the Top Fuel win in 1967, and he was followed by Steve Carbone in 1968 aboard John Bateman's Atlas Tool Spl. for that win. The last Top Fuel winner was Larry Dixon Sr., in Jerry Johanssen and Don Madden's Howard Cam "Rattler" which got by Carbone in the 1969 finale. Carbone had actually left on the normally lightning quick Dixon and from the cockpit flashed the "V" for victory sign at about the 100-foot mark. No sooner had he done that than the motor in the Bob Creitz/Ed Donovan-owned dragster let go and Dixon got the win. And after that the Hot Rod drags let go and everyone came up a loser. Well, almost everyone. Publisher Ray Brock saw the end as a minor godsend of sorts. "The simple fact of the matter was that the race didn't make money," he said recently. "The whole idea for the race came from Petersen Publishing; Bob Petersen was a stock holder in the track. In 1964, even with the road race cars, the Riverside track just wasn't raking in the money. We had a meeting at Petersen and decided that we'd hold races to boost track revenue and get exposure for our various titles. Motor Trend would back a Grand National stock race, Hot Rod would back a drag race, and so on. "As far as drag racing went, it was like the track itself, an uphill battle. Riverside Raceway was not a drag strip; it was a road course. It went uphill, it had turns at the top end shut-off and I think I speak for all the Hot Rod people that we feared one day a dragster parachute would somehow get tangled in the Champion spectator crossover bridge at the end of the quarter and wreck some car. Another thing that came into the picture was that, despite the pre-press build-up, the track was fairly uncomfortable. It was dusty and dirty and, in the last three events, very hot. Even though they had good car turnouts, it just made no sense to go on with the event." Despite the Hot Rod race's demise, other magazines saw potential benefit in hosting events. In August of 1969, Argus Publishing's Popular Hot Rodding magazine hosted their first championship event at U.S. 131 Dragway in Martin, Michigan and they ran it in a fashion just like the Riverside race: NHRA eliminators top to bottom and National Records. Four years earlier Super Stock & Drag Illustrated hosted its first Super Stock Nationals at York U.S. 30 in York, Pennsylvania -- a race that would go down as the Funny Car pioneer era's most important race. The magazine races were an important factor in drag racing history and in future issues we'll tell you about more.
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