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While racers like Don Prudhomme, Tom McEwen, Jerry Ruth, and James Warren were ripping on the coast and Texans like Bobby Langley, Vance Hunt, and the Carroll Bros. were charging in the midwest, racers opening doors like Bud Faubel, Bob Harrop, Al Eckstrand, Bill Jenkins, Phil Bonner, Bill Lawton, the Ramchargers, Don Nicholson, and others were becoming household words on the Atlantic seaboard. All of the latter group figured in best of three match races at haunts like York, Cecil County Dragaway, Capitol Raceway, Aquasco in Maryland, Atco Raceway, Suffolk Raceway, Old Dominion in Virginia, New England Dragway and tracks near the neighborhood of the factories, Detroit. The first magazine dedicated to this crowd was Super Stock & Drag Illustrated and it was first put out by Eastern Publishing in Alexandria, Virginia in November of 1964. Monthly, Super Stock and Factory Experimental fans were treated to race coverage and tech articles concerning this type of car. At the time, the publisher was "Monk" Reynolds, the editor, Jim Davis, associate editor John Raffa, Advertising Director Paul Haluza Jr., with the Technical Advisor being none other than Pro Stock godfather Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins. The magazine's circulation was strong and the cars with the funny wheelbases, the fuel injector stacks through the hood, and the forty-feet of traction resin in front of their burnout prints caught the fancy of a large segment of the drag racing population. At some point, Davis and a number of the other Super Stock staff came up with a "what if ..." as in what if we put on a big one-day extravaganza drag race featuring nothing but F/X cars and the best of the Super Stocks. This was what would become the inaugural Super Stock Nationals.
Keep in mind that there was really no such thing as a Funny Car in 1965. In the November 1965 Super Stock magazine, the one with the coverage of the inaugural race, there are very few references to a Funny Car. When the references are made, the words are used in quotes or used in jest. For example, Ron Pellegrini's "Super" Mustang, a '66 Mustang with a blown and injected fuel-burning 392-cid Chrysler was featured in this issue. Save for the headline, "The Funniest Car," the car is referred to as a Super Factory Experimental-classed car. In another part of the book, the two finalists were viewed as "driving 1965 Dodge 'funny cars'." The term "Funny Car" there in quotes appears to be used hesitantly because no one was sure what to call them. Even the tracks backed off from the term, preferring to use terms like "Run What You Brung" stockers, "Unlimited Factory Experimentals," or "Match-Race Stockers." What Super Stock did to race these unsettled cars was a common practice in the pioneer days of Funny Car. There was not one class, but several for the burgeoning weird breed. They created classes for the altered wheelbases, gas and fuel, and blown cars and raced them according to weight. |
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