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Ironically, the winner of Super Eliminator was a Comet driver, but not any of the above four (Chrisman's Comet burned in a top-end fire after clocking an 8.63, 176,12 - top speed). Instead, Pete Gates, the Friday and Saturday winner of the 2,700-pound fuel class with Nicholson's '65 Comet, utilized handicaps to his advantage and won. In the final, Gates beat Schartman with a 9.14 when Schartman got out of shape and shut off at half track. The 1966 race marked the last time that the Super Stock race used a format with class winners and their elapsed times for an overall single winner. In 1967, the Super Stock Nationals event made its third site move in as many years. Despite the success of the New York event, Super Stock management decided to move the event to Cecil County Drag-O-Way in Bayview, Md., a track that could be accurately described as the hot bed of "doorslammer" action on the DelMarVa Peninsula (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia). This race would also be the last of the handicap Super Stock races. Management decided to run the same classes as they did at York and New York, with an overall eliminator deciding the whole issue.
Tommy Grove's "Ford Charger" 2,400-lb. fuel injected Mustang was the star of the weekend. He ran off Ken Vogt's 2,700-lb. Mercury Comet (photo) in the final to win a race that had been astoundingly quick. Californian racers Butch Leal and Jack Chrisman shared low e.t. with an 8.03 with Grove healthily ensconced in the 8.40- and 8.50-second zone. In the time between the 1967 and 1968 races, the Funny Car class as a whole had undergone a metamorphosis of sorts. The blown and injected nitro-burner was easily outrunning the injected nitro cars and it became obvious that the blown cars deserved there own separate eliminator, one that was not based on weight so much as what sat atop the engine. In 1967, a few months after the Super Stock race, NHRA tried out their first unlimited blown Funny Car eliminator at its U.S. Nationals and the thing proved to be a big hit. Doug Thorley's Corvair ran as quick as a 7.83 to win, but really stealing the headlines was Chrisman, who qualified No.1 with a 7.60, a lap that was a quarter of a second quicker than anything that had been run by a Funny Car. Thorley was No. 2 qualifier with an 8.16 to give you an idea of the disparity. This forced the hand of the Super Stock people and they began "headlining" their races with the blown cars. This would prove to enhance the shows as well as lead to their ultimate demise in terms of popularity. As hardcore fans know, by the late 1960s Funny Cars began to surpass Top Fuel dragsters in popularity. What this did was force the Super Stock race to lead with Funny Car ... unfortunately, just like every other track in the country, and this helped make the fabled magazine race a little more anonymous. |
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