In 1968 the 1968 Super Stock meet was moved back to New York National
where it would stay until 1970. In addition to a site change, the competition
committee set up a three-day points format where the racer with the
most points won his eliminator. Fortunately for the magazine, the points
winners were all winners on Sunday. Larry Reyes was the Funny Car champion
with the Taylor-Collins "Super 'Cuda," Dick Arons was Super Stock champion
and Carmen Rotonda took Top Stock honors.
The 1969 race at New York and the 1970 event at original host site
York U.S. 30 were, to this writer's vision, the last of the great Super
Stock meets. Bruce Larson won the 1969 Funny Car title over the late
Dickie Harrell and, in another points competition, Leonard Hughes put
the Candies & Hughes Barracuda ahead of Larry Reyes in Roland Leong's
"Hawaiian."
In 1971, the Funny Car results were about the only ones published for
the Super Stock event. Gene Snow (photo) up-ended Tim Kushi's "Yankee
Sizzler" in the Funny Car final. The event became even more top-heavy
in attention because Pro Stock was now on the rise and it showed in
race results coverage like that of National Dragster and Drag News.
Right below, Snow and Kushi's final-round picture was the final with
Don Nicholson defeating Bill Jenkins' Camaro.
For the next five years, the Super Stock Nationals was a good 16- to
8-car Funny Car show with some East Coast Pro Stocks thrown in along
with a strong, if not national-event caliber Super Stock and Stocks
added.
If there was one race where the Super Stock Nationals stopped being
the Super Stock Nationals, it would be the 1977 event. Top billing for
the York affair was a two-out-of-three match between Don Garlits' Top
Fuel dragster and Don Prudhomme's U.S Army Arrow Funny Car. In addition,
an 8-car Top Fuel show was thrown in on top of the Funny Cars. Garlits'
winning in two straight sets with a 6.15 best and Charlie Greer's "Thunder"
taking Top Fuel were pretty much the crowning blow for making the Super
Stock Nationals just another drag race.
Of course, Super Stock continued to publish until 1997 and a Super
Stock Nationals was run most of the years. When York U.S. 30 faded at
the end of the 1979 season, Maple Grove Raceway Park continued the tradition,
as weakened as it was, until the end of the next decade.
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