But in 1982 and specifically at the U.S. Nationals the use of nitrous oxide injections in the nitro ranks reached its zenith. Nitro racers such as Kenny Bernstein, Billy Meyer, Jerry Ruth, and Joe Pisano all had nitrous.

There is a very good chance that Frank Hawley, driving the Austin Coil- tuned Chi Town Hustler, beat Don Prudhomme to win the Big Bud Shootout, and Billy Meyers absolutely used nitrous oxide injection in winning the Funny Car championship at the Nationals.

The fact that these racers won at the Nationals using nitrous didn’t seem to impact how racers and NHRA viewed the use of nitrous oxide injection. That is until Don "The Snake" Prudhomme and his crew chief Bob Brandt used it.

There was one racer’s performance at that race that changed the course of events and probably resulted in the almost immediate banning of nitrous oxide injection following the Nationals.

You see, Prudhomme had a nitrous oxide bottle and some lines going to the engine fuel pump on his Pepsi Challenger Funny Car. That didn’t upset people because so did several other racers at the 1982 U.S. Nationals. What did upset them and eventually lead NHRA to ban nitrous from all Pro classes was a Prudhomme qualifying lap.

Prudhomme had been quick all week, but on his next to last qualifying pass on Sunday he ran a 5.73/223.88 followed by an astounding 5.637/244.56. The 5.63 time itself was nearly two-tenths quicker that the existing 5.82 record, but what really had people’s jaws hanging slack was that on the 5.63 lap Prudhomme put the rods out of the car at 1000ft and rolled through the traps with the engine dead silent! I know this to be true because I was sitting at 1000ft, taking photos, and I watched it happen.

As it turned out, despite being the dominant car at the race, Prudhomme and Brandt had pretty much used up their stock of parts early and the team turned out to be mostly a non-factor at the event.

Despite that fact, evidently a majority of the fuel racers and NHRA had seen enough with that 5.63 run. By the time the fuel racers had left the next race at Maple Grove, NHRA had banned nitrous oxide from use in the fuel ranks after a meeting between NHRA and some of the fuel racers. The racers, who believed that Prudhomme’s 5.63 was nitrous aided, voted to ban nitrous and that was the end.

Racing historians have long debated whether Prudhomme did or didn’t use the juice, with most leaning toward believing he did.

NOS’s Mike Thermos has always said that he didn’t believe that Prudhomme used nitrous because Prudhomme had a fitting for the nitrous in the front of the fuel pump which would have put liquid nitrous into the nitro.

"I knew that putting liquid nitrous in the fuel pump wouldn’t work, but if people thought that Don Prudhomme was using nitrous oxide I was perfectly willing to let them think that. It was good for business," said Thermos.

Drag Racing Online went to the source, Don Prudhomme, and asked him to set the record straight. Did he or didn’t he, that is the question.

DRO Don, tell us, did you use nitrous at that race to go the 5.62?

PRUDHOMME No, we didn’t. What we had was an empty bottle with a line going to a fitting on the pump, but there was never any nitrous in it.

DRO Well then, why was that car so much faster at that race and why did you have the bottle on the car?

PRUDHOMME We were trying to put a smoke screen up to direct the other racers’ attention away from what was really making the car run so hard.

DRO OK, what did make your car run so fast at that race?

PRUDHOMME Actually it was a vane fuel pump like the ones that Sid Waterman developed later. We bought the pump at a surplus store and put it on the engine. Brandt and I found out that it had a tremendous fuel curve on the bottom but tapered off at the top.

We had run the car the week before the Nationals at Salt Lake. We broke the track record by two-tenths and knew we had something. We came to Indy and took some compression out of the motor. The only problem was that we didn’t take enough out and the engine was still too hot. That’s why we had the engine problems all week.

DRO So you and Brandt never used the nitrous on the car?

PRUDHOMME Nope! And you know what the sad thing is? Some of those guys actually put nitrous straight into their fuel pump which cooled the gears, tightened up the clearances, seized the pump, which then cause the engine to lean out and grenade. The truth is that for us that race was just one of those magic Indy moments that happens for a racer every once in a while.

So there you have it from the horses … er Snakes … mouth. There was no nitrous, but there was some magic and a lot of smoke. Freakin’ believe it!

Photo by Jeff Burk

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