Drag Racing Online

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From the original show through the last big California UDRA fuel show at Lions in October of 1966, the organization was largely a West Coast phenomenon with meets taking place frequently at Lions, Fremont, Fontana, and Pomona. However, many of the racers on the West Coast found that they could make money touring and didn't need to hassle local promoters, and so it fell to another area of the country to keep the UDRA banner aloft.

The Midwest chapter, which would later inherit the mantle of UDRA leadership in 1967, did stage a couple of great opening events in the above time frame. Rockford Dragway in Illinois was the host site for the first midwest UDRA show in October of 1965 with Charlie Smith winning Top Fuel in Bud Roche and Don Mattison's "Guzler." In May of 1966, a gigantic UDRA Nationals (actually the "Olympics of Drag Racing") was held at Great Lakes Dragaway on Memorial Day Weekend in Union Grove, Wisconsin with Don "the Snake" Prudhomme sweeping the three-day gala event.

In 1967, UDRA initiated its Top Fuel circuit, highlighted by a season-long points chase, and continued with one through the 1981 season, where it was terminated. At that time, the level of competition involved just a handful of out-of-pocket, unsponsored match racers and it was plain that the fuel end of the deal had run its course at that point.

However 19 years later, UDRA is still in business, although in an obviously modified fashion. Whereas the first UDRA meet at Lions featured 16-car Top Fuel and Top Gas Eliminators plus a full card of early day Sportsman (A/Gas Supercharged, Fuel Altereds, et. al), recent productions bear the stamp of the ultra-expensive modern drag racing economy. In so many words, over the years, nitro cars became too costly and ,save for an occasional set of bought-in performers, UDRA's marquee cars are Pro Modified, Pro Stock, and Alcohol Dragster and Funny Car.

Duane Nichols, the first UDRA season Top Fuel champ in 1967 and UDRA president from 1972-1990, recalled how the midwest chapter got rolling.

"Certainly the California movement had an effect on us and everyone else who liked the idea of a UDRA," Nichols said. "We never worked with them, you know call them up and ask how to put one together. Ed Rachanski, who raced FX Comets and other high profile cars, was the guy who headed it up and got us all together and we did it much like they did in California. We, too, met in a restaurant in Chicago, I think it was Marino's on Vincennes, and Ed, myself, Gabby Bleeker with the altereds and guys like Bud Roche, Don Mattison, and even 'the Greek,' (Chris Karamesines) put together a race.

"In 1965 and 1966, we had a couple of Top Fuel shows that were as big or bigger than anything we had ever seen in the Midwest. I'll bet at the Union Grove show in 1966, we had 25 to 30 cars. It was great."

UDRA's Midwest Chapter really came to life in the latter half of the 1960s, producing dozens of shows a year with its Top Fuel and, for a while, Funny Car and gasser circuits. But the sport was changing. By 1970, Top Fuel stalwarts like Prudhomme, McEwen, the Ramchargers, Connie Kalitta, Roland Leong, and even evergreens like Don Garlits and Karamesines had their names on the sides of (gasp) Funny Cars. The "floppers" were making huge inroads into the domain of leadership enjoyed by the Top Fuel class.

Worse yet, as the Top Fuel ranks started to recede, the Funny Car class was booming, and didn't require the scheduling of weekend circuits by an organization like UDRA. Race drivers like "Jungle Jim" Liberman were booking 100 dates a year and making a huge hunk of change in the process.

UDRA's last year for the Top Fuel circuit was 1981 and Nichols recalled the climate that led to the pulling of the plug on that class.

"The cost to run the cars was prohibitive," he explained, "and the number of tracks that wanted the fuelers was falling off. They wanted the Funny Cars. The general attitude back then was that Top Fuel was a dying breed. There were tracks in the south and south-central part of the country that wanted to book our Top Fuel dragsters, but it wasn't worth what would amount to mere round money for the participants. As a result, UDRA's Top Fuel circuit could only find work in the midwest and it just became obvious that their time had come."

UDRA is a non-nitro, Pro Modified, Pro Stock, alcohol circuit. Interestingly enough, though, the groundwork for these categories was actually laid well before the demise of the Top Fuel circuit. In fact, in the case of the Alcohol Funny Cars said groundwork was laid while the fuel cars were still quite healthy. .

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