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| In the latter half of the 1960s, UDRA had established other circuits for street cars, unblown gassers, gas supercharged coupes and funny cars and injected funny cars. In fact, there were a lot of circuits that employed these cars. California had an injected funny car circuit, there was an East Coast Fuel Funny Car circuit as well as UDRA.
By 1970 and 1971, UDRA had quite a stable of the injected cars. Jeg Coughlin, Jack Ditmars, Larry Swiatek, Fred Mandoline, Duane Muelling, Bob Gottschalk, Al Fontannini, Nick Gaglione, and Ron Correnti were just a few of the top level drivers and UDRA injected Funny Car circuit director Ron Pellegrini could book them as many as 45 or 50 times a year. At the same time, racers such as "Ohio George" Montgomery's blown A/GS, K.S. Pittman in the Pittman & Martin Vega, Junior Thompson's Opel GT, and Frank Harris in the Stone-Woods-Cook Opel GT were stars in the UDRA gasser circuits. At some point in this time frame, Pellegrini reportedly pirated the injected circuit from UDRA and booked it out of his own office. Right after the rift with Pellegrini, UDRA's Nichols and gas supercharged racer Joe Pirafalo were looking for something to fit in between the nitro fuel dragsters and funny cars. The nitro Funny Cars were booked too far and wide to be consistent with any circuit, and the Top Fuel dragsters were not as many in number or as popular and both were very expensive, so the question became, was there a middle ground class could create a solid potential fan base for a circuit. Making the question all the more important was the fact that with the injected cars gone there was a real need in the program for something to replace these cars and ease the difficulty in maintaining the nitro program. According to Nichols, they thought about and finally did draw up the plans for a prototype Alcohol Funny Car, a marriage of the design concepts of injected funny cars and gas-burning supercharged coupes and funny cars. The pair encouraged a number of gas supercharged racers to go with tube chassis or at least rebody their cars, run 8-1 compression, blower and injectors and use alcohol as fuel. "I'm not 100-percent sure of the year, but one night at an apartment in Chicago, Joe and I drew up what I believe were the plans for the first alcohol funny car," said Nichols. "I know we did it just before IHRA was racing (Spring of 1971) and I know NHRA did not have an Alcohol Funny Car class (NHRA posted an 8.15, 172.00 BB/Funny Car minimum in 1972 in its National Dragster's records page), so it was sometime before those days. We were UDRA members and put forward the idea and it came to life a little after that."
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Copyright 1999-2001, Drag Racing Online and Racing Net Source |
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A regular competitor on the UDRA circuit was the Manhart & Roshto Firebird
Alcohol Funny Car, driven by Steve Manhart, and seen here at Byron Dragway.
Don Gerardot, a 1973 U.S. Nationals Competition Eliminator winner, graduated
to UDRA and Alcohol Funny Car. Like a number of drivers, he elected
to run one of Bruce Iverson's infamous (and rather homely)"shoe" bodies.