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Tom Schiltz’s First
U.S. Nationals
By Tom Schiltz
6/8/04
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first time I went to Indy was in 1961. I attended
every Nationals after that until about 1996
when golf became more important to me than spending
the time at the race track fighting the crowds,
the heat, the rainouts, the oildowns and the
politics about who was allowed to go where.
Notice I didn’t call it the Mac Tools
U.S. Nationals or the U.S. Nationals. In the
early years it was just “The Nationals.”
There wasn’t a national race every weekend;
there was just The Nationals up until 1961 and
then “The Winternationals in Pomona was
added to the schedule.
Everybody who was anybody came and raced at
“The Nationals” to prove who was the
best in their class. Racers didn’t really
care about winning the Eliminator bracket back
then, it was about winning class. Everybody
came to race against the best cars in the country
heads up and to see who had the baddest car
in their class. The winner had bragging rights
for a whole year. Whether you ran A/Gas (supercharged
cars ran with injected cars then) or F/Gas or
C/Stock, it didn’t matter. What mattered
is that you beat all those other guys and won
your class. It wasn’t about money, because
there wasn’t much. Class winners got some
tools and a trophy. It was an amateur sport.
If you won class you got to run for Top Eliminator,
Middle Eliminator, Little Eliminator, Street
Eliminator or Stock Eliminator, depending on
the class. Top Fuel Eliminator wasn’t run
until 1963 because of the NHRA fuel ban where
they thought it was too dangerous and speeds
were approaching 190 mph. Remember, there was
no Internet then. Drag racing got no TV coverage
and about the only magazine around was Hot Rod
magazine where anything you read took place
about three months prior. If you were really
hard core you’d go to your local speed
shop and pick up a copy of Drag News and get
the news that was only a couple of weeks old.
In 1961 The Nationals moved from Detroit Dragway
to the brand new facility at Indianapolis Raceway
Park. Man, what a place! There was the finest
drag strip in the land, a major road course
and an asphalt 3-quarter mile oval track. There
was plenty of pit space for 1,000 race cars.
There were no 18-wheel transporters and support
vehicles at that time, only a pull along trailer
with a race car in it or on it, or you flat-towed
your car with a tow-bar, so each race team took
up about one-eighth of the space of the cars
today.
The things I remember most about Indy are:
the guard rails were about 30 feet from the
edge of the track. There was no Hurst Bridge
yet, so you had to walk around behind the back
fence to get from one side of the track to the
other. The D-A tower was state of the art. There
was no Christmas tree starting system. Races
were started by a flagman who had his flag resting
on a button and if you left before he raised
his green flag off the button, the red light
came on and you lost. There was this Indian
from Canada, Bob Beezer, who danced around the
staging lanes and starting line all during eliminations.
I think his major function was to keep the rain
away. No one ever really said, but I think he
just did it so he could get in free.
I remember Pete Robinson making a couple of
passes in his small block Chevy-powered Gas
Dragster and they didn’t announce any e.t.
(No score boards yet.) We found out later that
he was running 8.40’s and nobody in the
tower believed it, so they just disallowed his
runs. I heard he also had a pneumatic jacking
system that would raise the rear wheels just
off the surface of the track and when he got
the green flag he hit a button and the free
spinning wheels hit the track and he was off.
They disallowed that system in a hurry.
Top Eliminator was not run the way it is today.
You ran class eliminations on Sunday and got
a class winner in Gas Dragster. Then on Monday,
all the other dragsters ran again in eliminations
and the winner of Monday’s eliminations
ran Sunday’s winner for Top Eliminator.
It wasn’t Top Gas Eliminator, it was just
Top Eliminator. They had at least 64 cars as
I remember.
Middle Eliminator was won by Walt Knoch from
Michigan in his A/R (AA/A today). Walt also
won Junior Eliminator in 1962 when the event
was rained out and the only two cars left in
the eliminator bracket were his two “Walt’s
Puffers.” One was the A/R and the other
was his A/A. Both cars were identical except
one had a Fiat coupe body and one had a 23T
body. Today they’d run the same class (AA/A).
AMT later brought out a dual dragster model
kit patterned after Walt’s Puffers. You
could build it either way.
Stock eliminator was an amazing affair in 1961.
I had never seen Super Stock cars with hood
scoops before, but there were a number of them.
Some looked like they took a pretzel can, cut
it in half and stuck it on the hood. Evidently
NHRA came up with a new designation for the
cars with factory parts too new to be in the
parts catalog and called them O/SS (Optional
Super Stock). This class was the forerunner
to the Factory Experimental classes, which was
the forerunner to the Funny Cars.
Dyno Don Nicholson’s O/SS ‘61 Chevy
Bel Air with hood scoop beat Al Eckstrand in
the Ramchargers A/S 61 Dodge in the final, but
he was disqualified in a post race inspection,
so there was no Stock Eliminator in 1961.
Being from Ohio, I was a fan of the Gassers.
I loved the variety of cars and engines. I loved
the wheelstands in every gear. There were no
clutchless automatics; you had to manually shift
every gear using the clutch. Class eliminations
were amazing.
I couldn’t wait for Indy every year, because
it was the most fantastic place to be on Labor
Day weekend. With all the “National”
races now, Indy has been somewhat diluted and
will never be the same. 
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