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"T.V. Tommy" Ivo won the Texas State Championships Top Fuel title at Houston Int'l Raceway, beating a local array of talent and, in the final, Don Prudhomme ... The second annual and last Mickey Thompson 500 Meet was held at Lions Dragstrip on November 12 with Bob Muravez wheeling Don "the Beachcomber" Johnson's dragster to a final-round 7.32/195.22 win over Neil Leffler's 7.80/212.26 in the A&W Root Beer Special. Low e.t. was a 7.29 by Muravez, while Leffler set top speed with a 216.86-mph shot ... The purse was pretty decent for Top Fuel with $5,000-plus going to the winner ... Drag News' records page had some interesting material. For example, in AA/Gas Supercharged, the elapsed time record was a 9.14 by Jim Shores and "Skip" Hess' Anglia at a 9.14, while speed was a 157.78 by Doug Cook in the Stone- Woods-Cook '41 Willys. ... As far as Top Fuel went, the lowest elapsed time mark was in A/FD where Danny Ongais' 7.43 in the Broussard-Davis-Garrison dragster was better than anything in AA/FD or B/FD (letter designations determined by cubic inches). The best speed was a 214.78 by Tom McEwen in Lou Baney's Yeakel Plymouth dragster. (Stone-Woods-Cook photo by Ron Lahr) 25 YEARS AGO With the first complete Winston season in the bag, the drag racing landscape looked like a ghost town. The Orange County Funny Car Manufacturers Race was the last big match race of the season, with the only real racing action taking place on the benches. ... The consensus for Top Fuel was that 1976 Winston Finals champ Shirley Muldowney and her new Ron Attebury-built dragster would be awfully tough to beat in the next season ... Her 5.77/249.30 year's best at the Ontario race spoke volumes for her chances ... The other car that all were looking at for the coming year was Don "the Snake" Prudhomme's U.S. Army-backed Funny Car. He announced in November that he would go with a Plymouth Arrow and there were few fans who thought that he would slow down from his back-to-back NHRA Winston Funny Car championship- winning pace (1975-1976). 15 YEARS AGO
Darrell Gwynn closed out the 1986 NHRA season with a sterling effort
at the Winston Finals at Pomona Raceway. He defeated Joe Amato in the
final, but was still 500 points plus from preventing Don Garlits from
winning the '86 Winston title. ... Interestingly enough, Gwynn's win
at Pomona would be the first of a three straight Winston Finals win
skein. ... The other '86 pro champs were Kenny Bernstein (Funny Car),
Bob Glidden (Pro Stock), and Dave Schultz (Pro Stock Bike) ... Top Fuel-less
IHRA crowned its two 1986 pro champs: Mark Oswald wheeled the Candies
& Hughes Funny Car to that season points championship, and Rickie Smith's
Ford won Pro Stock. (Mark Oswald photo by Don Gillespie) |
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