NHRA APPROVES GARLITS' MONO-STRUT CAR
Garlits wins again...sort of
By Jeff Burk
Don Garlits photos by Jeff Burk
Jack Ostrander photo by Dave DeAngelis
NHRA sources have confirmed to DRO that their self-proclaimed number
one drag racer of all time, 70-year old Don Garlits, will be allowed
to compete at three selected events during the 2002 season, joining
fellow septuagenarian, long time protagonist, and fellow Top Fuel racer
Chris Karamesines on the NHRA trail. But Garlits' return to active duty
status as an NHRA top fuel pilot came only after a Garlits vs NHRA brouhaha
that is typical of the battles that Garlits and NHRA/Wally Parks have
waged over the last six decades.
Over the years, Garlits has been at odds with NHRA at various levels
and, more often than not, beat them at their own game. This time Garlits
took on the all-powerful tech department and won. But in doing so, some
may question whether he did himself or drag racing a real service.
First, let's look at the facts. Sometime during the 2001 NHRA season
Don Garlits decided that he wanted to run his still-revolutionary mono-strut
Swamp Rat 34, built for him by renowned chassis builder Murf McKinney
and debuted during the 1994 NHRA season. That is the last car that he
personally had built and campaigned with NHRA on a regular basis.
Garlits knew, as he pulled Swamp Rat 34 off the museum floor and started
getting it ready for NHRA competition, that it would need to get a current
chassis certification from NHRA, IHRA, and SFI. That's when the problems
began. NHRA tech inspector Rick Shreck went to Garlits' Florida shop
and gave the nearly ten-year old car a preliminary inspection and reported
back to NHRA Fuel car overlord Ray Alley with some of his concerns.
As a result, the tech department informed Mr. Garlits that they would
allow him to run the car at the 2001 World Finals, but over the winter
he would have to bring the car up to 2002 NHRA specs if he wanted to
race the car the following season.
There were reportedly 16 pages of changes that NHRA wanted done to
the car before it could be certified for competition. The main areas
that the tech department had concerns with included: 1) how the mono-strut
was mounted to the rear-end; 2) whether it was strong enough to support
the new 1500-square-inch rear wing that had replaced the 1250 square
inch wing that had been on the car; and 3) how the new 10.5 Strange
rear-end assembly that Garlits had installed in the car to replace the
old nine-inch rear-end was mounted.
The most serious flaw, in Ray Alley's mind, was that when the car was
originally built Garlits had McKinney route the fuel lines from the
fuel tank to the engine using the bottom frame rails on both sides of
the chassis as fuel line -- which was legal when the car was built and
a common practice. Alley felt it was an unsafe procedure and changed
the 2002 rulebook to make the practice illegal.
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