The World Finals

The drag strip is wild place to be regardless of what you’re doing. Racing, spectating, tuning or turning a wrench—there’s never a shortage of fast-paced activity unfolding when you mix high-horsepower machines with a quarter mile asphalt strip. And luckily, for those of us who weren’t around to watch it all go down the first time, a wide range of drag race-centric films have found their way onto the Internet. Speaking of which, that’s exactly what we have here today.

Last week, I came across this clip from the 1966 NHRA World Finals in Tulsa while searching for something else. More often than not, these quarter mile movies were recorded with the most basic equipment and the cinematography rides the line of passable. But not this one—this was a professional job shot and edited under the watchful eyes of the folks at Petersen Publishing.

Although I tend to gravitate towards the home movies because they paint a moving picture of the action from the vantage point of the common man (or woman) up in the stands or down in the pits, I took a liking to this particular clip. The music is fitting, the narration is informative, the camerawork is clean and—best of all—there was a good-looking, strong-running batch of cars that fought their way into the World Finals in Tulsa that year. If you have nine minutes to burn, check out the best of the best on the Great Plains, mid-’60s style.

—Joey Ukrop 

Video courtesy of longtime drag racer John Kenderesi.