They also ran the surface in well behind the tire in an attempt to stop air from rolling into the opening. The prototype for the first Force only Mustang was even more radical and looked like a GTP car but the concept did not fly with NHRA tech. Roo.
"did not fly with NHRA tech". For the life of me, I can't understand why that would matter anymore. The Mustang Funny Cars do not look like Mustangs, the Camaro Funny Cars do not look like Camaros, and so on. This is a Funny Car. This is just funny...
George, despite the fact that the current bodies look like bad cartoon drawings of a car you would be surprised at what stupid rulings come out of Glendora at times. Roo
I don't think anybody that ever raced under NHRA rules would ever be surprised by what comes out of Glendora. "Teams are required to back their Pro-Stocks into their pit areas. Your F/C headers lean back too far." Give me a break! As Forest Gump said, "stupid is as stupid does." Haven't had enough? 2018 is just around the corner.
These are the people that did away with'Modified Eliminator' That's Gas, Modified Production, Modified Sports, Street Roadsters etc. Guess nobody watched them, and nobody raced them. We just want to see, Rails, Funny Cars and Pro Stockers, none of which are the same as they used to be either. I have several ideas of cars that I would build that don't fit into the Glendora box. That only leaves me 'Bracket Racing'.
I raced a fairly successful street roadster, and was ruled out of competition when the rules changed, and the Broghe style cars were eligible in STREET roadster classes. I guess an 11 second car that actually was a 100% street legal national record holder and registered in California just wasn't entertaining enough.
Drag racing should never have evolved into entertainment for spectators. It should have remained entertainment for participants. Coulda, shouda, woulda, a case where drag racing and capitalism should never have gotten together...
I had that conversation with Chuck Gulledge (R.I.P.) from Holley Carburetors probably 30 years ago. My question was, "Why would NHRA do these things?" His reply was, "Because Wally Parks (also R.I.P.) is a greedy, greedy man!"
Drag racing has ALWAYS been a spectator sport. Not everyone wants to drive or work on race cars. In the early days SPECTATORS lined the unprotected sides of the mostly airport runway drag strips. If there were no SPECTATORS to pay the bills C.J. Hart, Wally Parks and hundreds of other promoters would have never bothered. Yes, we would have found places to race each other and did on the street (and still do) but drag racing became a major sport because of the excitement it created and the desires of SPECTATORS to see it, many who would go home and build something to experience that excitement. SPECTATORS paid for Zmax and all the other super drag strips (and the cow pastures too). And finally, SPECTATORS will decide how much longer these venues and all other forms of race tracks will be open.
I'm all for the 'SHOW' and the spectators. Just don't like the idea that the innovation and experimentation is regulated to brackets, breakouts, stutter boxes and electronic wizardry. I've always thought that classes like S/R as Dean ran, were truly what it was all about. Licensable cars racing off the street.
I never thought of Drag Racing as I was doing it in the early 60s as a spectator sport. I knew there were spectators there. But except for major meets, it was a participant sport as far as I was concerned. When things started changing I was out. And running at Bonneville. Later the lakes. In the last several years more and more people seem to be treating Bonneville as a spectator event. I'm against it.
Coming from an off-road background and desert racing is a participation sport, back in the late 70's it was $750 a race to enter
I am not sure where the second generation JFR Mustangs were tested but the first one (that Tim Gibson designed) left my shop after I mounted it and went straight to the Lockheed tunnel in Marietta, GA. And as I noted earlier the team also conducted real world aero analysis with wool tufts--no downforce numbers from that but at least you learned where the air was going. One example of that is the difference between the rear window area on the Camaro and Firebird funny car bodies from early this century. The Pontiac rear window is shorter with more rear deck behind it and there is more reversion in that area as evidenced by the direction of the tufts from when we ran the Alan Johnson E Moola car in GM's tunnel. Roo
For me, it's not about the people that come to the track to watch. I have no issues with that. It's about taking Drag Racing and trying to make a "TV Show" out of it. Many, many years ago, Bill Bader Snr. told me that drag racing will NEVER work as a TV show. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc., work because they are typically no more than a 3-hour event. If all the original classes are what we want to see, drag racing becomes an all day event and all day events do not work as TV Shows. Bader felt that a guy at home could get away with spending 3-hours watching TV on Sunday, but more than that, his wife starts getting antsy, and wants to have the family together, or wants to have everyone go to visit grandma. So, drag racing at the highest professional level, has been re-invented as a TV Show, with three classes, and all the cars in each class looking (and running) exactly like all the other cars in that class. And they run that same TV Show every week, from a different location, with all the same cars, doing the same thing, with the same script. It just gets boring (in my opinion). Bader was right (in my opinion), it just does not work as a TV Show. If it sounds like I'm beating on NHRA, I'm not. They are doing what they think is right, in order to create revenue. They probably feel that if they don't have the show on TV, the sponsors will not be there, and they are probably correct. But my concern is personal, it's about drag racing, it's about a lot of the classes that I used to love that are not around anymore, the Gassers, the Street Roadsters, the Altereds, etc. All because a company wants to make money out of what was always basically an "outlaw sport" to begin with. Don't mind me, I'm just growing old and I miss my youth, and the fun of going to the digs on Saturday night at The Beach or Irwindale or OCIR and on Sunday at The Pond...
Agree with George. My wife suggested we go to Summit this past summer. I thought about how much I love nitro. Then I thought about how much down time there is. For me, the bad outweighed the good. Didn't go.
Daddys' Autobody was the one Ivo took his inspiration from, it was an early streamliner built in Burbank by high school kids and Daddys' Auto Body at their shop. A great one! Kent Fullers first chassis as well. It ran at San Fernando Drags on a regular basis, got me going on Nail Heads along with Tommy Ivo.
The Jalopy Journal
