History The Timing Tag Collection Of Fran Hernandez

That's so cool. Thank you for sharing the story.

 

My opinion as to why Fran Hermandez had the timing tags of those other Lakes racers is:
The next monthly Russetta Timing Assn meeting after a Lakes meet would have the timing tags and trophies earned available for that Lakes meet. They would be given to the club representatives who attended the RTA meeting. All the timing tags shown in this post were earned by Coupes Club members. I believe that Fran was the Coupes Club member who went to the RTA meeting, collected the tags and trophies and brought them back to the racers who had earned them. The tags he still had were tags that had not been picked up by the owners. It may seem funny to readers today, but all of those guys were running at most of the meets and had won many tags before. If you were a racer who had tags showing speed of 125 mph, for example, perhaps you would not bother to pickup a tag that marked at 122 mph.
Also, at that time I considered Fran's '32 coupe one of the neatest, stripped coupes running at the Lakes.
Don

 

Sharon Baker was my Dad.
Randy Hernandez. has already been kind enough to send me the 2 tags that he had from Fran.
Here is my Dad's 190A with Fran over the fender & my Dad on the bottom side from 1949



More info here on the 1st 3 links on left of page:
http://www.bakerracingpix.com/hot-rods.html


Here is a post I put up a couple years ago (the images are in the original post)

 

Hi Jim! How are ya?

 

My Dad's Timing Tags that still exist: i

And a few of my Dad's Trophies that survived the years:

 

A few of Fran's survivors.

 

Very, very nice. Thanks for sharing

 

Fran Hernandez was in charge of the '64 Mercury A/FX Comet program of which Jack Chrisman received one. Being a dragster driver Jack was bored with the door slammer and asked Fran permission to convert the gas burning A/FX 427 Hi-Riser 2x4 barrel carb set-up with a blown injected nitro set-up. As they say "the rest is history"

 

Also, the Fran Hernandez-Tom Cobbs showdown at Goleta is one of the most important events in drag racing history.....maybe THE most.

 

Here is that car at Jack's home.