Drag Racing Nirvana Video: Incredible Footage From The 1965 NHRA Winternationals – Unspeakably Awesome


Drag Racing Nirvana Video: Incredible Footage From The 1965 NHRA Winternationals – Unspeakably Awesome

The NHRA will be racing in Pomona in a couple of weeks for the 2017 Winternationals. This video was made at the same facility in 1965 and it is a jaw dropper.

This is one of the more awesome old drag racing videos we have ever posted on BangShift and we have probably posted hundreds if not close to 1,000 of them over the years. Filmed at the 1965 NHRA Winternationals, the footage seems to have been color and clarity enhanced. It is so vibrant and cool that we don’t even really know where to start. While it has no sound, the visuals alone make up for it. You will be riveted to this like we were for more than nine minutes with clips featuring all kinds of famous and sportsman cars in the pits at Pomona, many cars paraded down the return road in front of the fans, and the actual energy of the event actually comes through the silent movie.

There’s a hidden story here, though. The 1965 Winternationals were run under duress by the NHRA. They had lost two days of qualifying and class eliminations due to weather and the sanctioning body was essentially forced to run a race with hundreds and hundreds of entires in a single day. That included class eliminations and all of the normal eliminators as well. Reportedly some 60,000 people showed up to watch and they got the show of a lifetime as there were constantly cars moving down the track. When a pair clipped the finish line another was staging to launch. Even by today’s standards, what they did was pretty amazing considering that they had no lighting and the race needed to be completed by dusk. Why didn’t they just “run it on Monday” like we typically see today? Wally Parks was cognizant of the fact that virtually everyone there racing had come an exceptionally long distance to compete and that they needed to get back to their homes and jobs stat. Also, there was no “run on Monday” option. The race would have had to have gotten pushed back a full week and that would have decimated his fields and basically left the local California guys to compete with everyone else long headed home. Lastly, there were only four NHRA National events on the schedule at that time and it would have been a big blow to lose 25% of the schedule in one fell swoop, especially at the Winternationals where all of the big Detroit manufacturers were rolling out cars to a rabidly speed obsessed group of fans at the event.

The decision was the right one. The race was run and completed by the end of the afternoon and some really cool stories came out of it. Bill Lawton and the Tasca Ford team won in Factory Stock, Bill Jenkins won in Stock driving a Plymouth, his only non-Chevrolet national event win, Prudhomme won Top Fuel, and Jimmy Nix won Top Gas. Jenkins and Lawton probably wouldn’t have been there if the race had been kicked a week off so they were certainly thankful of Wally’s decision.

We’re thankful for this video, which is stunningly awesome. Press play below and get teleported back in time to the 1965 NHRA Winternationals in all of their glory!

Thanks to Joe Grippo for the tip!


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