Spotted at Auto Club Famoso Raceway’s Good Vibrations Motorsports Saturday Night Nitro event over the weekend was the legendary Hawaiian himself, Roland Leong, but not with a nitro funny car team, for now.
Leong was tuning for Jim Murphy and his WW2 top fuel dragster and in the wee hours of Sunday morning nailed low elapsed time of the meet of 5.671 seconds at 237.13 mph, with Murphy clicking it off early, before the finish line.
Leong said of the experience, “Hey, I haven’t tuned a fuel dragster in forty-five years, guess I’m a dragster guy now, but a motor is a motor!” Murphy said of the new arrangement, “I love working with Roland he’s not afraid of making big changes, he’s got a lot of ideas and with him tuning, it helps me concentrate on my driving, there’s a lot more to come from us.”
Here’s a Vid of Jim Murphy’s 5.671 second run
Murphy and Leong are old friends for over forty years and will see how far this goes, but we hear they are already planning a test session at Sonoma Raceway before heading to the Pepsi Nightfire Nationals at Firebird Raceway August 13 – 15.
Bill Dunlap’s (above in near lane) recent defeat of reigning NHRA Heritage Series Top Fuel Champion Tony Bartone at the Bowling Green Hot Rod Reunion has breathed new life into the class this season. After Dunlap’s Reunion victory in the High Speed Motorsports dragster, he also swept the two-round, winner-take-all Mastercam Top Fuel Shootout held in conjunction with Famoso’s Saturday Night Nitro by firing off a sizzling 5.70-second ¼-mile elapsed time at 246.75 miles per hour to fend off hard-charging Rick White, who runner-upped with a second-best 5.79 at 257.83 miles per hour.
