When the dust settles and the big book of drag racing history is finally written, Dale Armstrong will stand alone among a group of five or six men judged to be the greatest crewchiefs of all time. Armstrong’s brilliance was not limited to just motors, his influence was felt in every aspect of the car.

He was responsible for the modern aerodynamic approach to Funny Car bodies and helped to invent the RacePak datalogger and the modern multi-stage lockup clutches, fuel systems, cylinder heads, and ignitions. He raised the bar of nitro drag racing all by his own self through the ’80s and ’90s.

Before he became the super genius crewchief, Dale Armstrong was a heck of a racer on his own, racking up 12 NHRA national event victories in all manner of equipment including AA/Altereds and Funny Cars. He was a dominant force in the old NHRA Pro Comp class driving Jim Foust’s awesomely named Alcoholic BB/Funny Car. Not to diminish the importance of the national championships he won in Pro Comp, but the Dale Armstrong story we want to highlight fired up in 1982 when Kenny Bernstein hired him to be his crewchief.

Dave Wallace Jr., a member of our message board and a drag racing hall
of famer, was once quoted as saying about Armstrong, “It was often said
that if this guy ever hooked up with some smart millionaire, our sport
may never be the same.” He was right and Bernstein was the wallet. There have been lots of guys in drag racing who were very talented and smart but never got to work with anyone who had a good sponsor and money to spend. But with Bernstein and the Budweiser deal, Dale Armstrong’s fertile imagination was allowed to roam and his talented hands were allowed to create, much to the dismay of the competition.

The first big results of the Armstrong hiring came in 1984 when Kenny Bernstein went from an also-ran to a legit contender for the championship. Running a Ford Tempo body that Armstrong had taken to a Lockheed wind tunnel and tweaked, (which was unheard of at the time) Bernstein ran the first 260-mph Funny Car run. At the Gator Nationals that season Bernstein managed a 5.80-second lap, stunning the place and cementing him as a guy who could win the championship. Unfortunately for the rest of the nitro world, Armstrong was just getting started.

In 1985 the pair put together a season of domination seldom seen before or since. Reaching the final round in 9 of 12 series races with their tweaked Tempo and won six of them to cruise to the championship. Along the way Armstrong was developing the parts and pieces that would be found on Fuel cars for decades to come.

More misery for the competition came in 1986 with eight finals in 14 races with five wins. They ran the first lap in the 5.40s that season and managed the first 270-mph run.

Dale Armstrong was God and it was only day two or three of creation week.

Going into the 1987 season, Armstrong worked untold hours crafting a Buick LeSabre Funny Car body that would come to define the shape of things to come (literally). He spent weeks in the Lockheed wind tunnel. What he ended with was a piece that looked like no car on the face of the Earth. Fearing that the NHRA would ban the body before it got onto the track, when it came time to get it approved, he showed it to tech inspectors in primer, with the windows still in it. They approved the body and then promptly threw up on their shoes when it rolled out of the trailer in Pomona. The NHRA was screwed. It was too late to ban a body they had already approved so they told Bernstein and Armstrong that this was to be a one-year exercise. We all see how that ended up. It was the forerunner of the weirdo bodies of today.

Oh, and as a side note, they kicked everyone’s ass again in 1987. They won seven races and became the first car into the 5.30s. But it wasn’t just the body. Much like Lee Beard’s “terrible towel” used to distract the competition when he was the crew chief for Gary Ormsby, the body only represented the skin of what was the most advanced Funny Car in the history of the sport. Competitors were blaming the body, but they were being beat by the mechanicals. They could have hung Bluebird school bus sheetmetal on it and whooped ‘em all.

Using what was to be the first version of RacePak, Armstrong was surprised to learn that the clutch, which everyone had assumed was fully locked by the end of a run, was still slipping mightily. Working covertly with suppliers like L&T Clutch, Armstrong developed a two-stage unit that would go to full lock by the end of a run. Literally no one else had this technology and, frankly, the car was probably not running as quick as it could to keep away too much attention.

Bernstein and Armstrong would win a fourth straight title in 1988 and then make the switch to Top Fuel in 1990. The achievement that Armstrong holds as the crowning moment of his career came in 1992 when he tuned Bernstein’s dragster—using a set of cylinder heads and magnetos that no one else had or could have possibly dreamt up—to a 301-mph lap. The biggest and baddest speed barrier the sport had ever known fell at the feet of Dale Armstrong.

Armstrong has been quoted as saying, “Being the crewchief on the first car to run 300 means more to me than any national event win or any Winston championship. There isn’t any question at all. People will forget what years we won the Winston championship, but they’ll never forget when the first 300 was run and who did it.”

He would go on to tune the first run over 310 mph and the first lap in the 4.40s with Larry Dixon in 1999.

We’ve interviewed Armstrong in the past about a couple of topics and some of his more out-there projects. He once told us a story about a long-stroke, small-bore combo he was working on. The first time they bolted the motor in the car on a test day, Bernstein whacked the throttle and the car moved about 60 feet before blowing the entire side of the engine block off. Scratch that idea!

A lot of the stuff he developed was banned from the sport. Stuff like a two-speed blower transmission, 24-plug heads with triple magnetos, refining the McGee quad-cam engine, and a host of other stuff that no one even knows about because the relatively quiet Canadian has not come forth with it. He was really the first guy to extensively dyno-test nitro motors using equipment built to test massive airplane engines.

This pocket bio really does not do justice as to Armstong’s total impact on the sport of drag racing, but suffice it to say that his genius made everyone else to advance themselves in order to try and keep pace. By forcing the masses out of complacency with his domination, Armstrong lifted the performance levels of the sport quicker and higher than anyone could have imagined.

Few people know that Dale is also a huge musclecar guy with a pretty bitchin’ collection at his home. After stepping away from the world of pro drag racing in the early 2000s he set to restoring cars and building hot rods. His work in that genre is almost without match, as well.

Dale Armstrong, a personal hero, and a gearhead guy you should know.