Boy, this is a killer video! Shot in 1968 at Houston International Speedway, it shows Tommy Ivo in his fuel dragster taking on Doug Rose and the Green Mamba jet dragster. The coolest part is that they have the actual announcer audio on the film. It really is like a time capsule with the original sound fom the day.

Lots of guys wouldn’t do this type of thing for multiple reasons (some actual concerns and lots of imagined ones), but Ivo recognized that he was there to run hard and put a show on for the  fans and doing stuff like this really did. Unlike today’s world of social media and mass distribution, if you wanted to keep your name up in the 1960s match racing scene you needed to be at as many tracks as you could get to and you needed to take booking…even the weird ones.

In this match up according to the announcer anyway Ivo goes down by a small margin to Rose and the Green Mamba. We wonder if they had another match up that day and Tommy was able to even the score? Something tells us this was a best 2 out of 3 situation and for everyone get their moneys worth, three races were needed.

There’s a couple minutes of great sportsman action previous to the big jet car/fuel car match up.

Press play below!