(Photos by Bob Snyder) – We have to thank Bob Snyder for this latest batch of photos from the 2014 IHRA Nitro Jam at San Antonio Raceway in Texas. Although it has been a few years since I’ve been there, San Antonio remains the home of the most insane drag race I have ever announced. I believe the year was 2007 and during Friday night top fuel qualifying, the freshly ground track literally crumbled into rubble as Bobby Lagana Jr. drove past the eighth mile in the right lane. When the track was ground no one bothered to see how thick it was and the extreme downforce of a top fuel car shattered it like glass. Needless to say, we thought it was all over.
I returned to the hotel with my announcing partner that weekend, the famed “Staging Steve” LeTempt and we literally packed our stuff and awaited word as to what was going to happen next. We didn’t get a call that night and since Steve has the pathological need to be the first person at a drag strip during an event, we arrived before dawn to see what seemed to be every piece of paving equipment in the state of Texas working on the drag strip. In less than 12 hours the left and right lanes had been cut out from the eighth mile to the finish line and repaved. It was freaking nuts.
Cut to noon when we went on the air and told everyone (pro categories included) that they were now competing at an 1/8th mile event. People could get their money back if they wanted but that was how the deal was going down. Maybe one guy left, everyone else stayed. It was awesome to call top fuelers on the eighth mile along with the funny cars and everything else. The crowd was into it and the weekend went from a titanic disaster to a pretty awesome win for the IHRA. Fun times.
None of that has anything to do with these great photos from Bob Snyder, other than the fact that we’re betting the cars and bikes you see in them are charging down that same asphalt I saw laid down nearly a decade ago on a cool San Antonio morning.
Phooey. In my Day, the push – car had to get a AA/ F up to about 70mph in an 1/8 mile just to Start the damn thing. Then ,once it fired up. They would do half track Burn Outs to clean the tires and warm the mill. Even the AA/FC cars had T-bars on the back to push start them. I seen the Blue Max, Color-Me-Gone, Chi-Town Hustler of Don Schumaker rip the Strip. i seen Shirley driving Kallitta mustang bodied Bounty Hunter get the hole-shot but broke a blower belt 1/3 of the way out. I seen The Little Red Wagon in its 2nd or 3rd incornation and visited them in the barn where it was built. i seen Jungle Jim bring the whole crowd to it’s feet with a Huge burn out while doing a wheelstand to past 1/8 mile distance.And Top Fuel cars of All the Known Greats and now Legends, take off in a Thundering , rib rattling Roar and instantly disappear in a Thick cloud of tire smoke and Flames.Tire smoke trailing the entire length of the quarter-mile, barely seeing the red or orange parachutes out past the smoke trail. I saw these people when, under certain conditions , all of them were capable of 200mph in the measured quarter-mile and due to air temp, humidity , and wind direction,let alone Traction, all the Entries ran from 192 to 202 in the 6.9 to 7.02 ET. range. except for the Exhibition Class.Still, they ran in the 140 to 150 mph range, on their back wheels. I seen the Ramchargers when they campaigned a car in Every Pro-Class a few years after they ran 1965 Fury’s . And I seen Ronnie Sox and half of the rest of the people I named, run on Non Sanctioned Out Law tracks that were no more than an abandoned air strip where you could stand in the grass next to the asphalt and Feel the car go by. We all stepped back 40 or 50 feet when they fired a Fueler. It was all Experimental back then. Build It, Bring IT . If it had the few basic safety requirements, then Run IT.
oops in my beer soaked editing, i left out a sentence between -Hustler and Schumaker. Many pardons. I was on a Rant.