This is spectacular video! You are about to see footage from Virginia’s Eastside Speedway. This track is still in operation and in many ways it is a lot like the place you’ll see getting raced on in this film. Sure, things have changed some over the years but the old school feel of the joint is still front and center. I have visited this track and it is very, very cool. They have a longstanding Easter funny car race that has been going on for decades. All that is well and good but this video….ohhhh this video!
You are going to see Shirley Shahan in her famed Drag-On Lady injected Plymouth taking on Pee Wee Wallace in his Virginian altered wheelbase Mopar. You’ll also see a few other cars doing their thing. One fun thing about this track is that it lacked something that we take for granted today, a return road. Note that the cars you see running down the strip as speed, first drove up it to get to the starting line! This was not uncommon back then but today it is relatively rare.
All of this stuff pales in comparison to what has to be one of the greatest wheelstander performances ever caught on tape. You are going to see the Dodge Thunder Wagon A-100 truck of George Shumpert. This guy was out of his mind. The truck’s nose is all bashed to hell and he makes multiple trips up and down the strip. One trip sends him flying off into the dirt where he somehow does not kill himself. He stops and rips another wheelie towards the starting line. The best trip he makes though is another from the top end towards the starting line and the truck heads for the fence. After seeing the other stuff, people scatter like there’s a ghost coming out of the sky for them.
This is a perfect video to show you what a match race afternoon looked like smack dab in the middle of the 1960s!
