The romanticized lifestyle of a barn storming drag racer from days of yore is slightly more glamorous than the real thing and this video of Don Garlits racing down in Mississippi in 1982 is living proof. Pitted in very muddy area at a small track in the middle of nowhere, Garlits must have been the prime attraction to draw fans in for a top fuel match race on what looks to be a sweltering weekend day. The video is cool because we see Garlits and his competitor at this race, the Tulsa based top fueler of Keith Craig, wrenching in the pits, warming their cars, and making a couple of laps. Watching a top fuel car get serviced by two guys is pretty awesome and it seems like the fellows he was racing had some trouble because they had to take the head off and swap a piston out, so it probably went lean and nicked on or something. During that era, the heads only came off in cases of emergency or known damage. It wasn’t like today, not by a long shot.
This video is fantastic because it has full sound and you’ll hear Garlits swapping the plugs, cackling the car in the pits, and ultimately ripping down the quarter mile at Riverside Raceway in Pearl, Mississippi. The track was opened in 1972 as best we can tell and was actually in business up into the 1990s before being knocked down so that a school (FOOEY!) could be built on the site where the track was. It was an NHRA division two facility for most of its life according to what we can dig up.
We’re not sure where Keith Craig’s career path led him but we do know that Garlits did pretty well for himself both before and after this 1982 match race. What a neat look into the sport and how it was more than 30 years ago!
PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE DON GARLITS COMPETING AT A MATCH RACE DEEP IN MISSISSIPPI –
Awesome stuff from the days before double stacked race cars in 53 foot trailers, great find guys!!!!!