Jon Lundberg’s name is no stranger to the lips of any drag racing fan who knows the history of the sport. While Dave Mac became the voice of the NHRA, Lundberg became the voice of virtually all other significant venues of the sport. There was nary a weekend for the decades that he actively plied the trade where Lundberg found himself sitting at home.
Instead, he was announcing history. The March Meet, the legendary Popular Hot Rodding Meets, the infamous PRO National Challeges in 1972 and 1973, and all AHRA National events for years. He witnessed EJ Potter’s first jaunts down the track on Widowmaker I, he saw Walt Arfons sand blast a Michigan state police car with the first ever jet dragster, he saw the Hemi Under Glass pop its first wheelie, he was the tour announcer for the Coca-Cola Cavalcade of Funny Car Stars, and the list goes on and on and on.
Outside of the drag strip, Lundberg had a highly successful career in the automotive aftermarket, owning three companies and serving on the SEMA board of directors. Anyone who became known as, “The Voice of Drag Racing” is absolutely worthy of the hero title in our book.
With all of that experience comes an unbelieveable treasure trove of stories. While we’ve read lots on Jon’s impressive career, we haven’t really seen anyone interrogate him about some of the truly neat things he has seen and done over the years. That’s when we took advantage of an e-mail conversation we were having with him and asked if he’d share some of his favorite memories. He did, and over the course of two hours were were regaled with stories that made us laugh, gasp, and simply shake our heads in wonder.
In no particular order, here’s a trip down drag racing memory lane, courtesy of Jon “Thunderlungs” Lundberg, “The Voice of Drag Racing” (retired).
On witnessing EJ Potter’s first ever passes on a drag strip:
“EJ Potter made his first runs on the V8 motorcycle at Central Migichan Dragway. He was actually asked to bring it to the track by Roger Huntington (the significant automotive journalist of the era), but before I go any further, we have to go back a couple of weeks.”
“We used to stop and eat at this neat little mid-priced restaurant in Potter’s hometown of Ithaca, Michigan. While we were eating we were approached by this guy who appeared to have had a beer or two. He asked us if we were drag racers, which we told him we were. He then asked if the cars that we were with were any fast, and we told him that they were. He then told us that he had something that was, ‘better than all that stuff.’ At this point it was about ready to turn into a fight. He then said, ‘I have a Harley Davidson with a Chevy V8 in it!’ Naturally we got a kick out of that and assumed this was just some guy who had a couple too many beers and we both went out separate ways. ”
“Well three weeks later, guess who shows up at the track? It was Potter on the first version of the Widowmaker and it was crude. This thing literally had a Schwinn bike stand on the back of it! At that time the bike was powered by a 265ci small block with a 2-bbl carb. It had a big arm on the side of it which looked to be made from tractor parts to engage the clutch and Potter was perched on top. He made three runs which were wobbly and we thought that he’d be dead for sure before long. At that point the bike was going maybe 100mph or so. We were kind of impressed that it ran as good as it did.”
“Fast forward to 1962, I had left Central Michigan Dragway and am now working at Onondaga Dragway in Onondaga, Michigan. Potter comes down to run the track and now the bike is sounding a lot more stout and is running more than 130mph. EJ had used a solid core flexible steel cable to actuate the throttle on the bike, similar to a choke cable you’d find on a car. He’d roll the throttle on and then roll it off at the end of a run. That day, when he was revving the bike up on the drop stand the throttle kinked on him and as he’s flying down the strip, getting ready to run 130mph, he figures this out and does the only thing he can do, rides the bike as far as he can off the end of the track and the jumps off. We go hauling down the end of the track and there’s dirt, mud, shit, everything just flying around down there and out of the woods walks EJ Potter. I’m not lying when I tell you he actually made another run that day.”
On creativity being legistated out of drag racing:
“One of the coolest apects of my primary era in the sport, which I’ll say was 1960-1980 was the wide open nature of what people were creating and racing. There was lots of cool stuff that was ruled out of existence because it didn’t fit the mold.”
“There was a California racer named Kenny Ellis that built and raced a three-wheeled dragster that was deemed “potentially dangerous”. Every time I announced it run the car ran well and it was fast too. Ellis’s creation was ruled out of the sport. Another innovation that I saw get banished by rules were starting jacks for dragsters. Mark Niver, the driver who recently passed away in his Top Alcohol Dragster at the NHRA national event, came to the 1965 AHRA Winternationals with a jack starting system on his car. He was allowed to make some exhibition runs with the car and it ran straight as a shot, but ultimately starting jacks were outlawed as well.”
On seeing the first jet dragster make test passes:
“I saw about the 12th run on the first jet dragster ever built. It was Walt Arfons’s car and it was driven by a guy names Nook Bakewell. We’re talking 1960/61 here. This car was nothing like the jet dragsters of today. The afterburner came on when it felt like it, the whole starting procedure took 5-10 minutes at minimum, and since it was the only one in the world, every run was a learning experience.”
“Before we go ahead, I need to tell you that Central Michigan Dragway started as the airport for flying farmers and the first two years the place was open, we raced on it unpaved. The fence around the track was basically created from the stumps that were pulled out to make the airfield. All around the track was farm land, active farm land which during the summer was manned with Mexican migrant workers tending to the crops.”
“Now that you know that, I can tell you that when Walt Arfons rolled this machine up the the starting line on that Sunday, the fields were full of farm workers. As soon as the car was getting wound up, we saw them all coming over and climbing up on the barrier beind the car. They were about 100-150ft back. The workers were all mad at the noise the car was making, which was a problem, because I was screaming at them to get off the wall because they were directly behind the car. They couldn’t hear me, so they sat there. Next thing I know, I see a Michigan State Police car come around the top of the staging lanes to get a look at this thing. Bakewell has the engine spooled up and it is pushing the car along the ground even though the brakes are locked. He decided to plant the throttle and go. The car ran about 185mph, blew every Mexican farm worker right off the stump barrier and honestly sand blasted the paint clean off large portions of that police car. Even the glass was all ruined from the sand and stuff being blasted into it. That Trooper was furious!”
On seeing the Hurst Hemi Under Glass birthed at Hurst Performance:
“Back in 1964/1965 George Hurst heard a record called ‘The Sounds of Sebring’ after hearing that he decided that he wanted to make drag racing records. I was hired to be the voice of those recordings.”
“In the spring of 1965 I was up at the Hurst office in Madison Heights, Michigan working on these records. At the same time, Jack Watson and his crew were building the Hemi Under Glass wheelstander. They were having issues with mounting the Hemi in the back of the little uni-body car and eventually decided to build a subframe under the car and use a V-drive to transmit the power to the rear axle. After working on that project for some time, they had it looking good enough and it was complete enough to have the guy who was going to drive the car, Bill Shrewsberry come down and test it out a little.”
“At this time Shrewsberry had made a very good name for himself as a Super Stock and FX racer. He was one of the best out there so he was picked to drive the car. Shrewsberry also had the showman gene that all wheelstander and exhibition drivers seem to have. He was supposed to come to Madison, have the final fitting for the controls of the car, maybe idle it around the parking lot a little and just get a feel for what the car was all about.”
“This was a hot Wednesday afternoon in May. Next door to the Hurst building was Madison Heights High School. The school had no air-conditioning so all of the windows were wide open and seeing as the Hemi didn’t have exhaust, the car was probably going to draw some attention.”
“Shrewsberry fires the car up and almost instanly, every window in that school was packed full of kids. Once Shrewsberry turned the car around and saw all those faces pressed in the windows, he knew he had an audience. He put the car in low gear and planted the throttle. The car pulled the wheels right up and 3/4 of that school came hauling across the street. I mean kids were jumping out of windows, out the doors, they were pouring out of everywhere! They were followed by the principal who was pissed. It took everything Jack Watson had to calm him down and Hurst actually had to put up a gate and fence across the lot to keep the kids out because they were always coming over to peek into the windows of the shop.”
On where he has announced:
“I was taking to Brett Kepner one time and he asked me how many strips I had announced at. We sat down and I started naming placed and finally we settled on 123. Over the next few years while announcing nostalgia events the total rose to 130 when I retired in 2001. So when people ask how many tracks I have announced at, I tell them 130 North American drag strips.”
On surviving a riot at the 1976 IHRA Gateway Nationals:
“Prior to the 1976 AHRA season, Jim Tice was battling with AHRA track operators over a number of issues. One of the track operators was a guy named Wayne Meinert who operated St. Louis International Raceway (now Gateway International Raceway). He got so mad that he left AHRA and joined up with IHRA for the 1976 season. I was then doing work for IHRA and since I had announced the AHRA event at the track for more than 10 years prior, they had me in to do the IHRA version of the race.”
“One thing to know about the track is that it is very close to East St.Louis which is a pretty rough and tumble place. The fans were always great and came out in droves to see the AHRA race, which, every year, featured nitro funny car qualifying on Saturday night. That’ll be important in a minute.”
“The two announcers were myself and Ralph Hamilton. The race weekend was going along fine and on Saturday the crowd was shaping up as it always had in years past. Basically the crowd during the day would be OK, but the place would really fill up at dusk as people were wanting to see the funny cars under the lights at night. The grandstand closest to the tower would fill up with folks from East St. Louis who had stopped on the way to the track, picked up their six pack and settled in for the evening’s action.”
“At about six o’clock, Ted Jones who was in charge of running the IHRA events at the time came to me and said that we had an hour left before we’d be done for the day. I told him that there would probably be a riot if we shut the race down in an hour. He told me that there was no plan to qualify cars on Saturday night and that they would stick to the schedule. I told him that he really didn’t understand what the implications of this would be and he reiterated that there would be no qualifying that night.”
“Ralph Hamilton spoke up and agreed with me that things would get ugly if we made the announcement, but it was what we were told to do so I held off as long as possible and then told the crowd that racing action would be done shortly. People got a little confused at 6:30pm when they saw a station wagon pull onto the track, take the timing system down and drive off, and when I told them that they had to go home at 7pm it happened. There was a riot.”
“The people in that full grandstand swarmed across the track and we spent the next two and a half hours on the floor of the tower dodging rocks, bottles and whatever else people could find to throw at us. It got so bad that one of the track officials grabbed a shot gun and had it aimed at the door and was prepared to shoot if they tried to come into the room to physically get us. These people were drunk and pissed!”
“Ted Jones was able to get Larry Carrier on the phone somehow and Carrier told him to give poeple their money back, but the problem there was the fact that there was no money to give back as the track operator took off at the first sign of trouble with the money. On Sunday, the IHRA did make cash refunds and the track operator did issue quite a few “rain-checks” good for other events at the track.”
“There were 12 local sherriff deputies there and they couldn’t get control of the crowd so finally the state police were called in to stop the riot. They came in with the riot squad and finally broke the thing up. The place looked like Prague after a bombing, it was a disaster but we did manage to finish the race the next day.”
A special thanks to Jon Lundberg for sharing these great stories. What do you think Jon, are you up for another round?
