While the drag racing world and frankly the rest of the world starts to stir these days, we know many of you are still homebound and that’s why we’re keeping the cool and historic QuarantinePiece Theater series going. In this installment rewatch the 1976 NHRA World Finals which was an awesome race at the incredible Ontario Motor Speedway which was the largest, fastest, and most luxurious track in the world at this time. There’s a cool feature about the track itself and the action on the strip is awesome.
The closure of the 1976 season meant the end of Don Prudhomme just mangling everyone in the world of funny car drag racing for another season. The guy was the best in the world by a lot and completely and utterly dominated the class through the middle 1970s with 1976 being one of the finest seasons of his juggernaut of a career.
The cars, the names, and the whole scene is great here. This was the first and only time that two AMC cars ever met in the final round of pro stock, there is excellent thrash stuff with Ed McCulloch after his car legit barfs a supercharger through the body on the starting line, there’s controversy between Shirley Muldowney and race officials when some weirdness happens on the starting line, and the whole story is told my Dave McClelland and his right hand man Frank.
This is a great race with the performance, drama, and intensity that you’d expect from this group of racers in the 1970s. Awesome stuff.
