We love this old NHRA videos and we especially love the ones that feature sportsman racing because the names and cars are always interesting. The NHRA finals are coming up in a couple of weeks so we went hunting for some vintage finals video and what we did find was this clip of final sportsman eliminations from the 1976 NHRA World Finals. The classes shows in succession are stock, super stock, modified, competition eliminator, and finally pro comp. There are names that jump up here which you’ll recognize and one of them you may not but it belongs to one of the most inspirational guys to strap into a dragster and his name is Doug Kerhulas. We’ll get to his story in a minute.
There’s a little double vision in this video and we don’t mean that the picture is screwed up. You’ll hear Dave McClelland say Tony Christian’s name twice in two classes that follow each other. He’s partially correct because in modified, it is Tony jamming the gears and pulling the front end of his Corvette off the ground a couple times and then in competition eliminator it is Tony’s car but the machine is being driven by Wally Jakecobson in the finals. Pretty cool that he had two cars that deep into the race, especially the one he is driving. Does either win? Watch to find out!
Last but not least, Bakersfield’s Doug Kerhulas could have had no clue that he was about a decade away from one of the most horrifying top fuel crashes of the 1980s. One that would leave him in a coma and clinging to life but one that he would ultimately recover from and actually drive top fuel again. The notoriously short National Trails Raceway had not received its swinging gate and across the street sand trap when Doug was running his top fuel car there in 1984. Instead they had two catch nets and those nets are what caught Kerhulas at an incredible rate of speed. He suffered a closed head injury from the massive deceleration and he would have to essentially learn every basic function of life again, from walking on up. He did it and ultimately strapped into a top fueler a couple of years later. A pretty amazing and largely forgotten story today.
Now, enjoy this video!
