Some junk news this afternoon had me looking for a little cheer up video on the interwebs. I found such a piece of footage in the form of American Sports Cavalcade’s coverage of the 1990 NHRA Le Grandnational Molson race from Sanair Dragway about 40 miles outside of Montreal, Canada. Sunday afternoons at the Lohnes house were American Sports Cavalcade time and I can actually remember watching this broadcast as a kid.
As you’ll see the race was “oiled out” on Sunday evening when Bob Newberry blew up his Top Alcohol Funny Car and the lightless track could not be fixed in time for the Top Fuel and Funny Car final rounds. Those teams stuck around until Monday to close the race. Luckily, back in the day, the events were all on tape delay anyway so it was not all that big a deal.
The best part about this broadcast is the great banter between Evans and Garlits, the bitchin’ interview with Karamesines who is as still as cool an dryly witted as he was 20 years ago, and the fact you’ll see big Buster Couch starting the race in…jeans! Yep, we’re sure he was supplied enough uniforms to get him through a three or four days race, not five days! Hell, the place was a veritable ghost town anyway so other than the TV audience, no one was going to give him any guff for being out of his Winston red pants.
NHRA Drag racing was in a pretty good place back in 1990. Gary Ormsby featured in this video, was defending national Top Fuel champ from 1989. He would lost his life to cancer a year later. He is as cool as a cucumber as is his crew chief, Lee Beard, who you can catch a few glimpses of as a younger guy.
This is not an Earth shattering video, but a neat look back at the long lost NHRA Canadian race with some of the best men to strap into nitro burning machines in the last 25 years.
Damn. 20+ years ago. Everything you wrote is totally dead on.
I sure miss Steve, and Diamond P. They knew how to cover racing…
man used to buy all of diamond p stuff just dragged out some and watched and they walked away. great stuff all of a sudden i’m feeling old.
I have a lot of old drag races from back in the day, this race being one of them, also have the sportsman races from Sanair in 1988, 1989, and 1990