When I ran the video of Ron Hope’s crash in the Rat Trap AA/FA at a road course type event in New Zealand the other day, I knew that the video was going to get picked up and run everywhere. I also knew that 90% of the people that picked the video up would butcher the history of the car, the show that the team was trying to put on and generally make a mess out of the whole thing. As if on cue, they did. One “drag racing magazine” cited Ron Hope  as the creator of the Rat Trap. He is not. Another large “Autoblog” which wouldn’t know a AA/FA if it came up to them at a Mercedes press event and punched them in the face, took the team to task while having absolutely zero idea what the hell they were talking about, and still others were treating this as some sort of insane, one off situation where a drag car was placed in a setting other than a drag strip. New flash dunces…it ain’t.

Gary Beck lapped Mosport in his Top Fuel dragsters during the Nixon administration time frame and more recently Bob Riggle took the Hemi Under Glass up the hill at the world famous Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in 2007. The video below shows that event. Riggle launches the car up on two wheels while on the straights and negotiated the corners when he reached them. This short clip shows him on the main straight, but from stories we have heard, Riggle pulled many wheelies on his way up the hill.

The Rat Trap is on the way back home to be fixed. It sucks that the car got crashed up, but it sucks worse to have know nothing blowhards taking pot shots at a group of guys who went to New Zealand to put on a great show at a totally killer event.