Sammy Miller’s exploits have been often written, raved, and ranted about here on BangShift. The guy was known and loved all over the world as the king of the rocket powered drag races deep into the 1980s. In this video he’s at a race track in Zandvoort, Netherlands running at an event. What makes this video super cool is the quick interview with Sammy before he runs where he states pretty dead pan that he is going to try and cover the eighth mile course in less than two seconds and have a terminal speed of more than 300mph. If you didn’t know, rocket racers were (and still are) mind-numbingly fast. Did he actually run that quick and fast? We’re not sure, but those numbers sure sound bad ass when you tell them to a TV reporter, so there may have some theater in ’em. The guy was a showman.
One little wrinkle about the Zandvoort track. It was a road course! They ran drag races there on the front straight like they do at Hockenheim, Germany and other places. You’ll see Sammy in the car, being pushed to the line by a crewman. Once pushed into the stage beans, the crowd started the famous countdown and when they got to 0 it was BLAST OFF time. Because the cars are largely silent before the driver hits the button to launch the peroxide over the silver screen in the rocket motor, Sammy could hear the screaming crowd as plain as day and he hit the button right when they reached the magic number. The car makes a typically fast run and then you see the ‘chutes come out….and after a second or three you see Miller negotiating a left hand turn on the road course! It cracked up us but it didn’t seem to bother him at all. In the event of a ‘chute failure, though, we can see this ending badly.
We love classic rocket car video and this is some of that. Revel in the bad assery of Slammin’ Sammy Miller once more. The dude earned it and the fans loved him!
Thanks to Vince for the tip!
PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE SAMMY MILLER STREAK DOWN AN EIGHTH MILE STRIP ON A ROAD COURSE IN THE NETHERLANDS CIRCA 1986 –
Remember from about 1978 at Portland drag strip seeing a rocket funny car run an exhibition pass on the 1/4 mile. It ran a 3 something ET and because NHRA or the racetack had a 300mph cap they didn’t show the speed on the board but it was clearly over 300mph. Incredibly faster than anything else of those days quite a sight to see.The announcer covered the speed by saying something about how the clocks didn’t catch the speed somehow. Good times back in the day.
Got to see a rocket dragster run back in the mid 70’s at Fresno Dragways. The owner was famed hot rodder Blackie Gejian who was also a top notch promoter. I will never forget the almost shrieking sound that sucker made. Don’t remember the ET but it ran 300 mph which was mind blowing at the time. The track only had about a 1/4 mile shutdown which made us all concerned that he would be able to stop in time! He did.
BTW, Sammy still holds the all time quickest and fastest 1/4 mile drag racing record at 3.58 @ 386 MPH set in 1984 at Santa Pod. Not sure if he ever broke 2 seconds or topped 300 in the 1/8th mile.
When I was a kid. Me and my brother witnessed a 2.1 second run at OCIR. We talked to the driver prior to his run. He explained the design of the car to us. He told us it ran on hydrogen and was by far the fastest thing we’ve ever seen run in a 1/4 mile.
Cole Coonce wrote that Sammy Miller “burned his crotch off” in a nitro funny car fire. Not sure exactly what he meant but it sounds painful.