Forgettable Racing Stories

[Bob Gullett]

At a bracket race about 5 or 6 years ago my wife and I were testing our cars in Edmonton. I was at the back of the staging lanes and Charlene was near the front. I walked up to her to see how she was doing and someone called me saying my car had been hit. I ran back only to see the back of my car caved in. The idiot behind me was letting his buddy run his car and was showing him how a trans brake worked. It worked all right. The guy thought I was going to kill him. I walked away and came back a couple of minutes later to calm down. After asking him if what part of stupid doesn't he understand, what he was going to do about it. He said get it fixed and send him the bill. I guess it gave me the excused to repaint the car. He did pay for the damages he caused.

[larry dowty]

how about a nhra points race in edmonton canada 76-77 dont remember which year they towed us into the track rained all weekend till sunday raced and they towed us out.

[MEXJOE]

Well,
IN 1993
Jason Line & myself left Minnesota for the Atlanta POINTS MEET. & the Gator Nats.
Got caught in the STORM OF THE CENTURY (first snow in atlanta in 100 years)
25 inches of snow!!!
Got stuck in a Dry County ... at the Bull Dog Inn Motel! (for3 days)

Took off for FLA. & HAD TO PASS ( with our trucks and trailers) A ROAD GRADER PLOWING A 6 LANE FREEWAY WITH A 5 MILE LONG LINE OF CARS BEHIND IT!!!

We got to FLA. to find someone had "helped us out" by CANCELING OUR MOTEL RESERVATIONS!!!!!

Then it rained for 2 days and that place was a SWAMP!!

NHRA ran 2 rounds of S/C &G/G and then kicked them (who were no longer in the race ) out so we could park stock, & super stock on the tared pit spots and let us
up out of the mud.

By this time we did get 1 Q- pass

My car broke an axle.

I had a single for class and could not make the call !

After crawling around in the mud and pounding the twisted axle out with a sledge hammer and with the help of Jason, Al Provost & Mike McDonald, we got her fixed!
I was way to dirty to get in my car and move it to the tar.

Jason drove my car to the tar for me

Came back the next morning at 8:30 AM (stock is going to run at 11:30)
Only to hear THE CALL ...STOCK ELIMINATOR TO THE LANES!!!!

We scrambled to get things ready

I jumped in, hit the key.....the battery was dead!!!!!!!

The fan was left on.. Thanks Buddy

How is that.

[Walker4108]

Originally Posted by Jim Cimarolli

Houston national event a few years back, we all got stuck, couldn't get our rigs out, NHRA wouldn't let us even try. We had to get home on our own, come back the next weekend to another postponed event. By the time we did get pulled out the next weekend nobody from NHRA was even there to supervise the situation. There was one track employee there with an old tractor, he had his hand out, and he jackknifed trailers into trucks, tore up hitches etc., and just shrugged his shoulders and said he was sorry. I got my pickup out on my own, but my trailer had to be pulled about an 1/8 of a mile through mud knee deep.

I agree Jim that whole ordeal sucked!!

[billy leber]

i had the pleasure of sandwiching those weeks in phoenix with a 700 dollar towing bill on the way to, and a broken trailer leaf spring on the way home.

[Rich Biebel]

In 1980 I began racing a 1969 Camaro I had built at home. I planned to just bracket race it but got talked into racing it as a SS/JA. I started out running over the index a couple tenths usually. We made various changes trying to pick up the performance. I had an intake manifold extensively modifed and hoped it would pick the car up a tenth or better. I had to attend a WCS event just to be eligible to enter the SummerNationals coming in July. The intake was not done untill the friday of the last event I could enter to get in for the Summers.....Cayuga....I bolted the intake on and must have been messing with my carb. I piled stuff in my pickup and got my 13 year old son with me....This is an 8 hour or better ride from my home in NJ.......I drove all night....took a nap.....got there just as Greg X was about to close tech....filed out my tech card, got my credit.....Started to unload the car and get ready to race it.....Had to set the timing.......Started it up and was warming it up and doing the timing and heard some evil sounds.....motor even shook......

Well in my haste to leave the night before I must have been messing with my Q-Jet and forgot to tighten the base srcews.......guess where a couple ended up!!! Tha'ts right they were stuck to the top of a piston and I discovered that after I pulled a head after finding a smashed sparkplug......It also cracked the block......SOoooooo I packed up found a motel...had something to eat and a few beers......Stopped at Niagra Falls the next day to show my son the awesome power of that place and headed home......Oh and we got caught in a wicked hail storm as we got thru Syracuse and it was easily the scariest weather event I was ever exposed to......I thought we were gonners......and my son could easily back me up on that one even after all these years.....

Got new pistons...sleeved the block.....made it to the Summers...got dumped in Rd 1 of class......car was still slow.......Back in that era SS/JA was one of the most populated classes......Charlie Taylor.....Jim Boburka.....I lost to Freddy Krawiec......The best cars went around 11.20 or a little faster....Charlie Taylor was the fastest usually...........

[Johnny Gray]

Got finished racing on a Sunday at Englishtown one year and was leaving to make the quick 5 hour ride home. Got onto the Garden State Parkway and had my first flat with my open trailer. Pulled off to change it and wouldn't you know, the spare rim had the wrong bolt pattern. Drove around central NJ on 3 trailer tires for over an hour looking for a gas station that was open that could swap the good tire onto the rim that had the flat tire and the right bolt pattern. Finally got that fixed and we were on our way. Almost made it into Massachusetts when I was traveling down the center lane of Rt. 84 and a moving van in the fast lane passed me and then decided he wanted to take the next exit and he must not have seen that I had a trailer because when he pulled right, he went right into the drivers side of my trailer flattening both tires and took the trailer fender off. Lucky for me, when CT Trooper Peasley showed up, he was not too happy with the non-english speaking driver of the moving van and wrote him up for everything he could. Trooper Peasley asked me several times to make sure there was no damage on the racecar that he could include in the police report. Thankfully, there was no damage to the racecar or truck. Trooper Peasley called the tow truck and I ended up paying about $200 for two used tires to get us home. Our quick 5 hour trip turned into a long 10 hour trip.

[Jim Bailey]

Shreveport ,LA ....IHRA World Finals 2000. The last year I drove Doug Herbert's IHRA Snap on Tools Top Fueler. Saturday Night. Wayne Bailey and I shook hands before our final qualifying run. He said, "Jim, let's just go out and have some fun!" Three minutes later, his broken in half racecar went by me in the lights at 290mph, he was a least 50' in the air. $h** was on fire, and flying everywhere. And Wayne died. Something's aren't forgettable.

[Mike Schwartz]

Lots of 'little' annoyances back in the pre-internet / pre-GPS days:

- Driving from North Jersey to race at Englishtown. Fifteen minutes into the trip I come off a curved overpass and ram a car that stopped to make a left turn The crash destroys the front end of my Torino GT and I break the bridge of my nose on the steering wheel.

- North Jersey to Atco in a rusty old Datsun 200SX for an import race. 25 miles from the track the exhaust system breaks. I remove the muffler and tailpipe, drive the rest of the way, win my bracket, and return home, all with an open exhaust.

- This time I'm driving from North Jersey all the way down to Sumerduck in Virginia for a $1000 footbrake race. It starts raining when I get to VA and by the time I'm close it's pouring and the forecast says it won't stop. I drive past the turnoff and head home without even bothering to find the track. 600 miles for nothing. (These are all solo trips in street-driven bracket cars BTW)

- Finally, I'm at Maple Grove on a Saturday night for the Bracket Finals. After I'm eliminated, I decide I'll go north to run Numidia the next day. By the time I get there at 1AM I'm dead tired, so I park outside the track gates and go to sleep. I wake at sunrise and wait for the track to open. 8AM: nothing happens. 9AM: still nothing. It's almost 10 when someone towing a drag car drives past me, gives me a funny look and continues down the highway. I finally realize: "Duh! There's no race today" I rush home, and two hours later I make it to Island Dragway and manage a last second time trial just as cars are being called for eliminations.

[greg fulk]

Jim I remember when that happened....I bet your the only person that remembers who Wayne was running that pass......