Tell Us About Setting A Record

[jimmyparker]

Originally Posted by Mark Yacavone

Yes. Now ,and always..

1972..We were headed to the World Finals at Amarillo (Joe Santangelo Sr. , and yours truly, as chief cook and bottle washer)
We took the drivetrain out of Bob Johnson's 68 Chevy II (SS/JA), and slammed together a 67 Camaro convertible for SS/KA, where there record looked better for qualifying.

When we got off I 40, the icicles on the street signs told us it was indeed the coldest spot in the lower 48 !
Back then, if you went under the record in qualifying, ET or MPH, you set the the record and went to tear down. Sure enough, we went over the MPH record.

Across town to the Brake-O store, we went , along with NHRA tech.
There was a guy in the stall next to us with a red CJ convertible. Can't remember his name..Bob something? Oh yeah..Bob Glidden. Of course a month later, Bob was at Ontario with his Pro Stock Pinto..You know the rest of the story there.
Dave Boertman was using the brake lathe while he was there, taking advantage of the situation LOL.

Many drag racing legends were in that garage that day, and also a couple of young guys from Connecticut, who left with a National Record in hand :-)

Mark, I remember that race well but wasn't there. Tommy Whitaker, a local racer, qualified for the finals with his SS/P car and he made the trip. Before he left here he ran 12.20's at Phenix City and was confident he could get in. If I remember correctly his altitude record was around 13.10, long story short he could not get the car to run that fast in the thin air and didn't get in.

[Rich Biebel]

1970.....The only Nat'l Record my name is on and it took a good part of the year to do it. We had a previous car a couple years earlier and tried setting the record with that one as well but never got it.

For various reasons we were stopped from setting the H/S record at a few races even after running as much as 2+ tenths and 4+ mph better than the existing record.

We were down to the last race of the year for us.
Atco Sept. 1970 and our first run was way slow.....
I had the timing set wrong....

We asked Ray Allen to drive our car since he rarely made any mistakes driving. He ran under by more than a tenth and we backed it up.

Many records set that weekend Including Don Nicholson in Pro Stock at 9.60 and we were the last car torn down and ultimately got the record and it stood until some class break changes put Warren and Register's lower class record in over ours by .02 or .03

We were able to run under that record we set a few times but it was a lot tougher and probably should not have gone that fast.

It seemed easy for many to set records but it was a real struggle for me and my then partner.

I do not even have a copy of that record sheet......I lost it....