Posts Tagged: Top Fuel
Growing up in the Pomona Valley during the early 1970s meant living down the block from people who ran real Funny Cars and Top Fuel dragsters, rock stars as far as any gearhead kid was concerned. The gasser look this 1969 Chevelle wears traces back to NHRA’s old Gas Coupe and Sedan classes, a straight-axle, nose-high style that had already faded from official competition by the time this car was built. Read on for how SoCal builders kept it alive anyway.
Elmer Trett was the first motorcycle drag racer to break 200 miles per hour, then the first past 210, 220, and 230, setting the Top Fuel record fifteen times on bikes he built himself over a career that ran nearly thirty years. He died on September 1, 1996, at the same Indianapolis event where the 200 barrier had fallen, two weeks after a 6.06-second run that put a five-second pass within reach. Thirty years later, here is why the NHRA ranked him among its fifty greatest drivers. Read on to find out what made him so hard to catch.
Ford named its most famous racing engine after a number that was not even accurate. The block actually displaced 425.98 cubic inches, but the sanctioning bodies had set 427 as the ceiling, so Ford built to the limit and rounded up. That engine went on to win Le Mans outright, get one variant banned from NASCAR before it could race, and become the most valuable set of casting numbers in the Ford world. Here is why it still matters.
Richard Tharp partied with Willie Nelson, lived by a motto that dared anyone to take him seriously, and was widely regarded as the most colorful driver of 1970s drag racing. Buried under all of that is a single 1975 pass that broke a barrier nobody had cracked before. Read on to find out what he did in New Jersey that summer, and why the NHRA put him on its list of the greatest drivers of all time.