At the dawn of drag racing, it was easy to tell which cars were fastest. They were the ones that looked like two rails, an engine, and four tires that someone sat on. Those stripped-down “bugs” or “rail jobs” were always the fastest, because they were pared down to the absolute minimum necessary to blitz the quarter-mile.
The evolution of the dragster has seen leaps and also years that seemed they hit the limit of physics and technology for any further reduction in elapsed times. Then, the continued march of lower times and increased speeds would erupt, with teams and builders sharing or otherwise divining the factors for the latest chop-chop to conquering that familiar strip of concrete and asphalt. The advancement happened natively, with trial and error or a secret shared. Says longtime chassis builder Don Long, “There was no science with the early dragsters, you just looked at what was out there and you added to it.”
There were advances from things like slicks, superchargers, nitromethane, slipper clutches, and ultimately data logging, but mostly it came down to slow tinkering. For the spectator, this arc of higher speeds and shortening elapsed times drew crowds witnessing a spectacle—“the show”—but also possibly a record, something he or she could hold onto as a historic, meaningful mark in the evolution of man and machine.
Held at abandoned airstrips or blocked-off country roads, “slingshots” as dragsters were called, hit more than 120 mph in 1950, the beginning of organized drag racing in California at the Santa Ana airstrip just east of Newport Bay. Then within a few years, the march quickly saw dragsters topping 150 mph.
Dragster evolution came from a myriad of sources. With organizers like HOT ROD’s Wally Parks, who founded the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), and promoters like Mickey Thompson, CJ Hart, and Lou Baney, opportunity and incentive converged with safety to mold drag racing into a more homogenous assemblage. Hundreds of different classes for every conceivable variation of machine were developed, but the “unlimited” Top Fuel dragsters were the top tier of the professional category. By the early 1960s, there were certain combinations normalizing the front-engine dragster to a general form evolving until the early 1970s when a major shift in the dragster paradigm happened: the modern rear-engine dragster.
Early chassis builders were Pat Bilbow’s Lyndwood Chassis, Joe Schubeck’s Lakewood Chassis, Frank Ito, and Scotty Fenn’s Chassis Research, all helping to make Top Fuel more attainable. The earliest “standard,” if you could call out a standard in this still-chaotic time, was the “dogsled” style of dragster at a 98-inch wheelbase. The Chassis Research TE 440 model was most identified with this design. The downside was that it left the area over a driver’s head exposed, so soon there were cross bars added from one side to the other, before an additional hoop surrounded the driver, adding more weight and complexity. By 1961 most dragsters had adopted the three-point roll bar or something similar, and by 1963 the evolution was complete. Writer and historian Don Prieto gives credit for the three-point cage to Bay Area builders Pete Ogden and also Romeo Palamedes, who would eventually found American Racing Wheels.
Once Mickey Thompson found luck with the driver sitting behind the axle, builders all saw the driver’s weight leveraged behind the rear axle produced better traction. Traction was always a problem with these lightweight cars and 8.20 skinny tires. By the early 1960s, professional builders like Don Long, Kent Fuller, Roy Fjastad, and Woody Gilmore added more development and refinement for pro chassis—or a good copy. Combined with the aftermarket providing accessories and components, there were more cars and more minds advancing the state of the art.
Failure was always on the minds of chassis builders and, really, all component manufacturers, because if you pushed the envelope too far, you and your product or services were instantly no good. So dragster momentum was artificially slowed as builders trickled into dragster evolution, even though the drag racer’s creed that more is better was abundant throughout drag racing.
At match races and non-NHRA sanctioned tracks across the country, nitromethane was the breakfast of champions. But with it came new problems. Dragsters and drivers that previously tamed gasoline power were introduced to an insane abundance of power. Nitro was banned by the NHRA in 1957, but this inadvertently resulted in drivers racing full time like “TV” Tommy Ivo, who was paid handsomely to race at nitro tracks across the country because the noise, times, and quality of the Top Fuel dragsters brought in the crowds. Tommy was making $3,000 a weekend booking match races, and that was real money in the late-1950s. With Top Fuel classes allowing nitro again at NHRA-sanctioned events in 1964, it wasn’t long before every run at every Top Fuel meet became an unpredictable performance, ranging from a riveting, clean run to all manner of mayhem and even death—plus plenty of death-defying brushes along the way.
Engines were not immune to experiments in chassis installations. Weight shift was of prime concern because traction was needed to fight the effects of inertia, while at mid-track the need shifted to speed, not launching traction. Woody tried mounting engines on tubing attached to the Chrysler Hemi blocks, which ran forward attaching to the chassis. This allowed the engine to move up upon acceleration. Fuller went one step further by making a structure the engine sat in, separate from the chassis, that pivoted up and down in the “Magicar” Top Fueler. (That’s how the Magicar got its name.) Frank Cannon’s “Hustler VI” went even further. It had a hydraulic cylinder between the bellhousing and chassis mount. The foot-brake hydraulics were tied to the cylinder, so when brake was released to launch, the hydraulics actuated the cylinder, lifting the engine 2 inches. Once it reached its apex, it slowly bled off so the engine moved back into the chassis. Clever minds, theories, and experimentation have always been part of drag racing.
As new ideas were introduced and new components perfected, there needed to be some oversight to recommend and even conduct testing of components. The SEMA Technical Committee was established in 1966 to put forth safe construction practices, as insurance was becoming an issue from the “high death-to-accident ratio.” And, of course, NHRA had clear sets of rules instituted with inspection of each car, and ultimately certification to ensure the safest, technologically up-to-date advances for both racers and spectators.
As chassis developed, everyone had a theory for where the engine should be positioned. Some liked the “Tampa Dump” named for Garlits’ penchant for angling the engine down at the front for perceived better torque transfer. Others wanted the engine level with the ground. Then how high or low should the engine be in the chassis, and how far forward? The accepted location was that there wasn’t an accepted location. Some believed you wanted the center of gravity as close to the ground as possible, so the dump was a means to get the engine down as low as it could go and still clear the oil pump and oil pan; it was a case of clearance rather than weight shift. Rear-end pinion height and how far from the rear-end the engine also factored into its location. As you can see, there was no magic awakening, but rather theories proved or not, and the march of dragster evolution continued.
Slowly it was determined that the longer chassis handled better, but in the late-1950s no one needed the length for taming wheelies because nobody was popping wheelies. That didn’t occur until Tommy Ivo experienced the phenomena at San Fernando Dragstrip after putting on a pair of Ted Cyr’s new M & H “slicks.” Prieto says, “When Tommy launched, his front end went up 4 or 5 inches. When he came around to run again, there were 10 guys lying on the side of the track to see if there was daylight under the wheels. That time he got about a foot in the air.” With those 10.50-16 tires, there was extra shear in the sidewalls, so the extra grip, weight transfer, and inertia made the car climb the ring gear in the axle, creating the wheelie and also a new phenomenon racers would face. While sounding prosaic, at the time it caused a major challenge, and an added attraction—air under the front tires had never been seen in drag racing.
Mathematics took a part in adapting the dragster to this new challenge posed. The theory of angular acceleration started factoring into dragster design. It posits that, all things being equal (weight distribution, engine, engine location, and so on), a 200-inch wheelbase dragster will have four times the resistance to lifting as a 100-inch car. As the wheelbase is lengthened, it squares the resistance. There’s more to it because you have traction issues and rate of climb, but whenever you get acceleration and then resistance, you have a transfer of weight, and something is going to happen—usually a wheelie.
By 1967 speeds of more than 220 mph were seen from the rapid march past the magic 200 mph. Then after 1967 the speed and e.t. gains fell flat. Everyone hovered around the mid-220-mph mark at 6 seconds for years. Was this all there was? It seemed that way until that fateful day in 1970 at Lions Drag Strip when Don Garlits’ clutch sliced through his car and the age of the rear-engine dragster had dawned. This paradigm shift not only radically affected dragster design but also speeds.
Garlits’ revolutionary rear-engine dragster seemed to magically appear, but everyone in Top Fuel knew for years that dragster evolution had bigger problems than stagnant times, and this represented a more sensible design. Violent, deadly engine and clutch explosions were occurring on a regular basis. One seen on a weekly basis was Jim Nicoll’s dragster ripping apart at the 1970 Nationals, used as part of the opening segment of the weekly ABC TV series Wide World of Sports.
But the timing was interesting, as chassis builder Woody Gilmore had just given up on a rear-engine design with the horrific obliteration of his experimental dragster piloted by Pat Foster. And we do mean “piloted,” as the dragster flew into the air at Lions Drag Strip in December 1969, smashing into a light pole at 200-plus mph. Foster spent months recuperating. His suggestion to Garlits? Slow down the steering, which “Dyno Don” heeded.
Bill Schultz, owner of the Schultz and Glenn Top Fuel dragster, thought front-engine dragsters had plenty of developments left to reveal. He ordered a new car from California Chassis Engineering with the engine set forward 50 inches from conventional dragsters of the time. It set both ends of the record at the 1971 NHRA Nationals, but was runner-up to Steve Carbone in his front-engine dragster. Some—like Tom McEwen, Don Prudhomme, and Roland Leong—campaigned both flavors of Fuelers to hedge their bets. But with Garlits winning the 1971 NHRA Winternationals, 1971 March Meet, plus runner-up at both Lions and Orange County Raceway just before the Winters, there was no longer any need to ponder Top Fuel’s future.
Rear-engine dragsters were lighter, the weight distribution kept front ends planted, locked rear spools could now be used to help dragsters achieve quicker launches, steering corrections were easier and more controllable (not to mention drivers were out of harm’s way from an engine or blower explosion), and they could see without a big, blown Hemi engine to look around. Before the end of 1971, Garlits had discovered the rear wing, giving designers another development to incorporate into their dragster designs. Gilmore, Huszar, Long, and Fjastad immediately began getting orders for rear-engine machines. “It increased my business especially,” Long says.
Eventually, big increases in dragster wheelbases got crazy. Where front-engine dragsters went to 225 inches, the rear-engine rails ramped up to 300 inches (and also bigger rear wings) before the NHRA mandated 300 inches maximum, squelching the racer’s creed of more is better. One of the last innovations to keep front-engine dragsters competitive was the introduction of canards ahead of the slicks. These wings created a low-pressure area ahead of the slicks and also helped direct air over the slicks, aiding aerodynamics. But by 1974 the front-engine dragster had disappeared, giving racers and builders a whole new combination of challenges and puzzles to solve.
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