Ok - at the overwhelming request of one person - here's the race history of Bruce Buicks '53 Buick. (Guitar playing stage name.) oh...it gets worse....ha!
IHRA was the new sanctioning body at our favotrite drag strip, Dragway 42, and they held their first ever "Summernationals" in August I believe. All I remember from the Pro side (two separate tracks side by side,) was Shirley blew up the Mustang and spun it bad thru the lights. Anyhow.....
A bunch of us kids were wanting to see our older brothers and the old guys in town race at a "national" event, I'm pretty sure Dave Sebring was one of those guys. You might have just seen him in nat dragster getting a promotion in sales some place. Those guys were ALL in their LATE 20's. Old, old, old, but they all had the most killer cars in town. Can't remember all of their names, Don - with a Hemi 69 GTX, Ron with a real ZL-1 red Camaro. Troutman and his LS-7 Chevelle that almost beat the record holder Knaffel Pontiacs GTO. A lot of 340 Dusters and 350 Novas. Sebring had a fast Duster at that time. He had owned some fast older Mopars before that too.
So a bunch of us kids had learned that we could run at this event too, IF, we entered on Saturday, in a Class, and then lost. Cause on Sunday the track had added this new thing called "bracket racing" and only Class losers were going to be allowed to compete. We weren't real sure how it worked, but two of us decided to give it a try. The other guy, whos name also slips my mind, but I remember he was 16 and I was 17, he took his dads '65 black Comet 289 4 speed. Fortunately for him he made it back home Sunday night without breaking the car. His Dad woulda killed him. Big mother his Dad......
I went thru Tech and told the tech guy what I was up to - he looked the Buick over and finally shoe polished "N/SA" on the window. If I remember right that was the lowest Class in IHRA. Somebody needs to let me know about that. I made five time trials that Saturday, and later that night got the call for Class. AllI remember is getting whomped by a brown '57 Chevy wagon that said "Good ol' Charlie Brown" on the side. I think he went 14.27. Here's the Saturday time slips with the one marked LOST being the Class run. You'll see all kinds of notes I scribbled on the ET slips. Especially the ones from Sunday. Coming up next.
