Tell Us About Setting A Record

[Mark Yacavone]

Originally Posted by Dano

Now days, you set a record, you're torn down? No matter where you achieve it?

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 :-)

[GTX JOHN]

I just finished our N/SA Dodge 150 Truck a couple weeks before
the Winters. about 10 years ago. My good friend(Dave Whitnack) and chassis builder/Crew Chief had just lost his son in a motorcycle accident. We had him go to the open in Vegas with us a drive the new truck and set a National Record. My son and I have set them before and we thought it might help him to do it.

The next week at the Winters....I drove it for the first time and I guess my
foot was a bit heavier. I got about 20 or 30 ft. and broke all the right rear
wheel studs of the axle and destroyed the Tree(And the Truck) and shut down the Winters!

And now you know the rest of the story

[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.

[Larry Hill]

1991 we and at least 20 or so more set 1/8 mile records at Ohio Valley. Inspection and verification was at an ambulance maintenance shop in Louisville miles from the track. No gps so we spent an hour trying to find the place.
Record C/SA was at minimum so it would be easy to set.......Wrong! See there was this Dick Simon guy in a 427 drop top Fairlane that had the same idea.

I dont remember how it happened but we went down the track three times together, side by side. Those runs were the best, first run I was quicker and barely got there first. The cars were complete opposites, mine was quick down low the Ford was a freight-train on the big end. Second run the Ford was best in ET and Mph. Third and deciding round whoever went fastest would own the record. Nobody Iced, heck it was cold, but I did have this thing called a 2 step it was a few quicker but it made me way early. I went red and got out of the way, it was a good thing, the Ford crossed the center line just past the tree and ran head on into the wall. I saw it in my rear view mirror. Dick was ok but the car needed lots of parts and work. We got the record on the last run and set both ends. The Ford ran better MPH but you had to set the ET record first. My last run was fast enough to be quicker than the Fords second run.

That was the year tech looked real close at the Qjets. Steve Haulman took his apart in tear down and did not run the same after reassemble.

10/5/91 C/SA 1/8 mile ET 6.88 MPH 97.69

1971 Cuda 440 6pack 385/390 3680 min wt.

About as fast as a good K, L, M car now.

[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....

[Stock4106]

I decided to set my first record at the Belle Rose national open in 2016 after noticing SS/MA had gone back to a minimum. I knew several guys were faster than me, so my goal was to set it low enough to make them have to put in a little effort to get around me if they wanted it. That didn't happen. Every run was a different problem and the car never made a full pass, so I only went 11.00(.85 under).

Here's the fun part. The open was run in one day, so after qualifying the motor was sealed and we into eliminations with teardown after the race. After a couple rounds I'm down to six cars, leave the starting line and look up to see my win light on sending me to the semis. I gave a quick fist pump and BANG, #7 piston rod came out the side of the block. With a hole in the block and unknown damage inside it, we decided it has to come apart anyway so lets take it to the barn and see if it has enough good pieces to pass for the record. We started teardown before they finished cleaning the oil I put on the track. Somehow, one cylinder didn't have bent valves and the crank was still intact enough so everything could be checked.

We left that night with a disappointing record and no motor, but getting that certificate in the mail was like Christmas morning.

[spike1]

I'll make this short. In the 55 years of NHRA racing I've set over 20 records in S/SS. The quickest tear downs were with my SS/BX Buick where a quick look over and a cube pump test took about 20 minutes. Set record 4 times that year,lol. My last record was the only profitable one, 2 years ago I set a record with my Dragpack along with Dennis Breeden with his, and we got paid $500 each from Dodge. Dodge has quit that program now and I have no desire to set anymore records......I'm just going to enjoy racing while I can. My fellow racers are the greatest friends a person could ask for, thanks for all the good tmes!

[Hacksaw]

Growing up and watching NHRA drag racing it always seemed prestigious to set the record, after all you were the quickest in that class. The GT/TB record was open and although I didn't run very quick I set it at Maple Grove and went through the tear down first hand. Couple weeks later it got bettered. I kept working on my stuff and set the GT/TA record at 9.69 @ 135 MPH+. that stood for two years. Deja Vu I now have the SS/AS record and hope to improve it,(before the west coast hitters) this coming season.

[Billy Nees]

The only record that I can honestly remember setting was the HF/SA record in the Sunbird from H&ll. It was early in the year at Delmar and there were loads of cars there just to set records (it was FAST!). I went out for my first run and just nudged the record a couple of hundredths. The "then current record holder" was there without his car and came over and congratulated me and told me that he would get the record back as soon as he got his car back together. Knowing that, I went out for my backup pass and went a few tenths quicker. As it turned out, I went too fast to use my first run as a backup and was going to have to make a third pass to use as the backup. The "then current record holder" comes back over while I'm waiting in the lanes and tells me that he'll still get his record back but he'll probably have to "blow up his stuff" to do it. Third pass, I went over 1/2 a second under the existing record, scaled and fuel checked and stopped on the return road to show the "then current record holder" the timeslip and ask him if he thought that he could go faster than that, he said no.
After the third run, I went to teardown where there must have been over a dozen cars tearing down before me. I started taking the car apart and was told by one of the Tech Inspectors,"Billy, go get some dinner or take a nap because we're not doing you until last because we don't even know how to check that thing". I got done at after 2 the next morning.
HF/SA was a fun class. It's too bad that NHRA decided that it wasn't worth having around anymore.

[Bob Don]

Epping used to have its own track records. I had to teardown for Ken Barrett. He remarked that he was surprised at how legal I was. lol