Mon, 21 Feb 2005, 02:21 PM It's Official, "Big Daddy" Don Garlits Won't Drive Again

By Bob Frey Photo copyright 2005 Auto Imagery, Inc., nhra.com & garlits.com

"Big Daddy" Don Garlits

Let it be known that Don Garlits has officially made his last pass down a quarter mile. "I didn't renew my license last year and since I don't want to have to go through that whole licensing process again I can say that I have made my last pass in a Top Fuel dragster," Don told me today. While it shouldn't come as a real surprise that the seventy-two year old legend is hanging up his driving suit, it has to take a little away from the sport to know that the man whose name is synonymous with drag racing will never drive again. For the record, his last pass came at the MAC Tools U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis in 2003. While everyone knows the story of Don I thought I'd pass on some of the comments that he made during our conversation. In no particular order I asked him about his career, the highs and lows, and as always "Big" didn't pull any punches. If you've never had the opportunity to talk to Don Garlits you're missing something. If you never had the chance to see him race you missed a lot. The man is one-of-a-kind, there was never one like him in the past and there never will be in the future and that goes for his actions both on and off the track.

Muldowney vs Garlits

When I asked Don who his favorite driver to race was he said Tommy Ivo. "We had a lot of good races and we both made a lot of money. We'd race a couple of times a week and while we would put on a good show and race hard we wouldn't beat our stuff up and we could make a living match racing. Tommy was very popular with the track operators, I guess because of that TV stuff he did, and he was a real gentleman when we raced." Next on the list was Shirley Muldowney. "I loved racing her but it was completely different than racing Ivo. Tommy and I ran a lot of match races and while Shirley and I did, too, with Shirley it was different, it was do-or-die every time. You had to run hard to beat her because she was so good. Every time you raced her you knew you were in for a tough race and you had to run your car hard or you'd lose." Don said that his long-time friend, Chris Karamesines, is also high on that list of favorite racers. "The 'Greek' is amazing because he' still driving and he's older than I am," he said. When I asked him who he liked to beat the most he said, "Shirley. Snake is a close second, but it has to be Shirley."

Garlits vs Carbone

The number one guy on NHRA's Top 50 list of all time drivers, Don Garlits has done just about everything in the sport. But like all champions he had some down moments and he didn't set low elapsed time and top speed at all of his races so there had to be a few tough losses. By far, Don said, the worst loss of his career was the 1971 final at Indy. "I had it sewed up," he said about his final round meeting with Steve Carbone. "All I had to do was stage and I had the race won. Of course when I didn't stage I played right into his hands. I was so stupid." Don said that Carbone's crew came over and told him that they weren't going to stage first and that "I better be prepared to go in first. They got me," he said. "I should have had my car ready and then gone right in and staged first and he wouldn't have had a chance. But I guess he figured that as long as he didn't stage he couldn't lose and I played right into his hands. Of course your ego gets to you and I thought to myself, I'll show him. Well who showed who?" he said with a laugh. "There's nothing else even close to that loss, I should have had another Indy win to my credit."

Garlits shaving

I had always heard that his return to drag racing in 1984 and his huge upset win at Indy was one of Don's biggest moments but he said that the 1967 Indy win was, by far, the most gratifying of them all. "They had me dead and buried. The folks from Fram were making a movie about me and when they asked for some more tickets because they wanted to get the crew in they were told that maybe they should think about doing a movie on the 'Snake' or Snively or one of those guys because I probably wouldn't even qualify." Well, he did qualify and he won the race, he made his first six-second run and shaved his beard on the starting line while thousands of fans, including me, watched on in amazement. I don't know about Don, but to this day that '67 Indy race is one of the highlights of my drag racing career. Oh, by the way, James Warren was in the other lane in the final, just in case you think that nobody remembers who came in second.

Garlits in Swamp Rat 14

By far, Don says that the creation of the rear-engine dragster is his biggest accomplishment and it will be his legacy. "I had a rear-engine car way back in 1956, not a lot of people remember that," he said. "I took it out to the airport to try it out and it was fast, but it went left at the end of the track and I ended up between two cars in the parking lot. The steering was all wrong but we were using what we learned from the oval racers. Even when I started the new car in 1970 it didn't handle very well." Don says that he was close to scrapping the whole program before his wife came out into the garage and saw him building a new slingshot car. "She was the bookkeeper and she knew that nobody had ordered the new slingshot car and when she asked what I was doing with it I had to tell her that I was about to give up on the rear-engine design. Well, she wasn't having any of that and she told me to go back and work out the problems. She really gets all the credit for making me stick to it." Don said that he had looked at a couple of rear-engine cars before he built his and some of them were pretty good. "The trouble with a lot of those cars was that most of the guys who were building them weren't really serious racers. They had good design ideas and some of them may have worked but they just didn't have enough racing experience." One car that Don said was done very well was the "Pawn Broker" car of Duane Ong. "That was a nice car. It was really heavy but it was designed very well and if he had stayed with it he could have been me, you know, that guy who designed the first workable rear-engine car," Don said. "They had the same steering problems that we had but it was a real nice car."

Garlits at Lions Speedway.

About his biggest regret Don said that, surprisingly, it didn't come on the race track. "I was buying up a lot of silver because I thought our currency was going in the tank," he said. "I had about $50,000 in silver coins in bags, about 50 bags with a thousand dollars in each bag. A broker from Florida called and offered me $25,000 a bag, but since I figured that the price of silver would keep going up I told him no. That cost me a lot of money." As far as his biggest regret on the track it shouldn't come as a surprise that it involved his violent explosion at Lions Drag Strip that cost him part of his foot. "I should have been a little more aware of what we were doing with the transmission. I had oil going right into the transmission from the engine and while it was good for the bearings in the engine it caused it to rev up too quickly. I wish I had done that differently but then if I had, who knows, maybe we would have lost other drivers in those front-motored cars. They just weren't safe."

As far as his favorite track, Don said that Indy was always his favorite, "But Gainesville is a real close second. The people, the track, the fact that it's in Florida, I just like everything about it." That's more than he can say for Columbus, which Don says he doesn't like, and not for the reasons you may think. "I just never did well there, never had any luck. Of course you used to get all of those bad top speeds because of the bumps at the end and it is short."

Garlits' at Indy '03.

When I asked Don how he was doing today he said that he spends almost all of his time working in the museum, and if you've ever been there you know how much time and effort that can take. "It really keeps me busy. We could use another building, we're just out of space and it's pretty crowded. But you can't just put up a building, there's so much more to it than that. Actually if I could get a warehouse to store some of the stuff we have that would be a big help. It's like the Smithsonian, they have more stuff in storage than they could ever put out on display. Even in our museum it's hard for people to see everything in one visit." And then Don said something that surprised me when he told me that his foot, the one torn apart in that accident thirty-four years ago, hurts him everyday. I just never thought about that and I've never heard Don complain about it in all these years. "The more I think about it, the more it hurts, and the more I walk on it the more it hurts. And being so busy around the museum I'm on my feet constantly so it hurts all the time."

As in every phase of life, when ever a legend decides to "hang it up" it's tough on everyone, the person, his family, his fans, and I'm sure it will be for all of us in drag racing. Oh sure, we didn't expect to see Don actively competing again and we knew that his Indy passes in 2003 were probably his last, but now that he hasn't renewed his license and has made his decision official it takes something away from the sport. Don Garlits is and always has been such a huge part of drag racing and even though you'll be able to see him at the museum, at the Hall of Fame inductions in March and at various functions around the country, you won't see him making any more runs down the track. And for those of you who never saw "Big Daddy" in his prime, believe me, you really missed something. "Big Daddy" was, simply put, the best!!

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