Tue, 19 Feb 2008, 07:50 PM
You're Not Going to Make That. Yes I am
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By Bob Frey
Photo copyright 2008 Auto Imagery, Inc. & BME Photography
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I had a really nice conversation with
Tony Pedregon today and we talked at length about his explosion and
fire in
Pomona.
Tony told me about his thoughts during the incident and after it and about his
whirlwind media tour for the next few days. But of all the things he said one
thing made me laugh out loud. Tony told me about talking to a doctor right
after it happened and the doctor looked at Tony's hand and fingers and said
"Well, you're going to be out of action for a little while." Tony said, "Yeah,
until next week when I have another race." The doc then said, "Oh, you're not
going to make that." To which Tony responded, "Oh yes I am." By the way, that
was on the first day after the incident and Tony has made significant progress
on a daily basis since then. "The doctor gave me the OK to race and I'm looking
forward to this weekend," he said. Tony and his team will be ready for action
this week in
Arizona
with only a few modifications to his car, like a push brake instead of a pull
brake. Or is that a pull brake instead of a push brake? Oh well, as long as
Tony knows the difference.
Gene Snow at Phoenix in '85.
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Firebird
International Raceway in
Phoenix
could be like the Rodney Dangerfield of drag strips. At least on the national
event level it could feel that way. Several of the other tracks on the schedule
get a lot of attention as the quickest or fastest venues on tour and yet,
almost every year when we leave
Phoenix,
there have been new records established for
either elapsed
time, speed, the quality of the fields and things like that. So the question
is, with the fuel cars back up to ninety percent in the nitro department, what
surprises do the teams have in store for us this weekend? Based on past history
at
Charlie Allen's track, there will
be some amazing runs and they're bound to please the fans as the 24
th
running of the
Checker, Schuck's, Kragen
Nationals gets under way.
Looking back, a lot of fans don't remember that this race
used to be the next to last on the schedule instead of the second race of the
year. It first made its way to the schedule in 1985 when a young man by the
name of Gary Ormsby qualified at the
top of the pack in Top Fuel. That set in motion one of the major upsets or
surprises at this race, because in the first round Gary's car got a flat tire and he was beaten
by Dave Miller. Miller then beat Darrell Gwynn in the next round and he
went to the semi-finals where he lost to Dick
LaHaie. Dick then lost to Gene Snow
in the final round in one of the best TF finals in the long history of the
event. Did you know that not
one driver who qualified for that TF field in 1985 is still actively driving?
Actually, I should amend that to say that they are not still actively driving
in Top Fuel, since Dennis Taylor
qualified 15th for the show that year and he is still very active as
a driver in the Top Alcohol Funny Car ranks. Anyway, LaHaie would come back in
LaHaie in '86 Phoenix WC.
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1986 & '87 to win the race and until
Brandon
Bernstein won consecutive races in 2003 and 2004, that was the last time
anyone had won back-to-back races at Firebird in Top Fuel. Ironically,
Rod Fuller would then win in 2006 and
2007, beating
Melanie Troxel in both
years, and so "Hot Rod" comes in with a chance to become the first dragster
driver to "three-peat" at Firebird. Toss in a Super Gas win at the track in
2004 and you have one hot
"Caterpillar"
coming to what has to be his favorite track...
Brandon, when he won the race in 2003, joined
several drivers who have recorded their first win at F.I.R.
Did you know that
Larry Dixon won his first race there in
1995 and, like
Brandon, he did it in his second start in a Top Fuel dragster?
Brandon, in fact, beat Larry in the final round to win his race and they both
beat
Jim Head on the way to their
Kenny Bernstein at Phoenix in '91.
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first win, Brandon in round two and Larry in round one...
Kenny Bernstein won his first Top Fuel race here in 1991 and
Cruz Pedregon won his first race here
in 1988. Cruz's win came in the Top Alcohol Dragster class when he was driving
for
Gary Turner and he beat
Jay Payne in the final round.
Did you know that it was only an eight
car field in the TAD class at that time? And
did you know that
Leyder
Ness didn't qualify for the show that year? Hey, when was the last time I
got to make a Leyder Ness reference
?. Throw in the
sport's first 330 mile per hour run by
Tony
Schumacher in 1999
, Pat Austin's
"double-up" win in 1992,
Scott Geoffrion
and
Darrell Alderman in the sport's
first-ever all Dodge Pro Stock final round and, well, you get the idea.
Firebird Raceway should get a lot of credit for providing us with some of the
great moments in the sport over the last quarter of a century and I see no
reason why this year shouldn't produce more of the same.
The Team Force
cars come into Firebird with about as much ammunition as a team could have.
Last year Robert Hight made the quickest
Funny Car run in history, a stunning 4.636, and still he didn't set the record
or win the race. Tony Pedregon
accomplished both of those feats, beating Robert in the money round and leaving
town with the national record, a record that still stands. Of course Tony will
be coming into the race on the injured list after his wild ride in Pomona but he will be
Force vs John Collins.
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coming in as the defending champion.
John
Force, who was a one-man injured list for a while, comes to
Phoenix and he has to like
his chances of winning, after all, he's done it an amazing eight times and
that's a Firebird record. John was part of the original Funny Car field back in
1985 and the only other guy who made the show that year and who is still
actively driving a Funny Car is
Gary
Densham. John qualified second at the inaugural
Phoenix
race while
Gary
checked in at #12. John went to the final round that year where he lost to
John Collins, but he has been making a
living out of going rounds in
Phoenix
ever since. He even had that "near miss" in 1995 when he wasn't qualified going
into the last round. Well, as only John can do, he dramatically made the field
and then beat
Brad Platt, Chuck
Etchells, Al Hofmann and
Tom Hoover
to get the win. And, just for the record, for all of the folks in the "sky is
falling" camp,
did you know
Della Woods
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that there wasn't a full field of Top Fuel cars at that race in 1995?...
Ashley Force returns to Phoenix, the
sight of one of her wild rides last year. I will say this, when
Phil Burkart and I were calling the
action in Pomona two weeks ago, we both commented on what an major improvement
we both noticed in her driving this year. She did a great job to save one run
and both of us mentioned that we're not sure she would have been able to do
that a year ago. Like John said in his interview after the run, "she looks like
her mother and drives like her father." Yes she does and it's only a matter of
time before she wins that elusive first race in the Funny Car class. Of course
Melanie Troxel is also in quest of that
and it will be very interesting to see which lady gets their name in the
history and record books first.
Did
you know that
Della Woods,
who was the first woman to try to make an NHRA national event field in the
Funny Car class, also was part of the first race at Firebird in 1985? While she
didn't make the show she wasn't alone because neither did ten other drivers.
Among them
was Johnny
West and I only mention that because I saw Johnny on the History Channel
last week. Right after my little rant about all the coverage we get because of
spectacular crashes and fires, Johnny was on the "Shockwave" show doing both.
His crash in the finals at Englishtown in 1990 will always go down as one of
the most spectacular in history and, thankfully, to coin a phrase, he walked
away. He doesn't remember much but at least he walked away. Johnny also stopped
by the tower in
Pomona
and he is always such a delight to talk to. He would tell me what most of the
fuel cars were going to do before they did it. Hey, maybe if
Mike Dunn gets a driving job Johnny
could work in the TV booth. And maybe if I hit the lottery....
Del Worsham comes to town with the
flagship of the
Checker, Schuck's,
Kragen racing team and how he would love to break his long dry spell at his
Worsham at Phoenix in '02.
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sponsor's race.
Del
had a weekend much like John Force's in 2002. That's the year where
Del wasn't qualified
going into the last round and yet he not only made the show but he won the
race. It's been a long time between wins for
Del and if he could pick one up here this
weekend it would have to go down as one of the biggest of his career. ...
Johnny Gray also ran at that 2002 race
in Funny Car, in fact, he was
Del's
teammate with the
CSK group. Since I
wrote last week,
National Dragster's John Jodauga and I came up with a
couple more guys who, like Johnny, have qualified at NHRA national events in
both Funny Car and Pro Stock. The original "Professor,"
Kelly Chadwick would be one and the 1989 Funny Car champ,
Bruce Larson would be another.
I'm sure we'll come up with more in the days
ahead.
Greg Anderson
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Greg Anderson's
sweep of the Winternationals can't be good news for the other teams in the
class, although a
Pomona
win doesn't always guarantee success the rest of the year. Still, the way he
took his new
Summit Racing GXP
through the field really made it look kind of easy. It wasn't, I'm sure, but he
sure made it look that way. And after the win Greg summed it up by saying that,
"I'm the only guy now who can go through the season undefeated." Hey, if you
don't think you're going to win you might as well not show up....With all of the
talk about tires in the fuel classes over the past few years I think it's only
fitting that we give
Goodyear a
little credit here.
Lee Elder, the
PR guy for Goodyear
, passed me a
note in
Pomona
that said that when Greg qualified number one on Goodyear tires it marked the
334
th time in the last 336 races that a car riding on Goodyear tires
qualified number one in Pro Stock. That's a pretty impressive record, isn't it?
And they must be pretty good tires if that many Pro Stock teams rely on
them..While Greg wasn't racing when the Phoenix race was first contested, a
WJ at Phoenix in '85.
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couple of drivers who will be racing this weekend were.
Bob Glidden qualified #1 at the '85 race,
Warren Johnson was fourth and
Gordie
Rivera was eleventh.
Did you know
that Warren Johnson has qualified number one six times in
Phoenix and that's more than any other Pro
Stock driver? For his part Bob Glidden was the top qualifier five times and he
won every one of those
races...The Pro Stock fields
continue to be very competitive and almost all of the entries this week could
make the field. There will be six current or former champions in the field this
Allen Johnson
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week including Greg Anderson for
Ken
Black and Summit Racing, Warren and
Kurt
Johnson, Allen Johnson, Jeg Coughlin and
Jim Yates...Almost lost in all the excitement about Greg's
performance and Jeg's runner-up finish in Pomona was the fact that Allen
Johnson continues to run well. Of course Allen and his dad, Roy, are returning to
the track where
Roy
had his heart attack last year. How neat would it be for them to return and win
the race, and believe me, they are more than capable of doing just that. They
have the best running Dodge in the class right now and it sure looks like
they'll be in the mix at every race. Of course, as I mentioned before, the
class is so competitive that at least one of the "A-list" teams will probably
fail to qualify at every race including this one. The question is
, who will it be this week?
Hawley at Gainesville in '85.
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I saw all the notes about
Frank Hawley getting his Funny Car license after making two runs in
the span of about fifteen minutes last week in
Las Vegas. Frank made one in
Mike Ashley's car and then, a few
minutes later, he made his second run in Melanie Troxel's car. Frank is
expected to race in
Gainesville
in a few weeks and it will be his first race in a Funny Car since 1985 when he
raced at that same Gatornationals. And while Frank is most well known for his
stint behind the wheel of the
Chi-Town
Hustler with
Austin Coil,
did you know that he went to his
first final round at an NHRA divisional race in 1972? That's right, 1972. The
then seventeen year old beat
Lloyd
Noxell and
Tom Steed before
losing to
Fred Forkner in the final
round. Hey, how often do I get a chance to work in Lloyd Noxell? I'll have more
on Frank right before the Gatornationals but it will be good to see him back in
a Funny Car.
Mercier vs. Lucas
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The
Lucas Oil
divisional races got underway this past weekend and
Morgan Lucas opened up with a solid effort. Morgan beat
Daniel Mercier in the Top Alcohol
Dragster final round in
Bradenton
and he sure looks like he has a car that could win or at least challenge for
the national championship this year.
Mickey
Ferro began the year with a win over
Jay
Payne and we'll see both of them along with
Frank Manzo when we get to
Florida....It
looks like
Bill Reichert will be
driving again this year. Bill, the reigning and two-time Lucas Oil World
champion, was trying to work a deal to put another driver in the car but he
told me in
Pomona
that it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Bill and his
Rislone team have to be the favorites
going into the 2008 season but it looks like the alky fields in both classes
are going to be loaded this year, so whoever wins the championship will
certainly earn it. I will say
this, Morgan Lucas could
pull off the elusive "double-up" before the year is over. His big car is
running well and, like I said, the injected car is as good as any car out there
right now. Stay tuned...
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