Thu, 24 Jun 2010, 10:28 PM Pick Your Favorite

By Bob Frey Photo copyright 2010 Auto Imagery, Inc.

Austin vs. Manzo at '99 Indy

For as long as there have been sports, there have been arguments about who is the best. Could Rocky Marciano have beaten Muhammad Ali? Was Mickey Mantle a better player than Willie Mays? Could the 1967 Green Bay Packers beat the 1980 Pittsburgh Steelers? Was Sandy Koufax better than Bob Gibson? And could the Los Angles Lakers beat the old Boston Celtics. Or the new ones, for that matter? You get the idea, different players or teams from different eras are often compared to one another, and no matter how long the discussion goes on, there really isn't any correct answer, but it sure is fun. The same holds true in drag racing. How would Mike Edwards stack up against the vintage Bob Glidden? Is John Force the best Funny Car driver ever? And wouldn't it be great to see Shirley Muldowney, in her prime, racing against Larry Dixon and Tony Schumacher in their's? And with the recent performances by Frank Manzo the question is, who was better, Frank or Pat Austin?

Austin vs. Manzo at '88 Indy

To set the stage for this discussion I should point out that at the recent NHRA SuperNationals in Englishtown, Frank eclipsed the long-standing mark for round wins in the Top Alcohol Funny Car class. That record, which now stands at 509 round wins, was previously held by Pat Austin who won 506 rounds at national events. And while their careers did overlap for a little while, the two really did run in different eras. Frank ran in the old Pro Comp class before starting his TAFC career in 1981. Since that year he has competed in 222 national events. Pat, on the other hand, started out in the alky ranks in 1985 and he crammed all of his round wins and race wins into a period between then and 2002, and that covered a total of 229 races. None of that, mind you, even touches on the divisional races that they ran, or in some cases, even match races, or in Pat's case, Top Fuel. No, for the purpose of this discussion, we're talking strictly about NHRA national events, and with only seven total races separating them, we may be able to make a fair comparison.

Austin vs. Manzo at '87 Gainesville.

Over the course of their careers both Frank and Pat virtually dominated the class. Sure there were others who had great success, and Brad Anderson is one who comes to mind, but even "Bad" Brad never put up the numbers that Frank and Pat have. Of course, one of the reasons for that may simply be that Brad, and every other racer, never made as many national event appearances as the top two did. For example, in the TAFC class, Brad only competed at ninety-one national events. He did a lot of Pro Comp racing before that and certainly accomplished a lot in his career, but with his race total so far behind Frank and Pat, comparisons would be unfair. Or would they? Maybe that's the better discussion, was Brad as good as or better than Frank and Pat? But that will have to wait for another day. And what about Bob Newberry? Bob, who raced in 220 national events, won 439 rounds and lost 170, for a winning percentage of 72%. Not bad, but far from the 500-plus rounds that both Frank and Pat won. You can pick any number of other racers, like Tony Bartone, Jay Payne and others, but in the end, it all comes back to two guys.Frank and Pat. For the record, Jay has had a great career spanning 308 races, the most in the history of the alky classes, and his 449 round wins would place him high on any list.

Austin vs. Manzo at '86 Indy

Any comparison between Frank and Pat has to include the basic numbers. Frank has 87 wins in the class and Pat has 70. With two dozen runner-up finishes to his credit (in TAFC), Frank has been to 111 final rounds while Pat has been to 109 (in TAFC). Frank leads in all of the performance statistics and so he gets extra credit for that. Frank has been the number one qualifier 77 times to Pat's 69. Frank has set low elapsed time 97 times, Pat 75, and Frank has had the fastest car on the property 114 times while Pat set top speed 73 times. Frank's winning percentage is 79.5 while Pat is close at 76.6%. In the performance department they are about as even as you can get. In his career Pat set the national record eleven different times, while Frank did it ten times. In final rounds Frank beat Pat three times including the 1986 Indy final, while Pat returned the favor by beating Frank twice in finals including the 1988 Indy race. And in the twenty times that these two stars met in head-to-head competition, they split evenly with each driver winning ten times. Like I said, they are very evenly matched.

Pat Austin

When I spoke with the folks whose opinions I value, and in this discussion that included probably a half dozen people, the one thing that kept coming up was the level of competition for each racer, and here's where it gets interesting. Just like trying to compare Marciano to Ali, it's impossible to compare racers who, for the most part, competed against different drivers. Sure, Frank and Pat's careers crossed paths, but Pat ran a lot more in the 1980's and early 1990's and Frank has raced much more in the last decade. And take nothing away from the racers who are in the class now, but when you had a steady diet of Brad Anderson, Jay Payne, Bob Newberry, Danny Townsend, Bucky Austin, vintage Vern Moats and others there weren't a lot of easy races. As an example of what I'm talking about, Frank only ran Brad Anderson four times with Brad winning three of them, while Pat had an impressive 19-7 record against Brad. I know, Frank didn't travel a lot and Brad was a West Coast driver, but you see my point? Or maybe you don't.

Frank Manzo

After looking at all of these numbers, the mind blurs a little bit. After talking about how good the competition was a few years ago, I think about Mickey Ferro, Steve Harker, Doug Gordon, Steve Gasparrelli and others who are running today and I think that may not be a good argument. Maybe, when it's all said and done, Frank and Pat are about equal, but for those who deal strictly in the numbers, Frank has passed Pat and is still going strong. He's kind of like that Energizer bunny, you know, he just keeps going and going and going, and with every race from now on, Frank will continue to add to those lofty stats and it will be hard to make a case against him. Now, if only we could get Pat to come out of retirement, after all, he's still young and you know that he would be competitive. Besides, how much longer can Frank enjoy doing this? Just thought I'd ask. Oh. There is one last thing. When NHRA ranked the top fifty drivers of all time back in 2001, Pat Austin was thirteenth and Frank Manzo was forty-first. If they took the vote today where would Frank be? Like I often say, just wondering.