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When NASCAR Went Straight!
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For a couple of years in the 60s the NHRA had some serious competition
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By Steve Reasbeck Photos courtesy of Drag List and Super Stock and Drag Illustrated |
In today's world, any clear thinking person must admit that NASCAR is arguably the most successful motorsports venue in history.
Sometime in the mid part of 1966, NASCAR officials looked at the burgeoning popularity of the straight line sport, as well as NHRA's ignoring of the many popular match race stock-bodied cars on the East Coast (the first funnies), and decided the time was right to expand their horizons and become involved.
In keeping with the time honored theme of southern stock-bodied drag racing, the top class, Super Ultra Stock 1, was designed to "run what ya brung, and hope you brung enough". The closest class offered in NHRA was the FX class, although the AHRA, which was primarily located west of the Mississippi , featured similar venues in their Formula Stock series.
The two top classes, Super Ultra Stock 1 and 2, were virtually wide open, allowing the wheels to be moved around, any and all lightweight parts, and fuel injected motors. The classes were determined by weight/cubic inches, and it was a dream class designed for the match race hitters. They were real crowd pleasers, as folks who paid to see two of them race each other in a local match race could now attend events in which all the "heavies" were in attendance. To the eastern drag fan, who lionized the match race cars, it was heaven-sent and the series drew big crowds.
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Drag fans, many of them, take particular umbrage to this fact, as drag racers and stock car folks, are, as a famous English statesman put it, "two brothers separated by a common language." Although the two disciplines are very similar in many ways, drag racers seem to look on their roundy-round brothers as beer- swilling rednecks, and in turn circle track folks look on drag racers as unsophisticated know-nothings. 
However, many on both sides may be surprised to learn that drag racing and NASCAR racing share a very important chapter in history. What many do not realize is that from 1967 through 1969, long before what is now the world's best-known sanctioning body became the hype-dominated, multi-billion dollar business it is today, NASCAR had a very vibrant, competitive, and high profile drag race division. 
Perhaps this epiphany happened when, in 1965, many NASCAR stars affiliated with Chrysler boycotted the circle track organization and went drag racing to protest NASCAR's banning of the 426 Hemi engine. Either way, it became apparent in Florida that NASCAR needed a piece of the action. 
NASCAR featured a full array of classes, including open-bodied classes, but far and away the stars of the show were the doorslammer classes. The Stock and Super Stock classes were the same as what NHRA offered, but the big difference came in NASCAR's Ultra Stock series. There were eight Ultra Stock classes, US/1 through US/6, which was limited to carburetors and stock wheelbase cars, but beyond that, interiors could be gutted, liberal use of lightweight and fiberglass parts was allowed, and pretty much anything went. 
Although eastern fuel dragster stars such as King & Marshall, Joe Jacono, Tom Raley, as well as Detroit's Ramchargers and Connie Kalitta were serious players in NASCAR Top Fuel, far and away the big hitters were stars such as Bud Faubel's "Honker" Dodges, Al Joniec's "Batcar" Mustang, (a slick looking Mustang featuring "batmobile" motif), the Bob Banning Dodges of Dave Reitz and Tom Sneden, the "Virginia Twister" of Tom "Smoker" Smith, and many, many others. The payout and the money was good, the venues were well covered in the drag racing print media, and the circuit was known as the place to be for the little guy drag racer. 
From there, the tour went on to two or three other events, at Richmond , Virginia , and in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania . Richmond Dragway and Pittsburgh International Dragway were major stops on the NASCAR tour, and those events, too, were well attended. Even after the feud between NASCAR and its stars was patched up, NASCAR stars still continued to participate and build cars for NASCAR's drag circuit. 
Unfortunately for the NASCAR brass who wanted to continue to play in drag racing, by 1969 NHRA had pretty much accepted the match racers, and the altered wheelbase behemoths that were the mainstay of the NASCAR circuit had developed into full-fledged funny cars, and the circuit began to be squeezed. NASCAR was faced with the choice to become a full-time competitor to NHRA and AHRA, or to focus on its mainstay, which was the round track racing venue. We all know what decision was made, and what the results of that decision eventually became. 