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Echoes of "The
Voice of Drag Racing" How The ’65 Super Stock Nationals Still Haunts Jon Lundberg By Dave Wallace Good Communications photos by Dave Wallace and Chris Ouellette
I hope you caught Steve Reasbeck’s remembrance of the 1965 Super Stock Nationals in last month’s issue. That combination of first-person interviews and killer A/FX photos proved irresistible to this reader. Therein, Steve’s mention of the infamous PA announcement that precipitated a near riot reminded me of an interview I conducted with Jon Lundberg back in 1978, only 13 years after the event. It was The Voice of Drag Racing on the microphone that fateful night at York U.S. 30 — and Lundberg has paid the price ever since.
"I would have to say that the ’65 Super Stock Nationals was probably the most bombastic drag race every held in the history of the sport, bar none," Lundberg told me. "At four o’clock in the afternoon, the seats were filled. At seven o’clock, the cops quit. By eight o’clock, there were 20,000 people on the property, and we had seating for five (thousand). About half an hour into the race, the PA system failed, except for two or three speakers; no cops and no PA system, so no crowd control. The joint was literally up for grabs. "Well, the race proceeded at a very slow pace. Come two o’clock in the morning, the people start to step on the drag strip." Track officials had no choice but to halt the race. At this point, Lundberg — the premier announcer of the era, at age 28 — petitioned the people in the stands to help move bodies back from the race track. Fearing that things would get real ugly in the absence of any racing, "Thunder Lungs" suggested that those in the stands throw ice at the backs of the offenders, so competition could commence. They had begun to back up, Lundberg insisted, "until one drunk threw one beer can," igniting aerial warfare between the two groups of fans. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t This artillery exchange lasted for mere minutes, according to Lundberg, and the race cars were running within half an hour of his impactful announcement. Nevertheless, by Monday morning, word had spread among promoters nationwide that drag racing’s first professional announcer had single-handedly incited a riot.
"After 10 years of building a career, I suddenly acquired a reputation for being ‘uncontrollable,’" he explained. Some bookings were cancelled — along with any hope he’d had to one day announce an NHRA event. Not until 1977 was he finally invited to address an NHRA audience, and only briefly: Bernie Partridge gave him a guest spot during the U.S. Nationals. Lundberg interpreted this generous gesture as a sign that the ice had finally thawed, so to speak. However, The Voice was never asked back. Now 67 and retired from dual careers in announcing and speed-equipment marketing, Thunder Lungs remains this fan’s undisputed choice as the most-entertaining, best-informed announcer ever. If you missed his work in person at an AHRA, IHRA, UDRA, Goodguys or major-independent event between 1955 and 1995, you can still catch his act on tape, in the series of Main Event Videos he hosted in the 1980s. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t If you wondered why The Voice of Drag Racing is the greatest announcer
you never heard, the answer lies alongside an airport runway in York,
Pennsylvania.
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