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Quarter-Mile Confidential
Hey race fans, Scott Kalitta here, or is that “Harvey Wallbanger”, or is it “Benny the Bomb”. I don’t know anymore. A lot of you probably know by now about my crew guys calling me “Harvey Wallbanger” because of my run-ins with the wall in testing this year, but some of you may not know that I used to be called “Benny the Bomb”.
Here’s a little background. There is a psycho son of (bleep) named “Benny the Bomb”. He has been around for years. He will go to car shows, races, truck pulls, fairs…you name it. I don’t know for sure, but I think he’s even been on TLC or the Discovery Channel in one of their specials. He has a big wooden crate and he puts a big lazy boy in it with some sticks of dynamite and blows himself up! Pretty dumb huh? Kind of sounds familiar…like a Funny Car sometimes! Well, in the 80s when I first ran in Funny Car, we saw this guy at Milan Dragway. He did his deal and my crew guys all looked at each other and then at me and all at once they yelled, “Benny” to me and “Benny the Bomb II” was born. I guess there may be a few similarities between us…well, actually a lot. Here are some “highlights” of a few of my “Benny the Bomb” imitations. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t The first was at Englishtown in ’83 or ’84, and I was racing Mark Oswald in the first round. My car threw the crankshaft on the ground and split the blower and threw it at my head! The body went a couple of hundred feet in the air like a kite. Surprisingly, it was relatively in-tack when it landed, but it was junk. One time at Dallas (Dallas holds the record for the most of my “bombs”), we blew up the car in the lights. Well, I finally got it slowed down a bit and thought it was stopped. It was so black and dark in there that I couldn’t tell for sure what was going on. So, I climbed out and up onto the roof and rolled off…at about 50 mph and hit the concrete! The car kept going down the track and into the grass a few hundred feet past my graceful dismount. The Safety Safari crew slides to a stop, jumps out and lifts the burning body. To their surprise there was NO DRIVER! I was already half-way back to the pits. They never saw me bail out. I would have given anything to see the look on the guy’s face when he realized I wasn’t in there. It’s pretty funny now looking back on it, but I landed hard and was sore for a few days. I was okay though. I must’ve landed on my head because I got back in that thing again! a
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We blew the body off at Indy once at the step. We pitched the thing over the guard wall and went back to the pits to get the next sacrifice. We ran the next day. In those days, Jim “O” (Oberhofer, Scott’s former Top Fuel crew chief and current crew chief for Hillary Will) had just come to work for us. He was the bottom end guy, and since he had paint and body experience from his body shop, he spent most of his time fixing and painting my junked-up bodies. Boy, did I put it to him back then. I think that’s why he stayed with the long car this year. He didn’t want to see a repeat performance of the old days. Enough about the past, how about ““Harvey Wallbanger”? What a way to start…NOT! I was saying at Phoenix that I thought I had stepped into a time machine and went back 20 years. I joked with Jim “O” that he must have hidden really strong magnets in the fender well of our new car to make it not steer to get back at me for the past. On a positive note, we are starting to get a handle on it. No, we're not winning and running 70s yet, but we’re at least qualifying now and we even won a round in Phoenix. That was excellent for all my guys because they worked a whole season’s worth of time before we even got to Pomona. Thanks guys. I truly appreciate all your hard work and sacrifices. a
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There are a lot of class acts in drag racing and I think that’s’ why I love the sport so much. All right, before this column gets dubbed as “Benny’s Babbles”, I better go. Hopefully the folks at Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com don’t mind my rambling and let me do this again next month. See you at the drags! a
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Got a comment? Drop us a line at comppluseditor@aol.com.
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