FEEDBACK ARTICLE: REMEMBERING PRO COMP: AN ELIMINATOR FOR ANOTHER ERA

I was lucky enough to race during the early days of Pro Comp Eliminator. There were 16-car fields of front and rear engine dragsters running blown gas and alcohol motors, injected nitro dragsters and funny cars, not to mention altereds of every conceivable configuration. Bradenton (DeSoto Memorial back then) Dragway ran a 16 car show once a month. Good racing with good racers. - Tim Hall

FEEDBACK ARTICLE: REMEMBERING PRO COMP: AN ELIMINATOR FOR ANOTHER ERA

I was lucky enough to race during the early days of Pro Comp Eliminator. There were 16-car fields of front and rear engine dragsters running blown gas and alcohol motors, injected nitro dragsters and funny cars, not to mention altereds of every conceivable configuration. Bradenton (DeSoto Memorial back then)Dragway ran a 16 car show once a month. Good racing with good racers. - Tim Hall

12-26-2008

Hey just a young old fart (42) here who remembers the old Pro Comp glory days. I now live along the gulf coast of Florida and attend the Snowbird Nationals at Bradenton Motorsports Park every December.

One of the neatest classes they have at this race is what they call "Open Outlaw". It's basically a gathering of blown Top Dragsters and Altereds along with a few lower rung Top Alcohol floppers limited to 14:71 superchargers that run heads-up and no breakout. It's a great fun competitive class with rules designed to keep the costs down -- you know, kinda like what Pro Comp used to be. Kind of a come full circle class.

They ran them at this year’s event for half the payoff of TAD and filled a 16-car field with no problem. The TAD class was double the payoff for an eight car field, and four cars showed up. NHRA would serve themselves well to think about running this class simply under the name "Pro Comp" again, if they could do it without screwing up the rules package to make it too expensive. Just a thought. - Don Dunbar


Used to love those cars and Brad Anderson was always showing up at
Sacto. One race was VERY remembarable as Brad left in the right hand lane and before he cleared the bleacher area he swerved over into the guard rail, went upside down and kind of rode the rail while the car was coming apart. He wasn't hurt, but that beautiful candy apple red car was pretty torn up. AA/DALE used to make quite a few appearances at SACTO also and I just loved the sound of those blowers whine as the car was coming at you. You could hear that supercharger whine even more then the exhaust from out in front of them. Great piece. - Eric Bruns


Great subject!!

I remember the OCIR/Ontario/Pomona days with all those cars. If you had an alcohol motor, it was either a BAE or an Armstrong. (Billy Williams, RIP!!) - Dirk Olsen



Hello, my name is Kenny Buzdas. I am a 19 year old drag racer from Northern California. I am the driver of a blown alcohol dragster that competes in an up and coming class called Top Eliminator West (TEW). We basically run a Pro Comp style category consisting of dragsters, floppers, altereds and even doorslammers. We have everything from a pro-chargers, nitrous, screw & root blowers, nitro... it all! We run on a 6.30 index, heads up tree and only two rules: Car must be NHRA Cert and run what you brung format (Anything goes!). 8 car shows (as of now) closest to index qualify. This make for a great side by show, and the fans at all the track we run in Div. 7 show interest in the class. We have had several alcohol and nostalgia nitro teams run with us in the past such as; Larry Miner (TAFC), Johnny Ahten (A/F) and Mike Fuller (AA/FD). I know that we are still small and a young category but I think with the economy shaping out to be what it is, this could be a solid class to run for many alcohol teams that can't afford to run NHRA. We have gained some recognition in such magazines as
1320 The Magazine and even some hits in National Dragster. Our class is attempting to grow and become larger we have just had some problems getting our word out to those who it would most benefit.

As far as I have been told, we have a solid amount of div. 6 runners starting up a format just as we have. This will create North vs. South and other much larger events to come. I am also aware of the DC Outlaws that run up in the NY, Penn and Maryland areas which run on a 6.40 index.

I think in today’s economy these categories can really help to keep a lot of racers racing. It's affordable, easy to run and i think we have a solid class that many racers can enjoy. - Kenny Buzdas

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