Here are the rules –

The field was seeded by reader vote. The participants are paired on the standard NHRA professional eliminations ladder. Each story represents an elimination run for the participant. The readers will judge each war story on the merits of (A) believability and (B) entertainment value. Please do not vote based on popularity. You are the judge and jury, so vote accordingly. Multiple votes from the same computer IP address will not be counted.

First round voting lasts for two days per elimination match. Once a driver advances to the next round, they must submit a new war story.

This is an event based on fun and entertainment value, and the rules are simple. The stories cannot describe any felonious acts (unprosecuted, that is) and you can't use a story about your opponent, against them. There is a one event win rule.

This is drag racing with no red-lights, disqualifications and plenty of oil downs minus the clean-ups. Please enjoy as each of our competitors tell their stories.

EVENT HOME PAGE

RACE COMPLETED: No. 1 Nicky Boninfante [91.9 percent] def. No. 8 Roger Gustin [8.1]

NO. 1 QUALIFIER - NICKY BONINFANTE ****** WINNER ******

WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – A TENDENCY TO BE IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME

TELLING THE STORY:  TOLD YOU THAT PIT BIKE WAS GONNA HURT SOMEONE

What you’re about to read is a true story and there’s no changing the names to protect the guilty. The story I am about to tell is about the night both a pit bike and a rental car reached a fiery conclusion – in other words, they both died a horrible death.

This was several years ago when I worked with Bob Gilbertson, along with Tommy DeLago. Over the winter Bob had made some changes to the Funny Car team including a new sponsor and a larger budget.

This was the perfect time for Tommy and I to work together again for the first time since we had left the Kalitta camp. Tommy had worked with Mike Green over at Prudhomme’s and he brought over with him the knowledge of how to build a car similar to what they were running. We spent much of the off-season building Bob a car capable of running with the top teams. We finished up a week before Pomona and decided to head to Vegas for a three-day test.

We arrived in Vegas on Thursday and had a really young crew. At the time, Bob had a motocross team and was really into this style of racing. Somehow or another Bob had come across this really small motorcycle to use as a pit bike.

This bike was brand spanking new and it didn’t take much to encourage the kids on the team to do donuts and all kinds of youthful tricks.

It also didn’t take long for us to realize this thing was going to hurt someone and even Tommy piped up, “Why do we need this thing? It will hurt someone.”

We had this discussion Thursday night with Bob but it was filed away by the time we came out for testing on Friday. We worked on the car and finally made a 330-foot run and decided we’d make Saturday a big day of runs. Bob made his quickest runs to the 330 ever, the first time being in a slip-joint chassis. Making the moment festive is the fact hardly anyone else made a good run that day. Things couldn’t have been any better.

We’d make four runs on Saturday and head on over to Pomona.

The guys were almost finished servicing the car, so we, with the exception of Bob (who was driving back to the hotel), decided to partake in some adult beverage(s).

We were having a grand old time.

When it was time to go we sent PR guy Berserko to get the rental car. We piled into the car when one of the crew guys hopped on THAT pit bike and took off flying through the pits, shooting rocks up as it pulls away.

This is when we reminded Bob just how dangerous this little bike was.

“Bob, somebody is going to get f****** killed on that thing; something bad is going to happen.”

Truer words were never spoken. No one got killed but something bad did happen.

Bob replied, “F*** that thing, I don’t care … I’ll run it over with the rental car, I don’t give a s***.”

The kid came flying up on the bike and we told him Bob was going to run over the pit bike. So he pushed it out into the road and laid it on the side.

We should have just left the thing in the desert.

About the time he laid it down and got out of the way, Bob nailed the gas in the rental car and ran over the top of the bike. The car came to a screeching halt with the bike lodged under the passenger door.  The peg was jammed into the asphalt and the gas tank was leaking. The sparks from the foot-peg then ignited the gas.

There wasn’t an explosion but a small fire underneath the car was growing bigger by the second. This might have been entertaining to watch except I was sitting in the passenger seat right under the bike as the black smoke was billowing.

As the flames grew, I reached over to raise the window but I couldn’t because the window lock is on. I screamed to Bob to take the lock off.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“What’s wrong?” I replied. “We’re going to f****** die, that’s what’s wrong!”

Every one of the crews were scrambling for a fire extinguisher.

Meanwhile, Berserko was in the back seat trying to make an exit. Then Bob became excited and mashed the gas. He had the rental car floored trying to dislodge the bike. The fire was creeping in through the window because I couldn't get it up.

By this time, there’s a trail of fuel, and the asphalt was on fire behind us … the stuff you see in cartoons. We were going down pit road about 35 or 40 miles per hour.

I look over at Bob and offered, “Bob, I gotta roll the window up, I’m getting burned!”

This inspired Bob to begin doing do-nuts. By this time all efforts to dislodge this bike had failed.

Then it occurred to me, “I gotta get out of this thing!”

I opened the door into the fire, and bailed out.

Bob resumed his donuts.

Bob took off through the pits, with people chasing him with fire extinguishers as I laid on the ground wondering what has just happened.

I heard on more than one occasion, “He’s f’ing crazy! He’s f’ing nuts!”

I felt awful low as I began to talk to myself.

My first f****** day at the track with this team and we’re never going to be able to race again. Tommy finally gets a tuning gig and now we’re both going to be banned from the NHRA.

I looked up enough to see the rental car in the dark, and in flames, headed towards the dirt track. It’s the talk of pit road. It looked like a 1970s Funny Car fire. It comes to a skidding stop and then there’s a big giant f****** puff of dirt and fire.

I was having flashbacks to my childhood and watching the old Funny car fires and braced myself for the impending explosion. Then it came, “baaaarooooooooooooom!” there’s a big f****** fireball. The car’s gas tank blew up in a big mushroom cloud.

It didn’t take a genius to realize we’re in big f****** trouble.

I figured Bob was dead, we just blew up a rental car, and then Berserko was dead, with the car just sitting there burning. Our guys jumped in the van and ran down there. It’s far away.

Next thing I know, I get up and begin walking back to the pits where Tommy is standing there in a state of disbelief. I just looked at him and all I could say is, “Bob’s dead.”

All we could do is sit there and say, “Aw f***.”

We drew the conclusion our careers were done and we were going to jail.

If there’s a silver lining, five minutes later, the van rolled by.

Sure enough, there’s Bob in the passenger seat, smiling and waving. Berserko is in there too, and he’s waving. They just drive on out of the track.

Tommy and I just looked at one another and I just said, “Well … he AIN’T dead.”

We determined, it was in our best interests to get out of there as quickly as possible. We hopped over the fence because the track was locked. We walked to the truck stop and called a cab back to the fleabag hotel we were staying at. We were settling in when Tommy got a text from Capps, “dude, what happened to the rental car?”

The rental car was the talk of the internet and message boards.

We got to the track early the next morning and there was a big sign taped to the side door of the trailer from Chris Blair, the track manager.

“Do not touch anything, do not open your trailer. Come and see Chris Blair in the tower ASAP!”

Me, Tommy and Bob go up there and Chris promptly says, “Load your s*** up and get out of here.”

We tried to explain and he didn’t want to hear any of it. He did point out we’d get a bill for the damage to the asphalt and so on.

We loaded up and headed to Pomona and by this time, the sponsor has heard about it.

Bob explained the situation and we became concerned maybe the NHRA might not let us run Pomona and maybe the whole season.

Bob then called Graham who told him he didn’t know if he’d be allowed to run Pomona.

“Bring your rig to Pomona and we’ll decide if you’re going to get to run, and there will be a fine, we’re working on it now,” Graham told Bob.

We got to Pomona on Tuesday and they turned us around at the back pit gate. Wednesday we were still sitting outside of the gate. The fine was handed down -- $25,000 and had to be paid before we could come in the track. Bob had the money wired, we parked. We went out and qualified, and even won a round.

But really, we lost. By the time we added up the cost of the fine, we also had to pay Bruton’s Speedway Children’s Charity $20,000 for the asphalt and even though the rental car was insured, it cost us another $8,000.

Of course, Tommy offered we might have saved money because we didn’t make those test runs. That made him feel better I’m sure.

And, in the ultimate I told you so moment, I couldn’t help but remind them all how I told them the pit bike was going to hurt someone.

So, there’s the real story of what happened with the pit bike in Vegas. If I make it past first round, I’ll tell the story of the dynamite, the toilet and the Hampton Inn, in case you were wondering.

I came to win this thing.

 

NO. 8 QUALIFIER – ROGER GUSTIN
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – ONCE FELT THE STING OF A FRANK BRADLEY PRANK

TELLING THE STORY OF: IT’S A BIRD; IT’S A PLANE … WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?

I’m not going to say whether I believe in UFOs or not, all I can tell you is my experience during an unusually warm evening in the darkness of the newly constructed “5” Freeway driving through Northern California.

My story takes us back to July of 1972. I was a rookie jet car driver and at the time, I was living the outlaw life because the NHRA had banned jet cars altogether.

I traded in my nitro car for a Mustang jet Funny Car called “The Time Machine”. After years of having a supercharged, nitro-burning engine in front of me, I now had a J-46 behind me.

Because we didn’t have those NHRA tracks available, we had to run every unsanctioned, obscure track in the United States. As popular as California was for drag racing, the Carolinas and Georgia provided a hot bed of bookings for spring match races. Later in the year, we moved towards the Midwest on our tours. There was only six of us outlaw jet car racers back in the day.

We ran mostly AHRA tracks in the Midwest and west coast. We made our way to California and begin working our way up the Pacific Coast Highway for a show in Seattle.

Because it was extremely hot, we’d sleep in the day and drive at night.

One the night in question, it was still hot … 100 degrees in the day and the nighttime provided little relief. There were four of us; myself, Mike Evengens, Doug Rose, and Dave Corey, the one responsible for getting me into jet car racing who later died on this trip in a racing accident.

But anyway, each one of us had a crew member with us and for me, it was a gentleman named Ray Stewart.

I can without a doubt say Ray Stewart was the most unassuming person I had ever met in my life. He was kicked back and nothing rattled him. A bomb could have gone off 20 feet from him and he would have responded, “Man, that made a lot of noise.”

It was 3 AM and we had decided to switch off driving, so he took over. I kicked back and tried to take a nap when I wake up to see Ray driving with his face almost pressed against the windshield. He’s down the newly-built Interstate 5 in Northern California, staring out the windshield and he’s uncharacteristically rattled. There was no real business development around there, not a whole lot of gas station, just miles and miles of farmland. You could drive for miles and never see a house … just desolate area.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Something’s after us!” Ray exclaimed.

He was in a state I had never seen him in before. He was excited.

“Something’s after us!” Ray exclaimed again.

“What do you mean something is after us?” I responded.

No sooner than I said this than a bright light swooped in above us. It was an incredible bright light; almost to the point it was blinding. It was coming in out of the west and swooping down and away. This light was low flying … about 25 feet in the air.

This light would come at us at a high rate of speed and then disappear.

There was really no noise associated with the light and we had the windows down in the truck. It would pass by and disappear.

The experience had me asking, “What is this?”

By this time, I was concerned, not really understanding what this was.

We just drove down the road, after slowing down, and watched this thing move around. It would come from the west, this light, and it would disappear. A few seconds later, out of the east, it would swoop down on us and then disappear into the night. Bear in mind, this was only 25 or 30 feet from the ground in the pitch dark.

We were just beside ourselves trying to figure out what this was. The one thing we could figure out was that we couldn’t figure out what it was.

Listening to the radio earlier that night, we had heard a news report of a commercial airline pilot on a flight from Seattle to San Francisco talking about the UFO he had seen. We were laughing and joking about it earlier.

Since we knew we’d be on the same route, we laughed and joked that maybe we’d see it too. This time, there was no laughing just concern it was going to finally quit playing with us … swoop down and take us to Mars.

We didn’t do drugs, so I knew it wasn’t a hallucination.

We had ruled out every lunar possibility including a meteorite or falling star.

We were facing a UFO.

Then it came from behind and over the rear of all four trailers.

I was extremely concerned by this time as was everyone else. By this time, I remembered Ray had bought a flashlight at a truck stop somewhere down the road.

Someone had to be brave in the group, so I grabbed the flashlight and stuck my head out the window, the next time this thing swooped down, I was going to shine the flashlight on it and either one of two things were going to happen. Either this thing was going to perceive my actions as a hostile threat and fire a ray gun at me and disintegrate us or I was going to know what we were dealing with.

It came at us again and as I was prepared to shine the light, Ray grabbed me, “Don’t piss them off or they will get us!”

I’ve never seen Ray more serious.

It came out of the North this time and the light was so bright it blinded us and then disappeared. We never heard a sound.

Then this thing made a turn and with my head out the window, it became apparent what we were dealing with.
A crop duster!

We sat there for the longest time trying to figured out how there was no sound. He must have had it throttled down so much there wasn’t a sound.

And for us, as we hit the road, there wasn’t a sound inside the truck either.

When you’re grown men and had the pants scared off of you by a crop duster, you just found other things to talk about going up the road.

We had stared down the Jetsons and lived to tell about it.