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 oting 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.

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NO. 1 QUALIFIER – NICKY BONINFANTE
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – A TENDENCY TO BE IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME

FIRST RD - DEF. ROGER GUSTIN

THE STORY OF: HEY JOE … WHERE ARE YOU GOING WITH THAT DYNAMITE IN YOUR HAND?

I’ve made many friends on my lifelong journey in drag racing, but when it comes to my friend whom I will call Joe O’Byrne, he was clearly in a clique of his own. And, following the story I’m about to share, you’ll see why.

This story, while hilarious, is told in memory to two co-workers, Joe and Doug Dragoo, no longer with us.

Joe and I worked together at Kalitta and just so you can paint a picture, he was a big Oklahoma hillbilly who favored Gomer Pyle in his appearance. He was absolutely a great guy with a heart of gold. He was a hard-working guy who made Jack Daniels his best friend every night. It was Donnie Bender, one of Joe’s classmates in high school, who was able to get Joe hired at Kalitta’s.

Me, Joe and Doug Dragoo all worked together at Doug Herbert’s team under Dick LaHaie. Doug and I had come over after a brief stint with Dib Prudhomme.

During this particular season, we ran a lot of races with Herbert, chasing wins on both the NHRA and IHRA tours and were understandably tired by the time September rolled around.

Joe was tired, too and for some reason, someone, and I don’t know who, gave him a few half-sticks of dynamite. He originally had about six of them and was down to one. His final one was one he wanted to be special.

Each weekend, after all of the racing was done and the car was loaded, Joe would often visit the cabinet where he kept his good friend Jack Daniels. He’d hit the bottle a few times and always straight, never mixed. He’d drink out of this big trucker cup with the Roadkill Café logo on it. He was a work of art. A gigantic gulp of the Jack Daniels and then he’d take a drink of Diet Coke to chase it.

Let’s say he was tuned up on Friday and Saturday nights.

Well, in Reading one year, Joe begins to confide in me, sharing that he had a plan, he wanted to light up a drum of nitro and launch it in the air. He goes into all this detail and to hear him tell the story it would be spectacular.

As entertaining as it would be, the friend side of me and the reality he’d be banned from NHRA events prompted me to counsel, “Joe, you really don’t want to do this. You will get in all kinds of trouble.”

He got perturbed, “Efffffff you Nicky, now I’m not gonna blow anything up.”

He really battled it out with himself, sort of like the angel on one shoulder and the little devil on the other. This goes on for a while.

It was the end of the day, so the team headed to the hotel. As for me, I only lived 45 minutes from the track, so I headed home to sleep in my own bed.

I came back to the track on Sunday morning and the team was working away on the regular pre-race prep and out of the ordinary, every worked away unusually silent. I mean no one was saying a word. I pulled Dragoo off to the side and asked, “What’s up here?”

I mean no one was saying a word. So, Dragoo unloaded in an excited tone, “You ain’t gonna believe what happened last night!”

I got a lump in my throat as I regretfully demanded, “You gotta tell me what happened.”

Dragoo tried to change the subject and walk away, saying we’d talk later, when I grabbed him and demand to know what has happened.

“You ain’t gonna believe what Joe did!” Dragoo exclaimed.

It was then Dragoo told the story about what happened when he left Joe in the room, and headed to the hotel bar. Joe was just sitting there sipping his Jack Daniels.

Dragoo went on saying, “I came back to find Joe sitting on the edge of the bed with his face buried in his hands. He was shaking his head.”

Trying to get Joe to explain what happened only drew the response, “Doug, you ain’t going to believe what happened.”

“I’ve done something bad,” he added, with his face buried in his hands.

“It’s really bad,” he reassured.

Dragoo reasoned with Joe, “What happened? Is your Mom okay?”

Finally Joe began to spill the beans.

“Look over there,” Joe said as he pointed towards the bathroom.

Dragoo explained how he walked over to open the bathroom door when, with the turn of the handle, the whole door fell off of the hinges and onto the floor.

The toilet was destroyed. There were only two studs in the floor with the nuts still attached to prove there was once a toilet there.

Dragoo looked over in disbelief at a trash can full of porcelain which once resembled a toilet. There were big pieces, little pieces, part of the tank and a plunger. The seat was propped up against the wall and all was organized.

This is when it all became my fault as Doug asked him what happened.

As Joe explained, “Nicky wouldn’t let me blow that nitro drum up at the track. And I had that half-stick, and I just had to blow something up. When I got back to the hotel, I was pretty bombed. I lit it and flushed it down the toilet.”

The toilet bore the brunt of the explosion.

Did I mention this room was on the second floor?

The blast blew a hole in the floor, sending all of the pipes and plumbing into the room below. This necessitated the people in the room below requiring relocation.

It was no sooner than I had finished the conversation with Dragoo on Sunday morning than a call came to me from Laurie, our travel agent, with whom I am good friends, telling me how much the room repair will cost.

The total cost was in excess of $7,000 and the price could have been even higher if not for our Laurie’s diplomacy which kept Joe out of jail. Joe ended up paying the cost of the damage and managed to keep his job as well.

And all these years later, I’m thinking, it might have been cheaper just to tell Joe O to launch the nitro drum at the racetrack.

NO. 4 QUALIFIER – FRANK HAWLEY
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME –

FIRST RD - DEF. JOHN "TARZAN" AUSTIN

TELLING THE STORY OF: THE CANNONBALL RUN WITH AUSTIN

A lot of my stories seem to focus on my time with Austin Coil, but when I really sit down and think about it – this was some of the most fun I’ve had in my career. I was a novice professional learning the ropes from one of the most decorated nitro tuners.

Travel back to the off-season of 1981 and Coil had decided that we were going to spend the off-season in California. We were going to run the big race at OCIR but after that, I really didn’t want to be stuck out there without a car.

I had just bought with my off-season salary a new Mazda RX-7 with all the bells and whistles as well as the new rotary engine. It was the slickest and coolest thing I had ever saw in my life. I decided I would just drive my new car to California.

At the time I made the decision to drive, Austin was in the process of booking plane tickets. I called to let him know I planned to drive out there.

Then Austin offered, “Why don’t you swing by Chicago and we’ll ride out there together.”

I didn’t give a second thought, “Fine with me.”

On schedule, I swung by to pick up Austin, we had a bite to eat, and hit the highway. Little did I know the lunch conversation would set in motion my most penalized driving experience ever.

We weren’t far out of town when Austin started talking about the “good old days” of racing and how the teams would drive from Chicago to Los Angeles in record time. He likened the experience to the Cannonball Run.

He beamed about how Tommy Ivo had the record of thirty-something hours.

“A fine automobile such as this, with two experienced drivers such as ourselves, we ought to be able to beat that record,” Austin offered.

I could see no good coming from this experience.

Inside I was saying to myself, “Don’t do this. This is silly. It’s not worth a traffic ticket. We’re not going to wreck my new car.”

Austin remained silent for a moment and then piped up, “We could blow this record apart and by the time we got to Los Angeles, everyone would know.”

I pondered silently for a little while and then spoke, “Well how far do we have to go? How fast would we have to go?”

Austin gets out his trusty pocket calculator and begins punching in numbers. He gets out his pencil and paper and starts figuring.

“We can do this,” he responds.

I just sat there, thinking to myself, “This is so stupid.”

And since we were on a long stretch of straight highway, I just nailed the throttle and put it to the floor. We were smoking along at about 120 miles per hour.

We were going along and Austin was complimenting me on how well I was doing when all of a sudden, I see my rear view mirror full of blue lights.

I pulled over and the officer lectured me, “You know how fast you were going and we’re going to take your license!”

Then he noticed I still had a Canadian license.

He realized he couldn’t take my license and instead wrote me this big huge ticket instead. He screams at me for being such an idiot. I was scared and felt bad.

We resumed the trip and this time instead of going for the record, I was driving five miles per hour under the speed limit.
Austin had been silent for a little bit and couldn’t resist, “You know we’ll never be able to beat the record now.”

“I just got a ticket,” I countered.

Austin in his infinite wisdom offered, “What’s the chances of you getting another ticket?” Austin asked skeptically.

“Two tickets in a row? It’s like having two plane crashes in the same day,” he reasoned.

Austin suggested we rip it down the highway for an hour or two and maybe we can back off for a little bit.

It all seemed somehow logical to me. I got on the gas pedal again and five minutes later, I had blue lights in the rear view mirror.

Once again, I had a cop read me the riot act and present a $100-plus ticket.

“It’s not happening again, I’m done,” I eventually broke the silence to say to Austin.

Down the road, we started up a new conversation and Austin asked, “Wow Hawley, do you get a lot of tickets?”

I explained those were my first two major tickets. I had gotten a couple of speeding tickets before but nothing like these.

As I spoke it occurred to me, “You know the good thing about having a Canadian driver’s license, is it doesn’t count on my insurance in Canada. My insurance rates don’t go up.”

You could see the gears turning in Austins head as he asked, “This doesn’t cost you anything but the money for the tickets?”

He looked at me and without hesitation, “Floor it!”

“I won’t have any money once I get there,” I reasoned.

“I’ll split the cost with you,” he countered. “This is like having a get out of jail free card.”

The logic seemed right to me once again and when it comes to Austin, he’s a convincing person.
I can honestly say I do not remember how many tickets I got after this point. All I will say is we got stopped a lot.

The one stop I remember was the policeman who made us go to the station to pay the fine because he was worried I wouldn’t pay the fine because “I lived up in the Arctic somewhere.”

We paid in cash and right out of the courthouse and to the highway, we accelerated back to 120.

Austin was that he was willing to split the fines, but wasn’t going to take a hit on his license. During a time he was driving and got-blue lighted, we pulled around the corner to switch seats and imagine the two of us switching seats in the small car with the five-sleed transmission.

The police got up there and I was behind the wheel.

We did make it to LA, and while I’m not sure if we set the record, but we racked up about $900 in fines.

When it was all said and done, Austin put the experience in persective.

“Hawley think of it this way, this was a tax or a fee to be able to drive as fast as you want to across the United States,” Coil said.

Somehow or another it all made sense to me.

 

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