How
Pro Gas bought “little guy” racing to the Nationals
We’ve all seen the current
Super Gas and other indexed pro tree classes, but have you ever wondered how
this phase of sportsman drag racing actually came into existence?
 This photo shows possibly the first throttle-stop fabricated by Pro Gas pioneer Dave Riolo. Riolo is said to have debuted the threaded-rod stop as early as the Seventies.
Dorman said, "Most tracks can afford to book Pro Stockers. Heck, we can
only afford Gassers. I guess we'll call them Pro Gassers. After everybody
laughed, they realized that they actually liked the name. Dave Riolo, a local
racer, was standing behind Dorman when he said it. Evidently, he liked the idea
because he and the other racers later came to the line with 'Pro Gas'
shoe-polished on their windshields.
 Bob Bunker was another founding member of Pro Gas.
A 9.90 index was later adopted, with a breakout, when the points series began
and the fields were limited to eight. As time progressed, the index was dropped
to a 9.70 and then even further to a 9.50 in 1978. In judging the performances
from that era, these cars were flying. To give you an idea of how close in time
that these cars were, let's compare them to Pro Stock. Today, the current Pro
Stocks would have been 3.2 seconds quicker. Back then, in 1974, only nine
tenths of a second separated the two.
Veteran outlaw shoebox campaigner Riolo recalled those early days of Pro Gas
racing. He admits that even though the cars were going really fast, it wasn't
as complex to race the class back then as it is today.
"Twenty years ago,
running mid-nines was expensive," Riolo explained. "We didn't have
much of a chassis. You saw lots of fuel-injected cars and four speeds. They
didn't have an automatic developed enough to run the numbers, and the Lenco
transmissions were too pricey. Parts were hard to come by for the particular
combinations that we had. We had to make a lot of our own parts to run 9.70s in
3,000 pound cars. Setting up the car was basically a shot-in-the-dark method
that worked more times than not.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
Click to visit our sponsor's website
 Most of all of the drag racing magazines supported the Pro Gas movement. Major titles such as Popular Hot Rodding (shown) and Super Stock and Drag Illustrated regularly devoted space for the cause.
Evidently, the technique worked. Riolo won three consecutive Pro Gas titles at
Sacramento Dragway beginning in 1974. He eventually added two more in '79 and
'80.
The class progressed and the index was dropped to 9.50 by 1978. By this time,
Pro Gas had taken California by storm and
Sacramento Dragway was the place to be if you lived in Northern
California. In Southern California,
it was the famed Orange County International Raceway. Competition was hot and
heavy at these two popular venues.
When the NHRA wanted to create a national event version of the popular Pro Gas
concept, they conferred a lot with the Southern California
racers and they pushed for the index to be 9.80. The Northern racers had their
own opinions and the overwhelming consensus was that "9.80s were for old
ladies." Some were pushing for 8.90s.
The NHRA was very interested in Pro Gas. This provided them with a means to
boost participation without all of the usual technical headaches often
associated with policing the class racing divisions, which provided the only
avenue for a sportsman racer to compete on the national event level. The
sanctioning body contacted several of the racers in California. The problem that emerged is that
one group provided an example, while another gave another account of how it
"ought to be."
The end result was what the NHRA described as a compromise to attract both
groups. They chose to debut the new program at the 1980 Winternationals in Pomona, Calif.
The So-Cal guys largely supported the program, but the Northerners were nowhere
to be found when the tree dropped for the first time. According to our sources,
the reason that guys like Riolo and Bunker didn't support it is because they
felt that the NHRA had butchered their concept. One of their largest gripes was
the legality of the street roadsters in the program.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
Click to visit our sponsor's website
 Pro Gas opened the door for longtime Seventies bracket stalwarts such as John Labbous to enter the national event scene without having to go class racing.
Wallace said, "The guys up North were really pissed off. Some felt like,
'Here we are running these big blocks in these old heavy cars, real cars, we
might add. Why go through all of that trouble to have a tube chassied, small
block with better visibility put you on the trailer first round. We are going
through all of this trouble to make this thing a unique format and these guys
are going a cheaper route, which virtually takes away all of the originality
that we'd worked so hard to preserve.' When Bob Tietz won Pomona with an automatic small block
roadster, he virtually sealed its fate and set a precedent in the NHRA's
version."
Tietz, a long time Pro Gas advocate, remembers the roots of this movement. He
recalled that fateful day, "Ron Williams let me drive his car at Pomona. I remember they
made us qualify a week earlier at OCIR. It was the quickest 32 cars and they
wanted us to showcase our program at Pomona."
Tietz continued his trip down memory lane by adding, "The Southern
California guys didn't want to run the fast indexes like the guys up North did.
We had a hard enough time finding cars to run 9.90s. Some of them wanted the
index at 10.50. As for the roadsters, the Southern
California people wanted them because they felt it was just one
more competitor for their cause."
Though Tietz is from Southern California, he
often ventured up the interstate to Sacramento Raceway. At a time when the guys
up in Sacramento
gave the So-Cal guys a hard time for wanting to go slower, Tietz was very much
competitive. He never let the taunts get to him as he won more times than he
lost. Tietz won the Northern California Pro Gas series championship three
times.
The NHRA made some significant changes in their sportsman program to
accommodate the indexed, pro-tree concept. The index was bumped up to a 9.90
and the division was renamed Super Gas. This new line-up was created at the
expense of the old Modified Eliminator class. Suddenly, the NHRA didn't have to
deal with gripes that the three eliminators of class racing design could
generate. They now had only two to deal with.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
Click to visit our sponsor's website
 The winner of the first-ever Pro Gas exhibition was Californian Bob Tietz at the 1980 NHRA Winternationals.
The IHRA jumped on the
wagon as well in 1981. At this time, the sanctioning body was based in Bristol, Tenn.,
and felt that a 10.50 index would be perfect for them, so they added it and
named it Hot Rod. A full 64-car field with alternates to spare was nothing new
for the IHRA. By 1982, they expanded and established a 9.90 version, dubbing it
Super Rod.
Since the inception of Super Gas, the style and type of car that has competed
has drastically changed. For instance, in the early-Eighties, less of an
emphasis was put on reaction times and more on running consistently. Riolo's
famed "Temptation" shoebox utilized a pretty unconventional set-up in
1980 that was capable of winning in Super/Pro Gas competition. His combination
in today's Super Gas ranks wouldn't even stand a chance as most experts
contend. Riolo's '55 Chevy was powered by an injected, 482 Yenko and engaged a
Chrysler Hemi four speed. This lumbering beast topped the scales at 2,900
pounds.
Before we continue this
trip down memory lane, not every one of the pioneering machines carried this
same combination. For example, there were those that tried the small motor,
lightweight car combination and others that bypassed the carbureted or
supercharged format for fuel injection. Some even experimented with nitrous
oxide. The days of the aforementioned "odd" combinations are gone.
Or, at least in the standard sense, they are absent.
A technical look at one of today's Super Gasser is enough to make one of those
Pro Gas purists of yesteryear sick to their stomachs. Gone are the oddball
blown combinations and the original "have your own identity deals"
that once fueled the spectator and media support.
As times change, so do situations. This has been the case with Super/Pro Gas.
With its Pro Modified-style introduction and today's computerized format, the
class has evolved to admirably fill a need. A major complaint is that the cars
no longer run side-by-side, opting to play a neat game of cat and mouse. Some
like the way it has evolved and some don't. But, regardless of how you feel, it
has filled the void and saved sportsman racing, at least on the national scene.
Imagine the cost of entering drag racing under the same standards that were
once mandated for the class cars, and you'll quickly see why Pro Gas had to be
the sacrificial lamb to take sportsman racing to the next level.
|
