Veteran automotive journalist Jim McCraw has been covering drag racing since the glory days of the 1960s. Here he takes in the scene at the annual nitro happening in Bakersfield.

 

 

The Bakersfield March Meet
story and photos by Jim McCraw

While the people at the Autorama in Detroit and the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance in Florida gawked at cars sitting still last weekend, the hard core of the California drag racing community were all at the 56^th annual March Meet near Bakersfield, where they worship at the twin altars of old-style drag racing and nitromethane fuel.

The Bakersfield race is not for the faint of heart.  There are 500 very serious, very beautiful race cars here, replete with transporters and tow vehicles and motor homes.  For many, Bakersfield is the greatest drag race of them all.

 

Tim Avila’s 1941 Willys Coupe D/Gasser, a classical gas, pure and simple 

 

Where to start?  Bakersfield, a city of 350,000, is the capital of the enormous Kern Valley, captured by the Sierra Madre and the Coastal Range, where they raise grapes and oranges and nuts and they pull huge quantities of crude oil out of the earth every day.

This is Bakersfield’s Super Bowl. This weekend, there were enormous crowds of people, excellent racing weather and a drag strip that is groomed and regroomed with mops, brushes and liquid traction compound all day long for maximum traction.

This weekend, they will run the traditional crowd-pleasing classes, cars that run supercharged on nitromethane, supercharged on alcohol, and on very expensive racing gasoline, in the shapes of cars that raced decades ago.  The variety and quality of these vintage race cars are unmatched anywhere else in the country.

A word about nitromethane, chemical symbol CH₃NO₂.  It is a rocket fuel that carries its own oxygen and burns nine times faster than gasoline.  It has more explosive power than TNT.  When supercharging is added to nitromethane, many thousands of horsepower are available from seven-liter or smaller racing engines.  Burned nitro has one of the sweetest and most enchanting aromas in all of racing, and it makes these engines the loudest racing engines in the world.

 

Pure mechanical madness, supercharged on nitro 

 

Vintage drag racing rules are restrictive, to keep costs down and limit performance. Tires are limited in width.  Only one magneto and one fuel pump are allowed per engine, whereas the NHRA pros run two of each and much bigger tires.  At this race, a front-engined fuel dragster will be lucky to run a 5.60 elapsed time at 260 mph, while current-technology rear-engine cars run 3.70 elapsed times at over 320 mph.  The seasoned spectators here don’t care about the numbers as long as the racing is close all the way down the quarter-mile (they don’t race to 1000 feet like the current pro cars).

There are classes for slower cars, too, including A/Fuel Dragster for cars running either supercharged on alcohol or naturally aspirated on nitro, Junior Fuel for small-displacement nitro dragsters, and more classes for everything else that shows up, with and without doors.

Dragster design varies all over the map depending on its era.  Some of these speed sabers have long, pointy nosepieces and beautiful paint and lettering.  Others have no bodywork at all, to save weight, time and money.  They reek of minimalism and memories.

 

The Champion Speed Shop dragster, a two-time Bakersfield winner

 

The nitro funny cars here use fiberglass or carbon fiber bodies to replicate cars that were in new car showrooms from 1965 to 1978, and they look like stretched versions of real Camaros, Mustangs, GTOs, and Challengers, not like the misshapen mutts at the pro races.

The paint work, striping, paneling, lettering and detail on these cars are meticulous.  This is California.  This is where the guys from San Diego square off against the guys from Modesto, where Fresno takes on Fremont and the Sacramento guys bring their best stuff for the gang from South San Francisco.  Regionalism is rampant here.

 

Funny Car winner — James Day and Gary Turner, 1978 Challenger

 

This is drag racing at its very old-time best in the state where it was born and raised.  There are short-wheelbase, nitro-burning Fuel Altereds here, too. Some of these ancient race cars are made from Fiat Topolinos or Model T roadsters, and they are the squirreliest handling race cars ever built, but thrilling to watch on the edge of control down a quarter-mile of primo blacktop.   And each day ends with jet-powered dragsters for those who like it LOUD.

The Famoso drag strip, handily located between California 99 and California 65 on Famoso Road, has been holding this event continuously since 1958.  What was once a mile-square World War Two military training airfield is now a huge drag strip complex with an airstrip on one side, and oranges, grapes and oil on the other three sides.

 

Masters & Richter, Top Speed of the Meet, 1964 — 195.44 mph 

 

Unlike most drag strips, Famoso has an enormous grove of specially planted shade trees behind the grandstands, and each tree is dedicated to a drag racer, living or dead, who made the sport better. There are park benches here, too, inscribed with the names of Hall of Fame drag racers.  Many of the tailpieces on the dragster bodies carry remarks of remembrance. “Wish You Were Here, Joey.”  “In Loving Memory Grandpa Bob.”

Front-engined fuel dragsters and funny cars, race cars that look they’re from the fifties, sixties and seventies, are what bring the throngs to this vintage drag race.  The people here remember and honor the pioneers of drag racing, and many wear T-shirts and jackets preserved from races and teams of long ago, all of which adds to the color and atmosphere you see everywhere at Famoso.

 

Ford Highboy Pickup, a traditional California hot rod 

 

The weekend includes a free hot rod, kustom car and rat rod car show in the grove of trees, with about 500 cars in it, a huge variety of drag strip food, and a gargantuan swap meet for race parts and car parts.

It’s very seldom that an outsider wins here.  The California fuel racers are just too good, too experienced, and they know this track. It’s a long, expensive tow from everywhere. In the face of all that adversity Tony “T-Bone” Bartone brought his dragster and his boys all the way from Long Island City, New York and put everyone else on the trailer.  Running in the low 5.60s in qualifying, becoming top qualifier at 5.63, setting Low ET at 5.623, and Top Speed Of The meet at 262.13 mph in the final against Rick White of San Diego, Bartone simply dominated in Top Fuel and was hilarious in the winner’s circle with his Jersey approach to things.

 

Top Fuel winner Tony Bartone came from New York and cleaned up

 

The Californians controlled Funny Car, however.  James Day, from San Juan Capistrano, used Gary Turner’s gorgeous 1978 Dodge Challenger Pedaler funny car to outrun number one qualifier Dan Horan’s red, white, and blue 1966 Mustang funny car, 5.88 at 228 mph versus a much quicker and faster 5.72 at 255 mph.

The best thing about all of this quick, fast, loud, and aromatic vintage drag racing, perhaps, is that the winners in each of the classes go home with a nice trophy, because there is no prize money.  None.  At the March Meet, they don’t race for money, they do it for love.

 

Six-cylinder GMC dragster with six carbs and sprint car nose 

Rare 1937 Graham Supercharged Sedan 

A 1967 Cadillac Coupe — customs are rare at Bakersfield