BOGUS NOTES – MATCH RACING

BOGUS NOTES - Nov 2011

Dale Boeru, the founder of this magazine has started a new business venture called Fast Entertainment Inc. The company is a booking agent for exhibition vehicles. When I was match racing our Alcohol Funny Cars or Jet Funny Car I used Duane Nichols of Nichols and Associates in Chicago Illinois. Dale will have his hands full as a liaison between the promoter and racer. Since Duane retired there has been a void in the system, but I do believe that Dale, with his professional attitude, will be the guy for the job. He has already signed up some tracks and several well-known teams. I wish him well.

I have been fortunate enough to race in many different eliminators. I’ve been to the U.S. Nationals with a thirteen-second Stocker, a nine-second Gasser, and a five-second Nitro Funny Car. I have always enjoyed the experience, challenge, and comradeship of any group I have been associated with. I’ve sat around a campfire at the National Dragster Open in York, Pennsylvania and been captivated by the stories of Stock Eliminator racers and  how they walk such a fine line between legal and being bounced trying to find just one horsepower. I have also sat and talked to some of the greats of our sport who have contributed much in taking drag racing to where it is today.

Some racers never go outside of their own group and that’s too bad. Those who do are rewarded with a whole new outlook and a better perspective of our sport. However, there is one group that not many folks get to sit down with and look into their world. That would be those on the exhibition and match race circuits who are, in my opinion, the most fascinating and sometimes most bizarre in our sport. I’m happy I was part of this group for a number of years. I fit in real good. To make a living doing it is a tough deal. My Jet Funny Car team has done a Fourth of July series where we started in Englishtown, New Jersey, Wednesday night, raced in Dallas, Texas, Friday night, then back to Atco, New Jersey, for a Sunday afternoon show. On one such trip the motor in our crew cab dropped a valve and busted up a piston fifty miles outside of Memphis, Tennessee. We got towed to Racing Head Service in Memphis where my friend Scooter Brothers had a new motor waiting for us. About four hours later we’re back on the road. The ‘break in period’ was the two and a half miles between R.H.S. and interstate I-240 at which point we ‘laid her on the wood’. We were on time and set a track record at the Texas Motorplex.

My friend Vince Vanni had aspirations of being in the exhibition business. C’mon now, don’t get ahead of me. He purchased a Go-Kart with a rocket motor in it and put Jimmy Moore behind the wheel. They were testing the thing at St. Thomas when Vince’s dad Carlo showed up. After watching a couple of out-of-control passes he asked Vince, “how can you put your best friend in that much danger?” Vince’s response was a shrug of the shoulders and a “don’t worry about it” but shortly after this he did get rid of it when, after staging the Kart for another run, the hydrogen peroxide failed to ignite when Jimmy hit the switch and they all ran for shelter.  Years later Carlo asked that question again after he decided to tag along with Vince and me on one of our adventures. We were on our way to Florida to run the winter circuit with the Alcohol Funny Car when the suspension on our trailer busted up going through Atlanta. We could not find a shop to come out during the night to make the repairs. It was decided that I would spend the night in the trailer with a tire iron and a dozen Buds to protect the race car and that Vince and his dad would stay in a motel. Before going to sleep, Carlo turned to Vince and asked “how can you leave your best friend out there on the side of the highway in danger?” Vince suggested that if it bothered him a lot he could trade places with me and the conversation was ended. The trip got worse after we burnt up some pistons in Miami but we went on to win the Snowbird National Open in Bradenton and life was good.

Vince and I did a lot of match racing with our Alcohol Funny Cars to create revenue so that we could run the National events. I could write chapters about crappy tracks, sleazy promoters, out of control passes and hour after hour of head-bobbin miles running the interstates. A lot of the events we ran used a ‘Chicago’ style qualifying format which is not for the timid. However, for many of the match racers and exhibition drivers, danger was a badge of honour.

During my years in the business there were many career ending injuries and way too many deaths. Those days were like the barn-storming that went on during the thirties. There were rules, but not too well enforced. Everyone was making money so “let’s not rock the boat”. Now, as many stories that can be told about the Alcohol and Nitro Funny Cars, the Jet powered Funny Cars and Dragsters were a group that stood alone when it came to danger. Some of us made a lot of money with the Jets and accepted the risk as part of doing business. For the most part, the dollar value on our contract was proportionate to our performance on the track. We had at least one death per year in this small group of racers, and two in particular touched our hearts here in Southwestern Ontario.

There were also a few ‘silly’ moments in my Jet career. Two of them were at Dragway Park, Cayuga. At one event we positioned the Funny Car cross-ways on the track and blasted out fireballs while a dude from California did a ramp jump over the flaming tailpipe on roller skates. He was holding on to a ski rope while being pulled at forty miles per hour by a Ford Pinto. Considering how many of those things blew up, that might have been the most dangerous part of the performance. And how many of you remember my match race against John Fletcher one Labour Day weekend. John was riding his moped and I was chasing him down in the Northern Force Jet after giving him a twenty-second head start. I’ll never forget him anxiously looking over his shoulder as I came up on him at two hundred and sixty five miles per hour. I stayed close to the centre line to make it interesting but at about the twelve hundred foot mark John had enough and wisely made a quick exit on to the grass.

She’s a crazy world ladies and gentlemen.  Currently in the motorsports world there is a neat tour thing happening. A small group will get together and do day trips to visit certain race shops. I have been approached a couple of times to be part of the itinerary and host such a visit. I tell them “I don’t have much of my old stuff for you to see since I sold it all to keep up-dating”, but the response is always the same… “well, you got you’re A-Modified Super-Stocker don’t you, and you could tell us some stories”. Oh Yes, I think I can handle that part just fine. The drag racing history in Ontario, and indeed Canada, is awesome and it is reassuring to know that people care. Thanks to Kirk Vanni for his help and knowledge and to Bob Schilling for coming out to the St. Thomas Can-Am Race. Nothing is more fun than a bunch of old dudes on the starting line trying to figure out what the heck the numbers are on the scoreboard. Could someone please bring us a pair of binoculars!

  ‘Bogus’