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The Streaker Takes Down Top Fuel!
Text by Wes Welch ~ Photo by Hector Leal
AKA The Streaker. Ramon Airington and Wes Welch built this dragster at Bud Warren's shop. Ramon was an excellent welder and Ramon and Wes used sand bags and hammers to roll the aluminum body. They built the entire car with no help and started racing it with an injected gas small block Chevy. They won many local races and many of the races they traveled to. After taking the car completely apart and cleaning everything, Wes Welch got it ready for the National Houston Car Show where they took first place. They met Dick Simpson there and Ramon and Wes talked about allowing Dick to put his engine in the car, and Dick and Wes would run the car and Ramon would drive. The chemistry was there; everything just got better and better. Year after year, they continued to win more races.
On a Saturday afternoon, Wes, Ramon and Dick were at the shop when the phone rung. Dick said to Wes, pack up the trailer and the car we got less than an hour to get to the track. There was an eight car AA/FD show booked in and Johnny Loper broke down on the way to the races, and Houston International Raceway asked if they would fill in and that they would pay them for helping complete the field for the fans. After getting to the track, there was no time to make a test pass or to even qualify. The teams were picked out of a hat as to who would race whom. In The first round, Ramon knew that his only hope of winning was to leave on that big bad top fueler with the supercharged alcohol dragster and just hope he wasn't ready. Sure enough, Ramon put one heck of a gate job on him, and then the top fueler smoked the tires. By the time he got it to recover, he was running out of time real quick. Ramon said he knew he was right there because he could hear him. Ramon won the first round.
Second round was a lot more serious. None of the top fuel drivers wanted to get beat by a blown alcohol dragster. Ramon did another great job on the lights, but the top fueler was coming after him fast. Ramon said it was so close that he did not even know if he had won. Final Round: It was the Airington, Simpson, Jenkins dragster tuned by Dick Simpson and Wes Welch against the big black top fuel dragster The Pusher driven by Steve Tarter. The Pusher was one of the best top fuel drivers at the time and good friends with Wes Welch tuning on the alcohol dragster. Simpson and Welch knew this track like the back of their hands. They had both raced here for many years. Simpson and Welch talked about how at about 10 o'clock there would be a light dew roll in from the Gulf of Mexico only a few miles away and that the track would become slick. They worked on the clutch and made it loose for the final round.
Both cars did their burnouts, but you could really tell who the fans wanted to win. They knew both drivers because they raced there a lot, but the little dragster that could, up against the nitro spewing 300 inch dragster The Pusher. They were screaming for the gold dragster to best the nitro car. Steve had seen the gate job that Ramon was doing and so he was ready for him. Ramon left first, but not by much. Then that dew on the track got to the big top fuel dragster and up in smoke he went. Steve back pedaled it one time, grabbed some brake and then here he came. He had all eight pipes lit and he was catching the alcohol dragster at a very fast clip. Ramon said when it went by him it sounded like a jet airliner had just screamed by him. He said it passed him so fast that they were both in the lights and that there was no way to know who had won.
When Ramon found out he had won and had just become the first and only blown alcohol dragster to ever win a top fuel race with a alcohol dragster! Even National Dragster covered it. It was quite the show! With Ramon Airington doing the driving and Wes Welch and Dick Simpson doing the tuning, the team became the biggest threat anywhere they went. One year they won 97 races out of 102. Two were lost to red lights and three were lost due to breakage. So, if he did not red light, which he seldom ever did, and it did not break, which it seldom did, they won the race for the entire year. What a time and what a team! They were the car to beat during that era.
Wes Welch
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