Bill’s Virginia Nationals Notes 2000
By Bill Pratt
I had a great time hanging out at Virginia Motorsports Park today during
final qualifying at the Nationals. My brother Tim, my son Jason, and I went
down to check on the progress of "our" funny car, Bruce Mullins’
"War Horse" Mustang. I call Bruce’s car "ours" because
we have sponsored Bruce with our new racetel.com
website. With so many deserving teams out there needing help (all of which
we love and admire), I had always resisted getting involved with any one
team. Pattie Mullins, however, displayed a tenacity and determination shown
by all great women throughout history and got my name on a dotted line for
2000!
So we were going down to see how "our" car would do. Besides,
it had been ten years since I stopped my annual pilgrimage to Indy. With the
advent of the Virginia Nationals some years ago, the traveling NHRA circus
came to my BACK YARD every year. It was inconceivable that I had not
attended, but one thing or another always got in the way. This year, there
would be no excuse!
Tim, Jason, and I arrived at about 12:30 p.m., and immediately set out to
find Bruce and Pattie Mullins. We wanted to see how they were doing, and we
wanted to lighten our load. We were returning several framed photos of Bruce’s
various race cars. We had used the photos in creating the Bruce Mullins
Racing Website (
www.brucemullins.com).
We came in the back gate and headed right, which took us on a complete tour
of the entire pits without finding the alcohol cars. (Later we found that
had we taken a left instead, we would have found them in five minutes).
Anyway, we were on the "tour of the pits," so we made the most of
it.
We found ourselves in the pro cars pits, so we set off to
say hello to some of our online friends. We stopped by Don Prudhomme’s pit
to say hello to Draglist friend Ron Capps. He was nowhere to be found (although
we did spot him at a distance later). We went by the Exide Batteries Top
Fuel pit to say hello to Standard 1320 pal Don Schumacher. He was nowhere to
be seen, although we did catch a glimpse of Tony as he sprinted past. We
stopped by Gary Densham’s pit (and saw that he had launched a blower
through the top of his number one body). We were looking for long time email
pal (and Draglist advertiser) Al Liebman, but the Densham crew guys said Al wasn’t
there.
We went by Scotty Cannon’s pit to say howdy to the new
NHRA star after I knowing him for years in Pro Mod. But Scotty wasn’t
around. (Are you seeing a pattern here?) Finally,
Success! We went by the Hartman Racing Enterprises Top Fuel pit to talk to
Virgil Hartman, with whom we’ve emailed for years (most recently about his
Southern Fuel Coupes circuit). Virgil was there! We had a nice chat for a
few minutes.
We then caught a few minutes of the Federal Mogul dragster
qualifying. We STOOD in front of the grandstands because there was NO
general admission seating. I heard many, MANY gripes about this. I
have to tell ya, we dropped $84 getting two adults and a kid in to see some
qualifying. For that kind of outlay, I don’t expect reserved seats, but I
do expect SOME seats. Following that, we headed back to the
pits where we finally found our alcohol burning friends.
Bruce, Pattie, and the gang were readying the War Horse. They were
qualified 10th at 6.27 and elected not to make the final
qualifying pass, since there were only 13 cars on hand. First thing they
told me was that some guy had come by about four times looking for me. I
suspected it was photographer Ron Dilley -- a suspicion Ron later confirmed
via email. See Ron’s neat Draglist
Story of the Day
on Thursday’s opening at VMP. We never did find Ron at the races. Tim,
Jason, and I fell into a comfortable groove in the Mullins camp. Jason, Alan
Mullins, and Steven Beecher played as eight and nine year old boys will do.
Tim and I hung out at Bruce and Pattie’s and with the other alky teams.
One thing we found out was that NHRA has restricted the cubes in FMFC to
528 cubic inches, immediately making Bunny Burkett’s venerable 540 inch
Walt Austin combo obsolete. In the frame rails of the pink, purple, and
black Bunny & the Boys Avenger sat a brand spanking new 526 inch Bob
Newberry bullet. Although it retained the "IHRA" flavor of a
Roots-style blower, the motor had the best of everything and Bunny & The
Boys were very excited about having new iron for the first time in over ten
years.
I was left wondering just what the NHRA had in their minds this time. It’s
not like alcohol funny cars and dragsters are beating down the doors to get
into NHRA events. At Richmond, there were 13 cars in each category -– a
total of 26 machines. The IHRA had 40 alky funny cars alone at their last
national event. Now NHRA has made all the 540 inch machines obsolete with
the stroke of a pen. And what about those few teams who use the 557 inch
Arias combo? They are out, too, apparently...
Bruce Mullins didn’t have those worries, however, as the War Horse
already sported a 526 inch Keith Black aluminum Hemi. And after fuel system
woes that plagued the team in late 1999 and early 2000, Bruce, Pattie, and
the team blasted through to some incredible performances and their first
national event round win! In doing so, Bruce reset his all time best speed
– 228.69 mph – and ran just shy of his all time best elapsed time at
6.131 seconds.
Bruce had lined up against Fran Monaghan, Jr., in round one. Monaghan had
been on a tear, the Petro Chem car adjusting quite well to the NHRA combo
with some amazing low 5.60 numbers late in 1999 and some impressive
performances in 2000. Bruce was uptight before the race, wondering how
poorly he would show against Monaghan’s screw blown monster. He would need
a holeshot; that was for sure. Then he would have to hope the 5.60 car
stumbled.
Missions accomplished. First off, Bruce laid a .462 to .562 holeshot on
the Pennsylvania racer. Monaghan made up half of that in 60 feet, however;
the Compulink ET slip showed he had gone .946 to Bruce’s .968 60 foot
time. Monaghan pulled ahead at the 330 foot timers, his 2.496 to 2.624
second advantage more than making up Bruce’s tenth of a second holeshot.
Fran retained a two tenths advantage at half track, too, 3.790 to 3.978
seconds, but he was already in trouble. Monaghan had slowed to 176.81 mph -–
uncharacteristically slow for a 3.79 second eighth mile elapsed time. Bruce,
by comparison, ran 181.18 mph and was charging. By 1000 feet, Bruce had
pulled back ahead, 5.146 to 5.161. He then took the win at 6.131, 228.69 as
Monaghan faded to a 6.59 at only 145 mph.
After the run, Bruce immediately got on the phone to Leroy Dewdney, who
was providing tuning help from afar. Leroy told Bruce to put some more
weight on the clutch for Sunday’s second round. Fuel system and blown
motor guru Bill Barrett stopped by to offer congratulations and to check the
plugs. Bill said, "It’s rich – lean it out and you’ll get 6.0s
tomorrow." Bruce related that he took the R’s up higher than he ever
had before on that run. Bill said, "Good. Ya can’t get ‘em too high
[on a blown alcohol motor]."
Bruce also related that the shifter light is broken, so he shifted by the
seat of his pants. He shifted when it felt right. Bruce said,
"If you run one of these cars for that many years, you ought to know
when to shift it!" The combination of this gritty team’s
determination and the expert advice it receives might put Bruce, Pattie, and
the gang into the 6.0s on Sunday and maybe past another opponent. The
numbers might come, but advancement is less certain even than it seemed in
round one. Sunday’s opponent is Jay Payne, whose 5.67 at 249 mph showed he
is getting this funny car thing in hand after years in alcohol dragsters.
The War Horse crew got the car ready and then enjoyed a feast of boneless
barbecue, hamburgers, hot dogs, cold fried chicken, cole slaw, macaroni
salad, chips, soda, and beer. I felt somewhat guilty partaking in this feast
when I didn’t do any of the hard work. However, those guilt pangs passed
in about three milliseconds with Pattie’s insistence, and "the big
dogs ate."
The crew – sharing both the feast and the work – were as follows:
Bruce, Pattie, and Alan Mullins, Scott Ankrom and Robert Ostrander (both
recently of Rudy McAdams Chevy team), Mike Yohn, Kim (dad) and Steven (kid)
Beecher, and finally, Bill, Tim, and Jason Pratt. I would like to say it was
the neat racetel.com lettering
on the side of the War Horse that provided the good luck for today’s big
win, but I can’t really take the credit. Especially when you consider that
Dave Keddy’s first voyage with a draglist.com decal on its flanks
today resulted in a huge wheelstand and a loss!
Bunny Burkett, another anticipated Roots-supercharged sacrifice to a
screw blown NHRA killer, hoped for some of that Bruce Mullins War Horse luck
in her first round match against Paul Gill's 5.60 car. Bunny received luck
neither in a win nor in parts attrition. The second run on the new, high
dollar Bob Newberry motor did result in a dramatic performance improvement
at 6.06, 230 mph (over yesterday’s clutch hurting 6.28), but with the
performance improvement came disastrous breakage. Rods went out the side of
the brand new block.
Other alky stars were on hand as well. I got to greet Australian great
Steve Harker on U.S. soil after meeting him on Aussie soil last June. Harker
was low qualifier at 5.66 seconds and got a first round bye run. Did he take
it easy? Nope – a super consistent 5.67 at 252 mph solidified Steve’s
status as one of the odds-on favorites for final eliminations Sunday. Manzo
then upped the ante with an amazing 5.57 at 251 mph (shutting off a bit?) I
would have expected 255 with that ET.
All the other matches went pretty much as planned, screw blowers taking
out the Roots blowers, and big names taking out the little guys. One of the
little guy teams who didn’t advance was that of Junior Fuel and Pro Comp
veterans Dave Keddy and Rich Tartaglia. Their www.easyinteriors.com
Olds Cutlass launched into a huge wheelstand in its first round match. Rich
explained that the car usually carries the wheels about a foot, but this was
WAY up there! Dave and Rich had applied www.draglist.com
decals to the spoiler of the car just before its first round match. I SWEAR
it wasn’t the added weight of the Draglist decals that caused the wheelstand!
Well, that’s my story. Tim, Jason, and I hit the highway back to D.C.
shortly after 9:30 p.m. I needed to file this story, and I needed to
catch up on a TON of Drag Racing List duties on Sunday. We all will
have to get our Virginia Nationals info from the stark lists of results at
summitracing.com or at nhra.com – as I always do. But it sure was fun
being there in the flesh for once!