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Drag Racing Story of the Day!
Sneaky Pete and his "Jack
Car"
By Jim Hill
One of Pete Robinson's newer dragsters lies at rest in Don Garlits' Drag Racing Museum.
Photo by Gonzo
Pete Robinson's "jack car" was his second Dragmaster chassis,
one of the slightly longer wheelbase "Dart" style chassis. He
did run against fuelers in match races and won more than a few of these,
especially on the sorry-surface tracks that were typical for most of the
East Coast back then. High HP Chryslers, on nitro, just freewheeled while
Pete's little Chevy car was headed for the finish line traps.
Pete took his jack deal to Indy, for the Nationals. He pulled to the
starting line, lifted the car up and lets out the clutch. Tires start
spinning and grow, enough so that they begin to smoke WHILE THE CAR IS
SITTING STILL, THERE ON THE LINE!
The starter, the car in the other lane, the announcer (Bernie Partridge),
Event Director Jack Hart and everyone starts to freak-out. Finally the
flagman throws the green and Pete's little car zips out and is gone. It
hardly got stopped at the other end before the PA system is calling:
"Pete Robinson report to the D-A Tower immediately!"
Uncle Jack Hart told Pete to lose the jacks - forever - or hit the road.
Pete's penchant for thinking his way quicker and faster told him that the
spinning tires would act like a pair of big flywheels propelling the car's
mass and weight almost instantly, and dropping his ET. Pete was never
concerned with speed; MPH numbers to him were irrelevant to the concept of
drag racing, which was to get to the finish line FIRST. NHRA wasn't ready
for such a quantum leap in the physical limitations of dragster technology
and immediately banned such antics, forever.
It's not hard to understand NHRA's position, especially when it was sprung
on them in such an off-the-wall typical Pete fashion. But then, Pete never
really could understand how the entire world couldn't embrace his
technological ideas and move forward at the same speed which Pete's mind
was running.
Pete saw drag racing as his own Physics Lab, one giant experiment that was
rewarding from an R&D sense, and a lot of fun in the process. He was
also highly safety conscious. He was the first to develop head protection
for drivers, via his "helmet pod" carried within the three-point
cage area, to increase head protection rather than the foam plumbing
insulation and leather snap-on covers the rules required. He was also one
of the first to use hand/arm restraints, after breaking his arm in a
crash.
Tragically, drag racing lost one hell of an innovative, creative mind
there on the guardrails at Pomona in '71.
Most blame Pete's ground-effects system for his fatal crash. To refute
that, I've seen Jere Alhadeff's photo shot milliseconds before Pete
crashed.
Pete has the butterfly wheel turned hard-left, the drag links are bowed
from his steering effort and the front tires are coming off the rims,
again from the steering effort. He put his all into keeping that hot rod
off the guardrails, to no avail. This tells my uneducated, non-engineer's
mind that something else had gone bad-wrong... like perhaps the rear end
components were galling and power-steering the car hard-right.
Too bad we'll never know the real answer to what caused this tragedy. The
only one who could have explained it will be gone 30 years this Pomona
Winternationals.
Jim Hill
jhill@cranecams.com |
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