Nitro Funny Cars in Albuquerque: Photos and Results

Bill Pratt

7 years ago

For the first time in over 35 years, Nitro funny cars match raced at Albuquerque Dragway last weekend.

A crowd of 2,000 drag race fans saw something not seen at Albuquerque Dragway for 35+ years – a 2-car Nitro Funny Car Match Race. The July 7 Firecracker Nationals is traditionally the track’s biggest show of the year and track owner Robert Costa decided to added nitro to the mix this year by matching up local Albuquerque racer Lyle Greenberg’s beautiful new “Cone Hunter” TFX Hemi-powered 1978 Corvette against Alamogordo, NM’s Ray Stringer’s “Blown Cent-less” steel-block Chevrolet-powered Olds Cutlass. Since these are New Mexico’s only 2 supercharged nitro racers, the matchup was billed as the “New Mexico Nitro Funny Car State Championship”. Both Stringer and Greenberg were coming off excellent performances at the “Funny Car Chaos” event last month in Amarillo, TX. Stringer took the runner-up honors in the “B” Field and Greenberg was runner-up in the “A” Field at that race.

Both Greenberg and Stringer utilized social media to generate interest in the event and the spectator count seemed to show that the fans were eager to see nitro in Albuquerque. Although the match was scheduled as a quarter-mile showdown, one of Albuquerque’s fabled dust storms had other ideas as it completely covered the track in dirt. This forced track personnel to break out the Zamboni and completely re-prep the track. With the schedule already on life support, the decision was made to only prep the front half and have the entire program run the eighth mile. Unfortunately, this took away the possibility of 200 mph performances at the 5300’ altitude facility that had weather stations showing 8,000’ density altitudes.