What's New at The Drag Racing List

March 31, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Drag News Memories. Dan Roulstons, who edited almost every top drag mag back in the day, tells what it was like to put out Drag News before the days of faxes and emails.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Smokin' Chevy Pickup! Anni Valder grabbed this shot of a sportsman pickup truck driver who's trying to fry all the rubber off his back tires.

Drag Racing Movie of the Week: Jet Dragster Comin' At Ya. Paul Rogers: was he brave or crazy when he took this head on shot of a jet dragster?

March 30, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Northeast Fuel Match Racing with Don Roberts. Top Fuel, Top Gas, and Funny Car veteran Don Roberts fills us in on all his rides.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: The Rare Gold Coast Duster Funny Car. New contributor Bob Strait caught this shot of one of those cars often heard about, but rarely seen.

March 29, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: What Fine Points Can You See at a Live Drag Race? Doug Dornbos sees things his friends can't and vice versa. What about you? Let us know and we'll print it.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Zombie Heats the Meats. Brian Wood got this absolutely killer photo of an absolutely killer car -- the original Bruce family ZOMBIE.

March 28, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: NHRA Enjoys Historic Lunch. Dick Wells reports that NHRA brass and pals got together for a commemorative lunch at the same diner where the papers were signed to bring the organization into existence 50 years ago.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: When Fire Burnouts Go Wrong. serves up a front engine fueler, hot and crispy after a fire burnout went awry.

March 27, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: NHRA Houston O'Reilly Nationals Final Results and Points Standings. NHRA.com provides the full story from Baytown.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Doorslammers at Speed! England's Sharkman sends along an absolutely WICKED photo of a '70 Camaro doorslammer making big speed at the top end.

March 26, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Winners, Final Qualifying from NHRA Houston. nhra.com provides full qualifying results. We add the winners.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Slammin' Willys Gassers. Steve Gibbs offers up a couple of bad doorslammers from '62.

March 25, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Happy Birthday, John Mendes. Justin Mendes couldn't think of a better birthday present than to write a Draglist story of the day about his dad. We agree! Happy birthday, John!

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Jim Wiens' Pro Street '69 Camaro. Jim Wiens sent along this photo of his bitchin' '69 Camaro Pro Streeter along with all the info on his 7.60 ride. Racers, be sure to send in YOUR information and photo!

Drag Racing Movie of the Week: Northwest Funny Car Burnout Action. Jay Mageau provided this Reid Johnson footage of a great funny car burnout.

March 24, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Fuller, The Greek, and the Dzus Fasteners. "Pit Crew Pete" Starrett tells a tale on Kent Fuller, showing that even chassis building masters sometimes have to say "Oops."

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: 38 Special! Dave Greytak's Nitro Coupe. Ron Dilley caught Dave Greytak's nitro coupe on another 220 mph blast.

March 23, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Big Yohns and Mendy at the March Meet. Ron Johnson provides a blow by blow account of his and driver Mendy Fry's outstanding Junior Fuel Dragster effort at Bakersfield 2001.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Jim Murphy's WW2 Nostalgia Fueler. Robert Briggs caught the WW2 fueler getting some between rounds maintenance at the 2001 March Meet.

March 22, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Valley Guys. Bill Holland tells how there once was a time when you could completely build and field an eight car Top Fuel show without ever leaving the San Fernando valley.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Ron Scott's Top Alcohol Funny Car in 1990. Rob Potter contributed this photo of one of New York's toughest drag racers.

March 21, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: How The Surfers Got "Started." Tom Jobe takes us through the sequence used to get The Surfers AA/Fuel Dragster started in the sixties.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Borscht Belt Brick -- A Tricked Out Yugo? Gonzo, a few hours, and PhotoShop software -- 'nuff said.

March 20, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Tommy McNeely's Great Experiment. Joel Naprstek with a little bit of a tall tale about one of our favorite racers and friends -- A/FX, Funny Car, and Pro Stock star Tommy McNeely.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: High Country Fiat Coupe. Pete Garramone captured Mike Guritzen's Fiat A/Coupe getting some between rounds maintenance in 1961.

March 19, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Final Qualifying - 2001 NHRA Gatornationals. nhra.com provides the lineup for Sunday's eliminations. NOTE: The race was rained out on Sunday, March 18, and will be rerun on April 20/21. We will print the results then.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: The Guzman & Dekker Assassination Vega Funny Car. Paul Hutchins caught the beautiful machine at Bandimere in 1973.

March 18, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: 2001 Gatornationals Friday Qualifying. nhra.com gives up the stats.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Charles Carpenter's Nitrous Backfire! Mark Hovsepian captured one of the earliest nitrous backfires in history as Charles took on the West Coast cars on a 1990 tour.

Drag Racing Movie of the Week: Dave Simpson's Six-Second Top Doorslammer. Peter MacGregor caught this six-second Ford at the world's newest strip.

March 17, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Final Results: The 42nd March Meet at Bakersfield. The Goodguys spill the facts on Bakersfield 2001.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Hemi Wagon Goes for 300 MPH. John D tells the story of a 6 second, 212 mph drag wagon on its way to the salt flats.

March 16, 2001 -- Drag Racing Story of the Day: Shirley Muldowney: Diva of Drag Racing. Billy Anderson makes the case for Shirley as the ultimate drag racer.

Drag Racing Picture of the Day: Saturday Night at the Fonda Drags. Joel Naprstek with a scan from 1963 that includes a certain lady drag racer you may have read about recently.

3/01/2001 to 3/15/01 -- "The Dark Ages" - It's been pretty bleak around Drag Racing List World Headquarters lately. For those of you who haven't heard the saga, on March 1, some bozo fired off a Trojan Horse or something on the server on which we resided. That blew everybody on that box away, including us. Our major site sponsor - Martel Bros. Performance - was especially hard hit. As one of the top Internet performance parts businesses in the world, they lost big dollars by being down for nearly ten days. 

We finally got back up on March 9, but I have not been able to update most of my pages on the shared server. At least we had SOMETHING to look at when you clicked on www.draglist.com! At that point, however, I did not want to interfere any more with the Martel Bros. by trying to force my stuff to update to the page. And I certainly didn't want to take up any more of Don Wilshe's time as he tried to reconstruct the massive Martel Bros. site. The great part is we have moved to a new server that is ALL OURS! It is fast and has plenty of room for growth. I will be moving all my sites there within the next week. 

This new era in draglist.com will be a little pricey (about the same monthly payments as a new economy car), but are necessary if we are to offer the rock solid reliability that our readers and sponsors deserve. We are really starting to rack up the visitors and we welcome all of you! We had over 115 thousand hits in January and we had 113 thousand in February! That would have been over 125 thousand if we had those three extra days! We probably won't set any records for March, since we basically were down and unavailable for the first ten days. Our readers have returned in force, however, for the past five days. 

I truly apologize for your having to see the same thing over and over for that period of time. We have uploaded a new story of the day for every day we were down. Enjoy! Now we have to find more content so send in those stories and memories! We want to print it all...

Thanks for your patience, friends. Now that we have survived the DARK AGES, we are ready for a Drag Racing List Renaissance!

Note our new email address...

Bill Pratt
bilden@draglist.com

Stories from The Dark Ages:

3/15 - Ten Hours in the Sun. James Morgan tells what it's like to sit outside all day, shooting drag cars... and why he wouldn't be anywhere else.

3/14 - Draglist ROOLZ! (Or Draglist DROOLZ?) Rabid Draglist fan Chris Fabiaschi welcomes us back from the DARK AGES, when our site was down for half a month in March. We retort with our deep gratitude, an explanation of what happened, and our plans for never letting it happen again.

3/13 - Could a Front Engine Dragster Be Competitive Today? Jim Burke offers his opinions, backed up by experience with his own late model FED.

3/12 - Simpson's First Drag Chutes. Tom Jobe with an entertaining and informative tale of how Bill Simpson got started making drag chutes and how The Surfers put them to the test.

3/11 - The Legend of Flaming Frank Pedregon. Tom West and Ken Logan team up to tell how Flaming Frank got that coupe to belch smoke and fire all the way down the strip.

3/10 - James Morgan's Top Ten Funny Car List. Just what it says! Do you agree with James' picks? Got your own list? SEND IT IN! We'll print it.

3/09 - Broken Clutches and Push Starts. Don Roberts with some then "warm" but now-funny tales of nitro racing in the Northeast.

3/08 - A Goggles Story, or Use the Proper Chute. Randy Bradford tells what happens when you drive 176 mph into a drag chute that is WAY too big.

3/07 - Racing on the River Road. Pat Foster remembers when SoCal drag racers were still "young 'n' dumb" and settling things on the River Road.

3/06 - Dodgin' the Venolias. Jeffrey Howe tells about the time Jimmy King had to fend of several of Venolia's best as he spit parts out in the King & Marshall Front Engine Dragster.

3/05 - The Italian Way at the Gators. Geno Terenzio fills us in on the altered stars memorable trip to the Gatornationals a few years ago.

3/04 - Ladies of Harley Invade! Teri Nelson and little Ricki are ready to ride for 2001.

3/03 - NHRA to Name 50 Top Drivers During Anniversary Season. This process has already begun, but I think it's so important that I want to highlight it here. Some of the sport's top experts have submitted lists of their picks for the Top 50 drivers in the past 50 years. The NHRA combined the lists to come up with an all-time driver list that they are announcing, two per week, until the World Finals. The drag racing experts list is a who's who of drag racing photojournalists and insiders.

Of course, our own Bret Kepner is on the list as one might expect. But imagine our surprise when Phil Burgess tapped Danny White and myself to join this esteemed group in sending in our lists of the top 50 racers. We are extremely proud to take part in this endeavor. As I said last week, EVERYBODY in the sport should visit NHRA.com's 50th Anniversary site to find out where modern NHRA-style drag racing came from. Regardless of sanctioning affiliation, no serious drag racing fan should go forward without the knowledge contained on this site.

3/02 - The Upset of the Race -- Almost! Lyle Greenberg tells how he almost took out FMFC hitter Bucky Austin at the Phoenix NHRA event.

3/01 - Headers: Cheap or High Buck? Jim Hill discusses the difference between exhaust headers for different applications.

Pictures from the Dark Ages:

3/15 - The Winged Express Rides Again. Jim Sorenson caught Mousie Marcellus's famous fuel altered at the 2000 Nightfire event. We miss Willie Borsch, but Mousie keeps on doing it.

3/14 - Rapid Ronnie Lyles' Pro Stock Hemi Colt. James Morgan grabbed a shot of the tough little Mopar in the pits.

3/13 - The Power of Duct Tape -- Bill Kuhlmann's Corvette. Ernie Broughton caught Bill doing what he does best -- winning no matter what it takes.

3/12 - Kenny Safford's Wicked Rail Dragster. Another gem from the Daryl Huffman collection.

3/11 - Altered OUT OF SHAPE on a Burnout! Brian Wood contributes this super shot of Chris McClellan just BARELY controlling his wild, six-second altered on a burnout.

3/10 - Big, Bad Mike Burkhart's '71 Camaro. Bob Plumer reached into the Drag Racing Memories collection for another great shot of a bitchin' race car.

3/09 - Road Rage! A Bad, Blown Ford Mustang. Anni Valder checks in with a wicked blue oval product from Britain.

3/08 - Showtime, UK Style! Fuel Funny Car at Night. Andy "Tog" Rogers with an awesome shot of Englishman Bill Sherratt with the header flames high.

3/07 - Transition Machine -- The Blue Blazer Corvette. Tom West with another gorgeous shot of a neat period in the transition between fuel altereds and funny cars.

3/06 - Bad Doorslammers -- '55 Chevy and '41 Willys Line Art. Tom DeLello graces our pages with some more neat drag racing/street machine artwork.

3/05 - San Gabe in the '60s -- Four Bad Machines. Steve Gibbs takes us on another ride down memory lane with a photo of one each -- an altered, a coupe, a doorslammer, and a gasser.

3/04 - Doin' It in the Sand! Jeremy Steven's Blown Roadster. Jeff Mills and his pals drag race in the sand in Missouri. Here's a killer blown roadster kickin' up some dust.

3/03 - The Unknown Wheelie -- Super Twin Drag Bike. Sharkman got this fantastic shot of a drag bike racer in Holland BARELY hanging on to a gigantic wheelie.

3/02 - Big Daddy Takes "4" For a Ride. Ron Dilley caught the old man taking his radical restoration for a quick trip to the finish line.

3/01 - Amazing Model: Mike Sullivan's Fuel Altered. Jack Smith has built an amazing replica of Mike Sullivan's famous Fiat. He shows it off here and provides links to his page showing the entire buildup.

Movies from the Dark Ages:

3/12 - Dave Simpson's Six-Second Top Doorslammer. Peter MacGregor caught this six-second Ford at the world's newest strip.

3/05 - Blown Comp Firebird Burnout. Paul Rogers grabbed this footage of a hard Maurice Fabietti burnout in warm, sunny Australia.

2/26 - Steiner Wins the Reunion! Dawn Mazi captured Gerry Steiner's winning Top Fuel "A" run at the 1999 California Hot Rod Reunion.

March 09, 2001 - WE'RE BACK!!! (Well, almost...) Hi folks. Boy did we miss you! Thanks for all the calls and emails of concern. We really appreciate the kind words. We've been down for a whole week now. As of last night, we didn't think we would be up and running today. But an early, early morning email from Don Wilshe got us rolling again. We originally hoped to be back online on Monday, but that didn't happen. I say we are ALMOST back because a few of our images are not loading. After an entire week of down time, however, I thought we could live with that for a day! Please excuse the somewhat rough appearance of the site as we rebuild.

As you may have heard, the server on which we were hosted was the subject of a hacker attack last Thursday, March 1. While it's been a major inconvenience to me and our readers, our generous site sponsor, Martel Bros. Performance Superstore, suffered way more than that in lost sales (I'm not giving away the figure, but it has a lot of zeroes in it). They have wisely made the decision that they cannot gamble on anything interfering with their primary business. This includes taking complete control of the content on their server, and they have asked the sites they sponsor to investigate finding other homes. 

That sent me on an urgent search for the best deal possible for hosting our 300 megabytes of data, 1,000+ pages, and untold GIGABYTES of data transfer. That stuff ain't cheap for a site the size of draglist.com and I can never thank the Martel Bros. enough for covering those costs for us for an entire year and then some. We are ending as friends with my sincere appreciation for all Don Wilshe and Ray Martel have done for me. Don's surprise email early this morning has brought you these words earlier than I thought I would be back.

The good news is, I've just secured a brand new virtual server for draglist.com that is ALL OURS. It has 400 megabytes of space on it and we can have unlimited bandwidth usage, which is just an amazing deal. I will control all aspects of the server, including eventually moving all sites I've created or otherwise maintain to my own server. I am having Network Solutions move the draglist.com name to the server tonight and I'm nearly finished uploading all the draglist.com data to the new server. 

I kept up with the stories of the day through this past Sunday. I will do stories of the day and pics of the day for each of the days we've been down. Heck, we just had our one-year anniversary of doing a new story every single day, and I don't want to break that streak, even though I'm cheating a bit since we've been down...

Anyway, that's the story as of this morning. Thanks so much for the kind words and for letting us know you miss the site. We sure did miss having it up there. Best of luck to Don Wilshe and the Martel Bros. in their future endeavors. I can't say enough about them. You guys and gals looking for performance parts online might consider checking them out. bp

March 04, 2001 -- Down, down, down! Our site was down from about 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 01, until today, March 04. If you sent us an email during that time, we didn't get it. Please send it to us again. Sorry for the inconvenience -- we missed you as much as you missed us! We are not sure what happened to the server yet, but I'm sure steps are being taken to minimize these outages. Here's a great time to again thank Martel Bros. Performance for sponsoring the web hosting of The Drag Racing List. They have been so generous to us. When we are down, THEY are down, and believe me, they lose much more money in lost sales than we do when the server crashes. Please consider Martel Bros. when buying high performance auto parts.

NEW MATCH RACE MADNESS PC GAME! We have updated the Match Race Madness PC game with even NEWER stats than we have on the lists themselves! We have all the info from Pomona AND Phoenix, so the 2001 season is ready for some hot simulated drag racing action. Click HERE to download the latest copy!

Send an email to a little drag pal. Larry Pfister from Horsepower Heaven sent me this note the other day. Take a moment or two to fire off an email to Brittany and let her know that her fellow drag racing fans are here and we care...

It's been a tough few days for motorsport people, but if you think you've had it tough how about little Brittany King? Right now she's sitting in a hospital bed with Leukemia. Her dad Leeland rides that really cool drag bike that nearly took the division last year. Everybody is really pumped up with Brittany's attitude, and guess what? She LOVES to get email! So send her some. Ask her about drag racing. She loves that too. EMAIL BRITTANY and the whole family: Leeland, Kim, Brittany and Michael King - Racers Finishing Touch KING6337@aol.com

Search and Link Improvements. We have made subtle yet useful changes to our Search and Links features at draglist.com. On our Search Entire Site feature, we now return a portion of the search results with each match. This cuts down on the "false positives" we sometimes saw when searching for similar persons or pieces of information. Try it now by putting in your name or type of car or whatever. I think you'll be pleased with the results. 

We have updated our Links page to show only ten links per page. Some of our links pages were getting so big that it took too long to load them. Now each page displays quickly, followed by a link to the next page. Remember, the separate Link Search on each link page can take you directly to the links you are looking for. I hope you enjoy these two new improvements! 

Draglist.com needs content! We are always searching for new stories of the day. If you have a drag racing memory you want to share with your fellow racers or drag fans, send it to bilden@draglist.com. We are trying to capture the flavor of drag racing from ALL perspectives, so yours is welcome! Don't worry too much about spelling, grammar, and that stuff. We can smooth out the rough edges. All stories and photos will be credited to you and we can include a link to your email address or to your website if you like. Let's make The Drag Racing List YOUR site -- send us a story!

Updated Draglist Links.