The Greatest Funny Car Final of All Time
 
By David Hapgood
 

Rewind the clock to 1981 and the NHRA Grandnational at SANAIR, a venue that was commonly referred to as Montreal, but which was actually tucked into the little hamlet of Saint Pie, an hour's drive east of the big city. On this particular weekend, Saint Pie was a soggy place.
 
For a number of reasons that will soon become clear, this greatest of final rounds was held under conditions that will never again be duplicated. The players were Kenny Bernstein and Don Prudhomme, two of the heavyweight champs of the era. Their match up had nothing to do with the points battle or wheel-to-wheel competition. It had everything to do with absurdity.
 
The weather was a mess that weekend. It had rained intermittently on Friday and Saturday before a steady downpour finally washed out the remainder of qualifying. The rain continued through Saturday night, letting up just before daybreak Sunday morning. The forecast for race day was so poor that NHRA took the unusual step of bumping eliminations up an hour ahead of schedule. As a result, thousands of spectators were just arriving as the first round of nitro burners were already on the track. NHRA deserved much credit for the choreography, however, because as soon as the round was complete, the skies opened up once again, and from this point on the event turned into an all-out endurance test.
 
Rain continued to fall on and off throughout the day, and eliminations were completed piecemeal between no less than five rain delays. For the spectators, much of the afternoon consisted of watching the jet dryer make passes up and down the track, while sportsmen volunteered to drive their door cars in a continuous loop between the starting line and the last turnoff -- all in desperate effort to dry the track and keep the event alive! But the clouds stayed low and each time racing resumed everyone knew that it was just a matter of time before everything ground to a halt once again. The event was essentially a rainout, but the NHRA soldiered on,
 
By the time the semifinal round was complete, the program was four hours behind schedule. And because of the many interruptions, a number of the finalists were already waiting in the staging lanes, ready to go, while others had just finished their semifinal runs.
 
The sportsmen eventually went ahead and ran their finals, while dusk settled on the track. If my memory serves me correctly, Manzo and Amato won the alky classes, or at least I remember the sight of their cars going down a quarter mile that was exceptionally dark -- darker than any I'd ever known. And we still had the professional finals to look forward to. Little by little, as the last of the daylight faded, it was becoming clear that we were in for a real treat. You see, SANAIR was not equipped to run drag races at night! Yes, the starting line was fully-lit, more or less, and even the first several hundred feet of track had marginal illumination, from the lights on an adjacent oval track which had been turned backwards to face the quarter mile. This was all fine and good up until about the halfway mark. But the top end was another story altogether, and the shutdown area was a virtual black hole.
 
At last, the Pro Stocks and Top Fuelers came to the line, while the very last glimmer of twilight filtered down through a heavy sky. Five minutes later it was over, and then night fully settled on SANAIR. But where were the funny cars? As fate had it, they had been the last to run in the semis, and they were still in the pits, preparing for the showdown. I might also point out that the top FC teams of this era pushed their cars harder than the TF teams -- they had bigger sponsors and greater mechanical carnage -- so it took them longer to perform maintenance. Looking out onto what was now a very dark track, I couldn't help but wonder if Bernstein or Prudhomme had any idea of what awaited them.
 
I stood with a group of racers and NHRA officials alongside the guardrail where Sanair's pit road led out into the staging lanes. The 'Snake' and Bernstein finally towed out, rolling silently past us and making quickly for the starting line. Every last bulb in the top end scoreboards had been illuminated, to give the drivers something to aim between! It seemed perfectly reckless not to postpone the run until the following day, but I was delighted that they were going to have a stab at it under these unbelievable conditions.
 
The teams wasted no time getting into position behind the water box and firing their cars, as if it mattered anymore, because by now the sky was so dark that it might as well have been 4 AM. They went ahead with their burnouts, rolling to a stop not far from where we stood. I had to laugh -- or maybe wince -- at the sight of huge flames lashing from Bernstein's headers: the car was obviously way too hopped up for the conditions. Now I should also note that Bernstein was the sort of champion who learned by trial and error, and at this stage of his career he was ramming the crash wall probably more often than all the other top-ranked super stars combined. The ludicrous circumstance of this final round only upped the stakes, and it made me a little nervous, but in a good way.
 
Prudhomme and Bernstein backed up to the starting line, the flames still lashing from Bernstein's headers and the frontal portions of both cars in full shadow, the lights of the starting line tower glaring from behind, I realized that I had never before seen funny cars back-lit so dramatically, and suspected that I would never see it again, so I tried to soak it all in. And as this was French-speaking Quebec, the announcer was bilingual, alternating French and English. At this pivotal moment he was shouting something to the effect of "Don Prudhomme avec Kenny Bernstein dans le Double A Funny Car finale," which definitely added to the surreal quality of the moment.
 
The drivers went through their dry hop routines and then inched toward the staging beams. The people standing beside me on the return road seemed way too relaxed, as if they had not taken into account the variables and considered what might transpire on this run: the drag racing folks of that era tended to live 'in the moment', while I was probably the exact opposite -- I had no trouble envisioning future possibilities. In this instance, I was ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble, probably coming from Bernstein. Back on the starting line they lit the pre stage and stage bulbs. Time seemed to stand still while simultaneously advancing, almost menacingly. In any case, nothing could stop it. The tree came down and the race was on! From my vantage point it appeared that Bernstein was pulling into a decent lead, as Prudhomme struck the tires a few hundred feet out, but an instant later Bernstein did the same, and then immediately lost control. His car tipped up on two wheels and, in a shower of sparks off the headers, swerved hard into Prudhomme's lane, directly in front of 'the Snake' -- brilliant!
 
I'd suspected that this run was an exercise in insanity, and here it was, playing out. Bernstein dropped off his right-hand headers, squarely in the wrong lane, and then lurched to the right, tilting over on his left headers as he struggled to regain control -- it was all happening very quickly, but we were being treated to one hell of a show. The car veered back across the centerline on two wheels, sparks flying as it made a beeline for all of us standing at trackside. To this day I have never seen a funny car so completely crossed up that the back end of the car was actually AHEAD of the front, and I couldn't imagine how he was going to save it. But one thing was perfectly clear: at that moment, the trajectory of the "Budweiser King" was going to put it into the wall directly in front of us, and with enough speed to clear it -- something that was now apparent to everyone in our large group of onlookers. The idea of 'safety in numbers' did not apply here, and we ran for our lives, each to his own, crewmen, racers and NHRA officials alike. I was several steps ahead of the crowd, and managed a wayward glance over my shoulder to see Bernstein somehow (and to this day I don't know how) miss Prudhomme and (again, anyone's guess) both walls, and idle past the stupidly-lit scoreboards into the total darkness of the shutdown area. Prudhomme coasted through behind him -- the event champ!
 
I nearly pissed myself laughing. To me, it was without a doubt the greatest funny car final of all time.
 
David Hapgood
hapgood_d@hotmail.com