All of the pictures on this page were taken by Geof Hauser,
I am very grateful to him for the opportunity of reproducing them here.
|
|
|
Click on any image to get the bigger picture |
|
|
|
This site is supposed to be an
archive of European drag racing pictures. Well it is branching out a bit on
Geof Hauser's pages because he took a number of pictures in North
America. |
|
|
|
|
This Camaro was brand new in 1968 and was running in A modified production. |
|
|
|
Geof was on holiday staying with his uncle
and, at the age of only 15, decided to hitchhike the 100 miles to the strip to
take in the racing. His uncle's reaction to this somewhat daring initiative is mercifully unrecorded. |
|
|
|
|
At first glance this just looks like a picture of a nice looking big block Chevy-powered altered on a pass. Take a look at the larger picture however and you will see that Cedars had one possibly unique feature - it was dual carriageway - there was a grass strip running up the centre of the track between the lanes! |
|
|
|
|
A real 1960s style dragster with its driver trying to keep it between the green stuff at Cedars Dragway. |
|
|
|
|
The Farkonas, Coil & Minick Chi-Town Hustler pictured on its trailer in the car park of the Marco Polo Hotel in Anaheim. The car was renowned for its burn outs and raced mainly on the match race circuit. Austin Coil went on to great things as part of John Force's team. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Custom Body flopper of Phil Castronova in the pits possibly at OCIR. |
|
|
|
The next set of pictures were all taken at the Supernationals held at Ontario Motor Speedway in California over the weekend of 17 to 19 November 1972. This was the meeting at which the first official 5 second run was recorded by Mike Snively (5.974/235). This is the Walker and Densham funny car burning out with Gary Densham (cousin of Tony Densham who drove the Commuter top fuel dragster in the UK. Densham, who failed to qualify for the field, currently (2003) drives a funny car for John Force. |
|
|
|
|
Here are two very well known drivers. On the far side is Don 'The Snake' Prudhomme facing up against Ed 'The Ace' McCulloch in the Revellution funny car which was made into a plastic model kit by Revell. McCulloch got as far as the semi finals where he was beaten by Pat Foster. |
|
|
|
|
The Snake doing a real 1970s style burn out. Get the start line crew nonchalantly standing there with their backs to someone like Prudhomme. This was Prudhomme's 1973 car (hence the black paint) but it couldn't stop him falling asleep on the line in the first round where he was beaten by Jim Dunn driving his rear engined funny car. A picture of this car will follow on a later page. |
|
|
|
Wouldn't we have liked to see a sight like that at Santa Pod in the early '70s? The staging lanes at OMS. Sadly all this is covered by a housing estate now - hail to the mighty dollar. My thanks to Andy Barrack who has provided a great deal of information about this meeting at OMS. |
|
|
|
|
|
A very familiar name to UK drag fans of a certain age, two shots for you of the Stardust funny car. This was the other Stardust car (the paint job was a mirror image of the one that came over to the UK) which was driven by Bobby Rowe, Don Schumacher himself did not compete at this event. |
|
|
|
|
The quality of these next three black and
white shots is not fantastic. This has nothing to do with Geof's photographic
skills, rather the fact that I had to scan them from a page of contact prints
which were part of Dave Riswick's collection albeit taken by Geof. This was a
happy chance because when I got in touch with Geof to ask his permission to use
them on the site he said you had better have a look at the rest of my
collection. |
|
|
|
|
Tee-Rat in the foreground versus Freddie Whittle in the Shutdown blown and injected altered. |
|
|
|
Movin' Mike Hutcherson leaves the line in Nobby Hills' Houndog 6 Top Fuel Dragster. |
|
|
|
|
The Jaguar-powered Stripteaser of Roger
Bishop and Bob Messent hazing the tyres as it leaves the line. |
|
|
|
|
Colin Mullan (in the foreground) launches his Vauxhall Viva HB-bodied Invader competition altered off the line in a race against the late Alan Wigmore in his HA Viva Itzaviva. |
|
|
|
Clive Skilton's Second Revolution Top Fuel Dragster. No ID on the crew men except for Don Beadle who is standing directly behind the engine wearing the leather jacket and sunglasses. He also seems to have lost his roll of lino. |
|
|
All material on this site is copyright |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Navigate through |
|
Geof Hauser was inducted into the |
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
_06.jpg', 0, 0, 700, 540, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1))
_07.jpg', 0, 0, 700, 540, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1))
_08.jpg', 0, 0, 700, 540, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1))
_10.jpg', 0, 0, 700, 540, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1))
_16.jpg', 0, 0, 700, 540, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1))
_13.jpg', 0, 0, 700, 540, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1))
)
)
)
)
)
)
