Well I need to give a speech on the evolution of top fuel dragsters for my penn state speech class and I need some more information. I have a few books from the 50's and 60's and a good amount of magazines too but i need some later info. Does anyone have anything about records being broken or being the who was the first to break a 6 second pass time? I've been looking at some of the threads here and got some good stuff but i just need a little more. Cliff notes: I am giving a speech and need websites or info about top fuel dragsters from the 50's to the present
No history about fuel dragsters would be complete without the story that evolved before dragsters discovered fuel. At one time there was a famous article, by a respected engineer, that stated it was impossible for a dragster to physically go over 160 miles per hour. I was flagging drags in the late fifties and we lived in Florida and the drag strip was out in a cow pasture. Don Garlits was a local racer who came every week to try out his dragster and one day he turned over 160 on that old drag strip. It wasn't recognized because we weren't NHRA sanctioned and Don had to go out west to make his runs official, but he first did it on our old track. Things kept evolving into what became the fuel dragster revolution. But it started with guys doing what engineers said couldn't be done. You ask about fifties and sixties, well fifties was just starting to realize the benefits of fuel. Better living through chemistry.
Thanks for the help. I'm going to email Big Daddy and see if i can talk with him. And Joe Amato lives about 1 mile from me so maybe i can talk to him too.
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