You never know when you are going to unearth a
treasure. While cleaning out some long forgotten about magazines of my dad’s,
we came across the January 1978 issue of Super Stock Magazine and realized
there was something special inside. This issue of the magazine had coverage of what
was the biggest sand drag event of the day, the 1977 “Bakersfield Nationals” in
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If you have trouble reading the article, here are the highlights:
- This race was held April 23-24, 1977
- There was one race each day for the Top Fuel & Funny Car classes.
- Fred Gregory ran 3.03, 3.05, & 3.06 on Saturday; eventually beating a red lighting Lyle Fisher in the TF final round.
- Chuck Neal would cut through the competition on Sunday and beat Lyle Fisher in the final with a 2.93 for the Sunday Top Fuel win.
- The Saturday & Sunday winners would race off for the overall event win, where Neal would run another 2.93 to defeat Gregory.
- Of note, current TF racer Rick Cameron raced his “Italian Stallion” Dragster at this event.
- Interesting to note, going into this race the Funny Car class record holder was Jim DePasse of
- Steve Andrews won Saturday’s event as long as set a new FC class record with a 3.17 backed up by an earlier 3.22.
- Andrews’ car was a dual-tire rear engine FC called “Fuel Excursion”.
- Steve Brooks defeated Sam Miller to win Sunday’s FC class.
- Brooks would go on to defeat Andrews for the event’s overall FC class win.
If anyone has similar articles like this laying around and you want to share them with the sand drag racing community, feel free to contact me This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to set something up.