Funny Car Legends
Funny Cars were never supposed to become sensible, and fortunately nobody involved worked very hard on correcting that.
They started with factory-looking bodies, altered wheelbases, big engines and racers trying to get down the strip faster than the fellow in the other lane. Then the engines moved backward, the bodies became fiberglass shells, nitromethane took over and the resemblance to something parked at the Chevrolet dealer became increasingly theoretical.
Funny Car Legends: Don Prudhomme | John Force | Kenny Bernstein | Raymond Beadle | Tom McEwen | Ed McCulloch | Jungle Jim Liberman | Gene Snow | Don Schumacher | Gordie Bonin | Jim Dunn | Cruz Pedregon
Driving one required more than a quick reaction time. The good ones learned how to handle enormous power, disappearing traction, occasional fire and machinery that could turn a perfectly good afternoon into a collection of fiberglass pieces before the finish line.
They also had to work a crowd. Funny Car grew up in the match-racing era, where a fast car helped but a name people remembered could get you booked again next Saturday. Champions, independents, promoters, tuners and outright showmen all found a home here.
These are the people who made Funny Cars worth watching even before anybody knew whether the run was going to end with a win light.
The Snake. Cool, methodical, brutally competitive and usually the last fellow you wanted staged in the other lane.
Prudhomme came out of the early dragster years and became one of Funny Car’s defining stars. Championships were only part of it. The Army cars, the Snake and Mongoose rivalry and a polished professional operation helped prove that drag racing could sell personalities and sponsors along with elapsed times.
Championships, burned pistons, burned race cars and enough talking to wear out everybody else’s microphone.
Force went from struggling independent to the dominant Funny Car racer and team owner of his era. He won, crashed, rebuilt, found sponsors, built teams and somehow made a massive professional operation feel as though the whole circus might come apart before the next commercial break.
The Budweiser King brought championships, corporate polish and race cars prepared like somebody was keeping score.
Bernstein understood early that winning races and building a professional operation belonged together. His teams were fast, organized and sponsor-friendly at a time when parts of drag racing still looked as though the tow rig had arrived straight from somebody’s driveway.
The Blue Max was fast, successful and just unruly enough to look exactly like a Funny Car ought to look.
Beadle became one of Prudhomme’s toughest rivals and helped make the late 1970s and early 1980s one of Funny Car’s great periods. The championships were real, the Blue Max was unmistakable and nobody had to manufacture much personality for the advertising.
The Mongoose understood something early: a good race was worth more when somebody had already sold the argument.
McEwen was a racer, promoter and one of drag racing’s best salesmen. The Snake and Mongoose program showed that nicknames, rivalry, sponsors, toys and race cars could all feed the same business without anybody pretending the stopwatch had stopped being important.
They called him the Ace, and Funny Cars were usually a little safer when he was driving the one in somebody else’s lane.
McCulloch came through the match-racing years when Funny Cars traveled constantly, raced often and occasionally returned home in fewer pieces than they had left with. He stayed competitive as the class became more professional and collected plenty of wins without ever looking as though the machinery had intimidated him much.
If subtlety had been required, Jungle Jim would have been seriously overqualified for something else.
Liberman was built for the match-racing era. Long burnouts, wild launches, colorful cars and Jungle Pam working the starting line turned his operation into a traveling show that happened to contain a very fast Funny Car. Promoters wanted him because crowds wanted him, which was the whole point.
The Snowman was fast early, experimented constantly and rarely treated yesterday’s setup as a reason to leave today’s car alone.
Snow raced through the transition from altered-wheelbase machinery into genuine Funny Cars and kept pushing as the class grew more specialized. Driving was only part of the job. He was one of the racers continually looking for a better way to make enormous power reach two rear tires without turning immediately into smoke.
A successful Funny Car racer who eventually decided one race car was not nearly enough organization to worry about.
Schumacher was already a major name in the early Funny Car wars before stepping away from driving. When he returned as an owner, he brought money, organization and scale that helped redefine what a top-level drag racing team could become.
The Bubble Up Trans Am was hard to miss, and the Canadian behind the wheel had no intention of making it easier.
Bonin became one of the recognizable Funny Car racers of the 1970s, when the pits were crowded with colorful independents, sponsor-backed stars and cars that could produce two completely different personalities on consecutive runs.
Driver, tuner, owner and survivor from the days when figuring it out yourself was part of the admission price.
Dunn spent decades making Funny Cars run without needing the biggest organization in the pits. Rules changed, bodies changed, sponsors changed and the machinery became vastly more complicated. The old independent streak stayed right where it was.
A championship racer who proved there was still room for somebody stubborn enough to run his own program in the modern Funny Car pits.
Pedregon arrived as large teams and established stars were tightening their grip on the class, then won championships anyway. His career carried the owner-driver tradition into an era increasingly populated by multi-car operations, corporate sponsors and enough data to keep a room full of laptops occupied.
Bottom Line
Funny Car has always been racing with a little extra foolishness built into the machinery.
Take too much power, put it through two rear tires and cover the whole arrangement with a fiberglass shell that still claims to resemble a production car. Then hand the thing to somebody willing to drive it while a tuner decides how much clutch and nitro the track will tolerate before protesting.
Sometimes it goes straight.
Sometimes it goes fast enough that nobody complains about the first part.
The drivers brought nerve. The tuners brought horsepower. The promoters brought crowds, and the showmen made sure those crowds remembered whose car had just filled the starting line with smoke.
That combination gave drag racing some of its fastest machines, biggest personalities and best stories.