Don “The Snake” Prudhomme
The Racer Who Made Winning Look Like a Business
Don Prudhomme was born April 6, 1941, in California’s San Fernando Valley, right in the middle of the Southern California car culture that produced half the names in hot-rodding history. Before racing took over his life, he worked as a painter in his father’s body shop and became part of the Burbank Road Kings crowd.
It didn’t take long for the paint gun to lose the argument.
There are racers who win races. There are racers who put people in the grandstands. Every once in a while somebody figures out how to do both while dragging the whole sport forward with him. Don Prudhomme was one of those.
“The Snake” became one of drag racing’s defining names not because he was the loudest character in the pits, but because he was frighteningly good at the part that counted. He could cut a light, keep a fuel car underneath him, make the machinery live long enough to reach the finish line and then come back and do it again.
That sounds obvious now. It was not always obvious in an era when nitromethane drag racing could look suspiciously like feeding hundred-dollar bills into a furnace and hoping the crankshaft stayed inside the block.
Drag racing already had plenty of characters. Prudhomme showed that one of them could become a polished professional without sanding off the part that made the other lane nervous.
Before the Snake Got Famous
By the early 1960s Prudhomme was driving fuel dragsters, and the Greer-Black-Prudhomme car quickly made people notice. Tommy Greer supplied the backing, Keith Black supplied some extremely effective engine knowledge, and Prudhomme supplied the reactions and driving.
The team’s actual record was roughly 81 wins against eight losses from 1962 through 1964 — rather less fantastic than an old advertisement’s claimed 236-7, but still enough to make losing an unusual event.
Somewhere in there came the nickname. Crewman Joel Purcell thought Prudhomme’s skinny build and quick starting-line reactions suggested a snake. Prudhomme initially did not care much for it.
Fortunately, nobody asked him to name the toy cars.
The Hawaiian and the Big Time
Prudhomme’s national breakthrough came in 1965 when Roland Leong put him in the Hawaiian Top Fuel dragster. They won the NHRA Winternationals at Pomona and then the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis.
At the time those were NHRA’s two national events, making Prudhomme the first driver to sweep both in the same season. That pretty well settled whether he belonged with the big boys.
He eventually accumulated seven U.S. Nationals victories as a driver. There are easier places to build a reputation than Indianapolis. There are not many better ones.
Snake, Mongoose and Hot Wheels
The part that changed more than Prudhomme’s own career arrived around 1970.
Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen saw what many racers had not yet fully grasped: companies outside the traditional speed-equipment business might spend serious money on drag racing if somebody gave them a reason.
The result was Mattel’s Hot Wheels Snake and Mongoose sponsorship. Prudhomme and McEwen had brightly colored race cars, matching transporters, toys sitting on store shelves and a rivalry kids could understand before they knew the difference between a blower pulley and a spark plug.
The two racers toured, appeared at promotional events and helped turn themselves into recognizable personalities well beyond the hardcore drag-racing crowd. It was not merely sponsorship. Drag racing had figured out that the race car was not the only thing it could sell.
McEwen deserves enormous credit for putting the deal together. Prudhomme supplied the other ingredient every great promotion eventually needs.
He kept winning.
Then the Snake Got Serious About Funny Cars
Prudhomme had always been a Top Fuel man at heart, and during the first years of the Hot Wheels program he did not attack NHRA Funny Car competition with the single-mindedness that came later.
That changed with a John Buttera-built Barracuda for 1973. At that year’s U.S. Nationals, Prudhomme won his first NHRA Funny Car national event and became the first NHRA driver to win national events in both Top Fuel and Funny Car. He won Indy again in 1974.
Then came the U.S. Army Monza.
And everybody else had a problem.
1975–1978: Everybody Else Was Racing for Second
Prudhomme won four consecutive NHRA Funny Car championships from 1975 through 1978. The numbers from the middle of that run are ridiculous even by nitro-racing standards.
In 1975 the Army Monza won six national events. In 1976 Prudhomme won seven of eight, reaching the final at all eight. His Funny Car streak eventually reached seven consecutive national-event victories, 30 consecutive elimination-round wins and 13 consecutive final-round appearances.
That is not having a good season. That is showing up at the track with several dozen other professional racers already wondering who gets the runner-up trophy.
Prudhomme and crew chief Bob Brandt were pushing the performance envelope too. At the 1975 World Finals, Prudhomme recorded the first official five-second Funny Car run, a 5.98-second pass. He later became the first Funny Car driver credited with 250 mph.
At some point the statistics quit needing much explanation. For four years, if somebody wanted to know how good his Funny Car was, Prudhomme was the measuring stick.
Back to Top Fuel
Funny Cars made Prudhomme famous to a generation, but he never completely lost his affection for the long cars. In 1990 he returned to Top Fuel.
This was not a nostalgia tour. Prudhomme won another nine NHRA national events before retiring from driving after the 1994 season. At age 51 he became only the third Top Fuel driver to exceed 300 mph, running 301.60 mph in 1993.
Fifty-one was evidently still young enough to strap into a fuel dragster and chase 300.
He finished his driving career with 49 NHRA national-event victories — 35 in Funny Car and 14 in Top Fuel — and 58 No. 1 qualifying awards. NHRA later ranked him third among its Top 50 racers.
Hard to argue much with that.
Getting Out of the Car Didn’t End It
Retiring from the cockpit did not retire Prudhomme. Snake Racing became one of NHRA’s premier professional teams.
Larry Dixon drove Prudhomme’s Top Fuel car to championships in 2002 and 2003, while Ron Capps became a major Funny Car winner driving for Prudhomme. By the time Prudhomme shut down his operation following the 2009 season, his cars had accumulated 112 NHRA event victories and six world championships between his driving and ownership careers.
Plenty of racers can drive a fast car. Far fewer can drive the car, sell the sponsor, build the team, hire good people and keep winning after somebody else climbs into the seat.
Prudhomme could.
The Bottom Line
Prudhomme did not invent drag racing. He did not invent the Funny Car, and he did not build every piece of machinery carrying his name.
He won in front-engine Top Fuel dragsters, dominated Funny Cars, came back and won in modern Top Fuel, helped take corporate sponsorship into territory drag racing had barely explored and became a toy-store celebrity without turning himself into a circus act. Then he climbed out of the car and built teams that kept winning without him.
The nickname was clever. The Hot Wheels deal was brilliant. The Army Funny Cars were unforgettable.
But strip away the paint, sponsorships and plastic toy cars and the reason Don Prudhomme became “The Snake” is considerably simpler.
When the other lane contained Prudhomme, there was a very good chance somebody was about to lose.
Prudhomme spent enough time at the center of drag racing’s rivalries, sponsorship deals and promotional machinery to turn up repeatedly in Racing Shenanigans.
➤ See the Snake vs. Mongoose story in Racing Shenanigans
➤ See When Mattel Designed the Real Race Cars in Racing Shenanigans
➤ See Bill Doner’s promotion story in Racing Shenanigans
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