Bill Doner: When the Promotion Was Wilder Than the Race
If Funny Cars Filled the Stands, Imagine What 64 of Them Could Do
Bill Doner looked at a pair of nitro Funny Cars and saw a problem. They were already loud, fast, smoky and capable of producing several thousand horsepower in approximately the time required to sneeze.
Most promoters would have considered that a satisfactory evening’s entertainment.
Doner wondered what else he could add.
More Funny Cars. Rock bands. Wheelstanders. Jet cars. Motorcycle acts. Stunts. Women in bikinis getting through the gate for free.
Somewhere in there they would also run a drag race.
Doner was not trying to preserve the quiet dignity of motorsports. He was trying to fill the grandstands.
Bill Wasn’t Selling Elapsed Time
Doner started as a sportswriter before moving into promotion at Seattle International Raceway, where he learned that a technically impressive elapsed time was not always enough to get somebody off the couch and through the gate.
The serious racers understood 6.42 seconds. Everybody understood that something spectacular might happen.
Funny Cars were almost perfect for the job. They had names, colorful bodies, recognizable drivers and enough mechanical violence to make a radio commercial sound exciting without much assistance.
Put Don Prudhomme, Tom McEwen, Jungle Jim Liberman, Raymond Beadle’s Blue Max and a few more recognizable names on the bill and the event sounded important before the transporters arrived. Doner bought radio time and made sure nobody mistook the commercials for public-service announcements.
The object was simple: get people curious enough to buy a ticket.
➤ See Don Prudhomme in Racing Legends
➤ See Tom McEwen in Racing Legends
Then Came the Fox Hunt
The Fox Hunt took Doner’s theory of race promotion somewhere a traditional racing purist probably would not have volunteered to go. Women in bathing suits got in free, and the advertising made that part perfectly clear.
Tell enough young women about the offer, then make equally certain that young men knew the women would be there.
The women came.
So did considerably more men.
Now the drag race had become a social event with Funny Cars attached. A fellow who could not identify a blower from a brake drum still understood why his friends were heading to the track Friday night.
The racing had not stopped being important. It had simply acquired competition for the customer’s attention.
If Four Worked, Try Sixty-Four
Once Doner learned that spectacle could fill seats, restraint was never likely to become his strongest management tool.
Four Funny Cars became eight. Eight became sixteen. Then thirty-two.
Eventually Seattle hosted 64 Funny Cars. Not sixty-four race cars scattered across a dozen classes over a weekend.
Sixty-four Funny Cars.
Doner assembled so many touring stars in one place that other promoters complained there were hardly enough left to book elsewhere. Then, because merely having them all there did not seem excessive enough, he arranged for rows of them to fire at once.
Dozens of supercharged nitro engines came alive together.
At that point the evening had stopped being a race and become a geological event.
And There Was Still Room on the Schedule
A normal promoter might have looked at dozens of Funny Cars and decided the entertainment budget had done its duty.
Doner kept booking. Jet cars, rocket cars, wheelstanders, motorcycle acts and rock bands all had a chance of appearing if they were sufficiently loud, spectacular or ridiculous to make somebody tell a friend about the event.
The logic was not complicated. Racetracks had expenses. Expenses required crowds. Anything capable of producing those crowds deserved consideration.
The Funny Cars brought the race fans. Doner kept looking for reasons to bring everybody else.
Orange County Gave Him More Room to Misbehave
When Doner and Steve Evans became involved with Orange County International Raceway, the same promotional philosophy moved south.
OCIR was expensive to operate, which meant ordinary crowds were not especially helpful. Doner needed large crowds, so the Fox Hunts came along with huge Funny Car programs, concerts and whatever else might turn a night at the dragstrip into something people would still be explaining Monday morning.
During the streaking craze of the 1970s, that philosophy reached one of its more difficult-to-explain moments when a nude parachutist landed on the starting line.
The stunt was not quite as spontaneous as an innocent observer might have hoped. The parachutist even had to hit the starting-line area to get paid.
Some promoters bought newspaper advertisements.
Doner preferred advertising that became a story afterward.
Even NHRA Had Trouble Keeping Up
One evening, NHRA officials were visiting an Orange County production before the racing had officially begun. That technicality did not mean the facility was quiet.
A wheelstander came up the strip in the wrong direction. A fire burnout erupted on the return road. A flying motorcycle act arrived somewhere inconvenient.
NHRA’s Bernie Partridge finally told Doner he had already violated dozens of rules.
Doner’s response amounted to suggesting he keep watching.
Things could still get worse.
That may be as concise a description of a Bill Doner promotion as anybody ever produced.
The Crowds Could Become Too Much of a Good Thing
There was a serious downside to packing a racetrack with people who had not necessarily arrived because they cared about the racing. Fox Hunts and concert nights developed reputations for heavy drinking and rowdy behavior.
At Orange County, criticism eventually became more serious than anything another loud radio commercial could solve. One young spectator was killed after being struck with a beer bottle. Neighbors were increasingly unhappy, and the Irvine Company, which owned the property beneath OCIR, had its own reasons to question whether enormous, unruly crowds were helping the track’s long-term future.
Doner’s formula could fill a racetrack.
Sometimes it filled one with more trouble than the racetrack could comfortably absorb.
But the Racers Knew Who Was Filling the Stands
At Seattle, Doner’s biggest programs could back traffic up for miles. That pleased racers for a very practical reason: a promoter with a packed facility could afford to book them again.
Don Prudhomme later credited Doner with helping provide enough West Coast work for touring racers to make a living without constantly towing across the country. A full booking calendar was worth considerably more than applause.
Doner was helping create a market where recognizable Funny Cars could earn money simply by being worth advertising.
Getting Your Name in the Commercial Meant Something
Young racers understood how valuable Doner’s advertising could be. If the radio announcer shouted your name alongside Snake, Mongoose and the Hawaiian, there was at least a chance people would remember it when they reached the ticket window.
John Force remembered wanting Doner to mention him in those commercials.
Doner had practical advice.
Get a sponsor.
Force eventually did, and his name made the advertising.
That little exchange says plenty about how professional racing was changing. Driving quickly was still required, but a racer who could bring money, personality and a recognizable identity gave the promoter something else to sell.
Doner’s microphone did not merely advertise established stars. It could help create the next one.
The Race Was Only Part of the Ticket
Doner’s real trick was understanding that a dragstrip did not have to sell only drag racing. It could sell an event.
A conventional program might offer two strong Funny Cars and a night’s racing. Doner wanted thirty-two. Then sixty-four. Add the wheelstanders, bring in the jets, book a band and make the radio commercial loud enough that nobody could accuse the evening of lacking ambition.
The racers still raced. The clocks still recorded elapsed time and somebody still won. Doner simply understood that by Monday morning much of the crowd might not remember who ran low ET.
They would remember the night.
Bill Doner did not merely promote the race.
He kept adding everything around it until the race occasionally became the quiet part.