Fire Burnouts: Because Ordinary Tire Smoke Wasn’t Enough

Somebody Had to Light the Puddle

The basic idea did not require much drafting-table work. Put a flammable mixture beneath the rear tires, light it and have Jungle stand on the throttle.

The details required considerably more respect. Too little flame and the stunt looked like somebody had spilled something near the burnout box. Too much and the fiberglass Funny Car sitting above the experiment might decide to participate.

Jungle’s crew worked on finding the useful territory between those two results. Jimmy “Tuna” Demarcella later credited crewman Peter White with perfecting their version after plenty of trial and error.

Different fuels and solvents produced different flames, and daylight changed what the crowd could see. A mixture that looked spectacular after dark could disappear under an afternoon sun, so the recipe could change with the show.

Dragstrip lighting design had become a fuel-mixture problem.

Peter White Brought Advanced Ignition Equipment

Pouring flammable liquid under a nitro Funny Car only prepared the stage. Somebody still had to ignite the stuff while remaining reasonably interested in keeping his eyebrows.

Peter White’s answer was admirably free of unnecessary technology.

Matches.

According to Demarcella, White would bundle several matches together with a strand of Jungle Pam’s hair, light the bundle and toss it into the mixture. Fire spread beneath the slicks, Peter gave Jungle the signal and Liberman hit the throttle.

The Funny Car charged out through the flames trailing the tire smoke it had been perfectly capable of producing before anybody decided the starting line needed combustion of its own.

No remote firing box. No electronic pyrotechnics system. No fellow behind a control panel counting down from ten.

Matches, fuel and a strand of hair.

Engineering occasionally benefits from knowing when to quit shopping.

The Hard Part Was Knowing When to Leave

From the grandstands, a fire burnout looked simple because the crew had done the experimenting beforehand. Light the puddle, spin the tires and enjoy the photograph.

The timing had teeth.

Leave too soon and the fire had not developed enough to give the crowd much of a show. Wait too long and the burning mixture could consume enough oxygen around the engine to make the motor stumble or quit.

A running Funny Car had one useful advantage over a fire.

It could drive away from it.

A stalled Funny Car was simply sitting over the burning puddle with the driver strapped inside, which narrowed the acceptable delay considerably.

Peter learned when the flames were ready. Jungle learned when the throttle needed to come in.

The audience only had to learn where to look.

The West Coast Got the Full Production

By 1971, Liberman was bringing fire burnouts west with his Camaro Funny Car. Photographer Steve Reyes remembered Jungle as the first Funny Car he saw performing the stunt on the West Coast.

At places such as Orange County International Raceway, the starting line could turn into a stage before the race ever began. Flames gathered around the slicks, the engine came up and the Camaro disappeared into a mixture of smoke, fire and noise that required no explanation from the announcer.

It also photographed beautifully.

That gave the stunt a second audience. A normal burnout impressed the people who bought tickets to the race. A photograph of a Funny Car sitting in flames could reach everybody staring at a magazine rack weeks later.

Before long, other racers were trying versions of the same idea. Funny Cars, Top Fuel dragsters and Fuel Altereds all had the two necessary ingredients: slicks and somebody willing to ask whether tire smoke looked lonely without flames underneath it.

The Promoter Could Order the Deluxe Version

Jungle Jim’s crew did not necessarily include the extra spectacle for free. Demarcella remembered promoters paying roughly another hundred dollars when they wanted fire burnouts added to the show.

That is match-racing economics in its purest form.

The promoter booked Jungle Jim and got Jungle Jim. He wanted the big burnout, that came with the act. If he wanted Liberman driving through a burning starting line, the invoice could grow along with the flames.

The crew had turned foolishness into an option package.

Better yet, it was billable foolishness.

The Fire Had Some Mechanical Opinions Too

The stunt was more than a visual trick because the fire did not understand that it was supposed to remain decorative. Flammable liquid could spread. Crewmen worked close to it. Fiberglass bodies sat above it. A nitro engine capable of making trouble without outside assistance was being asked to operate in the middle of the arrangement.

Then there was the oxygen problem. A large fire consumes the same air the engine would prefer to breathe, and a supercharged nitro motor does not become more cooperative when starved at idle.

Too much delay could turn a dramatic departure into a stationary race car surrounded by flames.

That tends to reduce the entertainment value rather quickly.

The successful fire burnout therefore depended on something every good stunt eventually needs: enough repetition that the crew understood exactly how far the foolishness could be pushed before it changed categories.

Not Everybody Wanted an Encore

The racing establishment eventually began questioning whether deliberately setting the starting line on fire was improving drag racing. It was not an unreasonable concern.

Fuel could spread, crewmen could get burned, engines could stall and cars could catch fire. Meanwhile, photographers kept producing spectacular images that encouraged somebody at the next track to wonder whether his flames could be taller.

In early 1971, Car Craft publisher Sal Fish publicly called for the stunts to stop before somebody was badly hurt.

That was a defensible position.

The awkward part was that the same issue carried spectacular fire-burnout photography.

The editorial warning said stop.

The pictures said buy this magazine.

The Camera Loved the Whole Bad Idea

Fire burnouts succeeded partly because a photograph could make the stunt look even more outrageous than it did from the grandstands. Freeze the right instant and the car appeared to be sitting inside a wall of flame while the slicks disappeared in smoke.

Editors wanted those photographs. Photographers wanted to shoot them. Promoters wanted the crowd reaction, and spectators had already demonstrated that nobody needed to explain why a burning Funny Car was worth watching.

One magazine editor later remembered a cover showing two Gene Snow cars performing side-by-side fire burnouts selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

➤ See Gene Snow in Racing Legends

That is a fairly persuasive sales report for a stunt that contributed absolutely nothing to elapsed time.

The car was not quicker because the pavement was burning. The tires did not become magically superior because somebody had introduced matches to the starting line.

It just looked magnificent.

Sometimes the stopwatch has to share the building.

Eventually the Rule Makers Put the Matches Away

Organized drag racing ultimately decided that intentionally surrounding race cars with fire was a form of showmanship it could live without. Fire burnouts disappeared from sanctioned competition.

By then the stunt had already left its mark on the match-race era. Those racers were expected to deliver more than a number on the scoreboard, and Jungle Jim understood the assignment better than almost anybody.

A burnout was necessary because the slicks needed heat.

A long smoky burnout entertained the people who had paid to see Jungle.

A fire burnout gave the promoter something to put on the poster.

That progression explains the whole business.

Ordinary Smoke Had Lost the Argument

Peter White worked out the mixture and the timing. Jimmy “Tuna” Demarcella helped make the operation work. Somebody lit the matches, Jungle waited for the signal and a nitro Funny Car charged through a burning puddle because plain tire smoke had become insufficiently ambitious.

None of it made Liberman quicker.

It made him harder to forget.

That was worth money on the match-race circuit, worth photographs to the magazines and worth another booking to a promoter who knew exactly what the crowd had come to see.

And if the promoter wanted the version with flames?

That cost extra.