Do you not understand that Drag Racing had one stark, visual distinction that set it apart from all other motorsports? A FACE and that face was the BREATHER MASK. Don’t you understand how beloved that image is? I see it on everything…T shirts, bumper stickers…even tattoos.
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Tony DeFeo was thrown out of school at 16 for stealing a bus. He went on to start a career as an auto mechanic and, on a whim, entered the field of automotive journalism, writing for Cars Illustrated magazine. Tony founded High Performance Mopar, and then launched Mopar Action a year later just to compete with his first book. He is currently building a twin-engined Fuel Altered, and in his spare time studies economics and abstract psychology.
Tony DeFeo: An Open Letter to Who Banned the Breather Mask
Posted by
Tony DeFeo
on 10/27/10
Comments (1)
The most talked about run of the year…perhaps decade..(And thus century!) was not a run at all, but rather the crossed up, over the top, lane swapping burnout performed by Iron Mike Boyd in Mousie’s pride and joy, the Winged Express at this year’s CHRR.
It’s the liquid so potent, so deadly, so illegal that those in Drag Racing who have unleashed its wrath dare not speak its name in public. Lakes era racers who experimented with H found that a stock 90 horsepower flathead would pump out better than 300 horsepower simply by sucking this stuff through its Stromberg.
Flashback Friday: Sammy Miller’s Hydrogen Peroxide-Powered Dragster
Posted by
Tony DeFeo
on 10/08/10
Sammy was a mad genius who had a passion for things that were impossibly fast and over-the-top dangerous. After a couple of bad fires in his Fuel Funny, he was offered a ride in a rocket digger, the hook was set, and history was about to be made.
The word simple can’t even begin to describe the framework nestled under the flawless, gold hued behemoth. Straight tube front axle, 2×3 mild steel box tubing, and a lightweight muffler-moly roll cage that offered about as much coverage (and protection) as a small tent.
This is the Triple Trouble Nova. An exercise in extreme backyard engineering, the little Chevy sported a whopping 1128 cubic inches…24 cylinders worth of very angry mouse motor wrapped up in an otherwise stock, steel production car.
Some will always see the glass as half full…others half empty. But, when it comes to the state of Drag Racing today, it’s becoming more and more obvious that we’ve simply got the wrong size glass.
