Flashback Friday: The 1986 Castrol GTX Fallnationals In Phoenix

This weekend the cars and stars of the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series return of the Firebird Raceway in Chandler, Arizona near Phoenix, where the tour has made an annual West Coast stop since 1985. In addition to the scheduled visit each season, Firebird also hosted the vast majority of the nitro teams for their pre-season testing before many of the once California-based team packed up their wares and headed East in recent years.

While we were unable to track down that inaugural Arizona Nationals for the NHRA Winston Drag Racing Series in 1985 on the interwebs, the second running in 1986 has been converted from VHS to YouTube, allowing us to share a look back a quarter of a century to the early years of the Firebird Raceway.

While the Phoenix event has followed the season-opening Winternationals for the better part of the last two decades, it wasn’t always that way and if you’ve checked a calendar lately, it isn’t that way this year either. The Castrol GTX Fallnationals was the penultimate race 1986, delivering some quality championship drama to the Arizona faithful; just as they will this season. And as you would have expected from the professional categories in 1986, it was the likes of “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, Darrell Gwynn, Mark Oswald, Kenny Bernstein, Warren Johnson, Bob Glidden, and a host of other hall of famers in the championship spotlight.

We don’t want to spoil the entertainment, so rather than discuss who won in Phoenix that season, we’ll just let you be unproductive at the office today and watch it.