Images courtesy: Wikipedia

In the late 1980’s and early 90’s, there was perhaps no more likable team in all of professional drag racing than that of Wichita Falls, Texas’ own Eddie and Ercie Hill, along with late crew chief and sidekick Terry “Fuzzy” Carter.

Many drag racing fans remember Eddie as a former drag boat racer and world champion on water, but long before he was throwing 200+ MPH roostertails in the air, Hill was an accomplished motorcycle racer and one of drag racing’s most noted racers in the very early, formative years of the sport.

Hill began his racing career at just 11 years of age racing flat track motorcycles and entered his first drag race in Karnack, Texas in 1955. In the ensuing years, he claimed his first national event win and claimed multiple national records, and by 1960, had quit his job to become a full-time drag racer. But a devastating fire in a car known as “Double Dragon” in 1966 wiped out his financial resources and desire to race.

In ’66, Hill opened his motorcycle dealership in Wichita Falls and went motorcycle racing, here he claimed more than 100 trophies between ’66 and 1973. It was then that hill embarked on what would become more than a decade of dominance in drag boat racing.

Not surprisingly, Hill won his first race in a non-blown boat in ’74 and followed that up by setting in ’75. The following year, he made the switch to nitromethane and never looked back. He won the NDBA Fuel & Gas title in ’76 and again in ’77, and from ’78 to ’84, won 55 of 103 races entered, with four ADBA titles, five consecutive SDBA titles, and in ’82, set the world record speed for a liquid quarter mile, going 229.00 MPH.

An elapsed time of 5.16, recorded in 1984, gave Hill the distinction of the quickest drag racer on earth – on land or water – and was the first time the drag boat record exceeded the land record. But it was a crash in October of ’84 that sent nearly claimed Hill’s life that created the “nuclear banana’ legend we all came to know and love.

Hill purchased Dan Pastorini’s Top Fuel operation in 1985, but underfunded and short of knowledge of tuning a nitro car on land, Hill struggled and didn’t capture his first round win for nearly a year and a half. In ’87, set the national speed record at 285.98 MPH, thus becoming the first and only person to ever hold the land and water speed record simultaneously. Hill won his first NHRA national event in Top Fuel at the ’88 Gatornationals, and a couple months later, became the first driver to ever record a four-second pass, running 4.990 at the IHRA Texas Nationals.

Know as “TheThrill,” film maker Dean Papadeas created a biographical film on Hill’s racing career during that 1988 season, which is actually still available in some locations, albeit on VHS. This film highlights the lovable husband and wife team during the season considered to be the highpoint of Hill’s driving career, and looks back on the crash that nearly ended his life and sent him on the fast track to drag racing immortality.