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90-year-old Hall of Famer earns NHRA license to drive electric-powered dragster after run at Rockingham Dragway

Rockingham Dragway

ROCKINGHAM – Forty-four years after he last hoisted a winners’ trophy at Rockingham Dragway, drag racing legend “Big Daddy” Don Garlits was driving a race car down the track’s equally legendary quarter mile this week in order to earn NHRA certification for his latest racing endeavor.

At the controls of one of the Top Dragsters in which students learn the rudiments of the racing game at Roy Hill’s Drag Racing School, the 90-year-old Garlits covered the standard distance in a best of 6.393 seconds at a speed of 182 miles per hour to earn an NHRA license that will allow him to make exhibition runs in his cutting edge, fully electric-powered dragster next week at Palm Beach International Raceway.

Designer of the rear-engine Top Fuel dragster that revolutionized the sport in 1971, Garlits was the first to break the 200, 240, 250 and 270 mile per hour barriers and was a Top Fuel champion for three different sanctioning organizations (NHRA, IHRA and AHRA). He was voted the No. 1 racer in the first 50 years of NHRA competition.

During his Top Fuel career, he won three times at The Rock, twice in the IHRA Pro-Am Nationals (1976 and 1978) and once in the IHRA U.S. Open Nationals (1973).

Nevertheless, this week’s experience was a new one for the Hall of Famer, one in which he was the student instead of the teacher.

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“I wasn’t used to the car,” Garlits said, “and I knew right away that the car wasn’t going to come to me; I had to come to the car. I was hoping I’d be able to do that in the amount of time we had. I’m happy about it.”

Hill, himself a successful Pro Stock, Pro Modified, Super Stock and Stock class racer and a 2020 inductee into the Garlits founded International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, handled the instruction and even operated the Christmas Tree starting system during Garlits’ runs, had high praise for the nonagenarian.

“He’s the best Top Fuel racer there’s ever been,” Hill said.  “He’s a real racer and it’s a lot of fun to work with a real racer even if (he’s) never driven this kind of car. He had a lot of ‘feel’ and could tell me what the car was doing.”

Rockingham owner Steve Earwood, who worked closely with Garlits during his tenure as national media relations director of the NHRA, was similarly impressed.

“I’ve signed licenses for (NHRA World Champions) Del Worsham, Greg Anderson and Erica Enders as well as for Tommy Hammonds (the former NBA basketball standout who had a brief career in drag racing),” Earwood said, “but I could never have imagined I would sign off on a competition license for the sport’s most innovative pioneer. It was an honor, really.”



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