A continuing Series
where average nitro fan 90% Jimmy Becktel
hunts down and chats with our favorite nitro
hero’s. This episode features a one
on one between Jimmy and some guy named
“Big Daddy Don Garlits”, who
we presume some of you may have heard of,
considering he’s the NUMBER ONE DRAG
RACER OF ALL TIME ACCORDING TO NHRA’S
50TH ANNNIVERSAY POLL!
“Some guy”…..how
dare you even think something like that!
My family takes a
bi-yearly week long vacation at Christmas
in Orlando, Florida. This gave me the opportunity
to set up a visit to chat with Don for Deepstage.
The interview took place last Christmas
Eve in Don’s office at the
Drag
Racing Museum in Ocala, Florida. It was awesome
spending time in Don’s office, a nicely
appointed place with wood paneling, a big desk
and lots of wood framed chairs with the brass
tacks holding the green upholstery. There’s
so much paraphernalia around the office having
to do with lots more than drag racing that it
would take a 15 minute video pan to describe the
various interesting pictures and souvenirs. The
percentage of UFO related stuff is significant.
I’ve talked with Don two times before, so
the “Holy-Mackerel- I’m-talking-with-my-hero-of-40-years”
factor is under control, and its more like I’m
just talking to another car guy, albeit the Lord
God King Boofu of all car guys. I did keep looking
around telling myself over and over “I’ve
got to remember everything I’m seeing in
this office!” Shoulda’ taken some
pics, but I didn’t want to “go tourist”
with Don there. The interview begins with a question
to Don about his 2004 plans.
Don Garlits:
The big deal for 2004 is the movie we’re
doing about my life, which will take about six
to eight months to film.
90% Jimmy:
Who’s the backing on the movie?
D.G.: It’s
a film company in California, a major Hollywood
production. I can’t be specific yet, but
it’s got real actors and directors. Although
it’s based on a true story, it’s not
a documentary, which doesn’t do well at
the box office. When the movie is announced, it
will appear in Variety with a full promotional
campaign.
90%:
What are you going to do to avoid the fate of
Heart Like a Wheel - a good movie that suffered
from a lack of promotion?
D.G.:
This is a whole different deal. Heart Like a Wheel
had an eight million dollar budget, this is in
excess of FIFTY MILLION! It’s going to be
done just like any other major Hollywood production.
90%:
Where are the locations going to be? Pomona disguised
as other tracks?
D.G.:
The main location will be Florida. They’ll
go to an old airport, Dunellen, Florida or something
like that, set it up, build whatever towers they
need, and change the props around. The shots could
be in Texas or anywhere because all the early
tracks were old airports, and the big race deal
will probably be shot at Pomona instead at Indy.
This is a west coast vs. east coast deal so they
want all the big stuff happening out at the Pomona
racetrack.
It’s not gonna be
Indianapolis. The wheelstand and ‘59 fire
will be at Pomona, not Englishtown and Chester.
[In his museum, Don has 1959 newspaper articles
from his Chester, S.C. fire and recovery at a
Tampa hospital, with pics of a non-bandaged starting
to heal Garlits, and lots of “I’ll
never race these dangerous Fuel Dragsters again”
quotes.]
But it won’t be in
59, they’re squeezing 40 years into 90 minutes,
so the wheelstand will happen in the semi final
round before the “big finals,” which
is where we debuted the rear engine car.
90%:
I was there Saturday in ‘86. I thought you
were gonna come back the next day.
D.G.:
We were gonna rebuild it over night because the
finals weren’t till the next day - we should
have gone to the chassis shop and fixed the damn
thing and come back. (90% note: The shop he’s
referring to could be Bob Jenkins or S&W Chassis?
There is at least one chrome moly chassis shop
close to E-town that would’ve opened their
doors to Don)
90%:
I was in the stands on the pit side, and I was
scared to death because I thought you bought it.
You won the world championship anyway, but that
blow over was the most horrifying accident I’ve
ever seen. I was overjoyed to see you driving
through the smoke . . .
D.G.:
Yeah, It was a nasty deal.
90%: Did
you cross paths with ‘John the Zookeeper
Mulligan’ back in the 60's? What kind of
person was he?
D.G.: He
was a wonderful guy and dear friend. He got me
on Kendall oil, which I ran when I was a kid,
because it’s a 2000 mile oil. Back then
you were supposed to change your oil every 1000
miles, but in 1949-50 it was too expensive, so
I used the Kendall. Then I started racing and
went to the big Chrysler Hemi. I was using some
local gas station oil and having a problem. Lee
Petty told me I needed to get a Pennzoil aircraft
60 weight oil, so I went on to that. It was many
years until the Valvoline deal came around with
the Smother’s Brothers in 1969. They went
racing and I was part of their team. We had a
lot of trouble with the Valvoline, which was good,
but it’s not thick enough for us. We ran
too much clearance, which goes all the way back
to Lee Petty who told me how to cut the cranks
and all. In the beginning I never had any trouble
if I used the really heavy oil. I stayed on the
Petty combination my entire career. I was having
all kinds of trouble with that Valvoline oil and
I was at New York National Speedway and John saw
I was having trouble, and almost out of engine
parts. He saw the Valvoline and he recognized
the problem so I guess he had it too, with his
large clearances. He brought over a case of Kendall,
and that was the last engine we blew that year!
So we bought the Kendall oil from the dealers
and put it in the Valvoline 5 gallon cans because
I was under contract.
90%:
That meet was a couple of months before the U.S.
Nationals? (90% note: This was Gil Kohn’s
Bakersfield Smokers Meet, which I attended as
a 15 year old Long Island apprentice nitro fan.)
D.G.:
Yes. (Solemn) And then John was killed . . . I
was behind him in line, the next car to be run,
when he caught fire . . .
90%: A
terrible tragedy. As I understand it, he survived
and was in decent shape in the hospital and got
infections from visitors. It seemed like he died
more from medical ignorance than the accident.
D.G.:
They say he lived about two weeks. A hospital
is a dangerous place to be. There’s a lot
of bad stuff in there. Most of the employees become
immune . . . it’s the people coming in from
the street that might be weakened; John was, and
it got him.
90%:
Do you keep in touch with any of your other contemporaries,
Prudhomme, Kalitta, those guys?
D.G.: Oh
yeah, we’re all good friends.
90%: What
do you think of your 2003 season, getting back
behind the wheel of a modern Fuel Dragster?
D.G.:
I love the speed, and the 323 was exciting, 319
at Atlanta [the slicks from this run were available
for sale at the entrance of the museum]. The car
was good, but it’s a two-edged sword; I
hated the major changes to the car that the NHRA
required to keep running, but it was probably
for my own good because I was gonna make those
changes, and it wouldn’t be good for the
car. If there was an accident it could weaken
it in certain places and they knew I knew that,
so that got me out of the car for now. If I’m
gonna drive anymore, I have to get a new car,
which I’m not gonna do now ’cause
there’s a lot of major changes taking place.
The timing of the movie is perfect. I can go hide
and watch. If I’m gonna do anything, it
will be 2005; come back and build a new car with
all the latest . . . like all this blower stuff’s
been moved now, and the chassis and body changes.
And now, Clay Millican and Mike Kloeber are making
a mono strut carbon filter rear wing.
90%: Good
for them! Good for Kloeber, he’s a cool
guy - in the rocket scientist category.
D.G.:
Of course, the problem is that the car was set
up as a system. The narrow wheels, the mono strut,
and enclosed cockpits go together like ham and
eggs. If they do just a piece of it they won’t
get the full benefit, and that narrow rear is
tricky. They don’t like that because they
can’t just take the clutch out and the engine
has to slide forward, but the design takes 24
square inches of frontal area and throws it away.
If bigger frontal area was better, they’d
made them bigger, wouldn’t they? But the
silhouette needs to be as small as possible to
get through the wind.
90%:
Another thing: open wheels: The top part of the
wheel in open air is going twice as fast as the
car, and you’re approaching something supersonic
. . .
D.G.:
You impress me! There isn’t one out of a
thousand that knows that. That’s why I covered
the front wheels with Swamp Rat 30. I was down
in the lights in Indianapolis in 1985 and I saw
‘em coming through, and there had been rice
ash on the track, and the Funny Cars with enclosed
wheels were only pushing the rice ash six feet
in front of the car, while the Fuel Dragsters
were disturbing it THIRTY FEET in front of the
car! They were doing about 280 back then so the
top of the wheel was nearing 600 miles an hour.
Now at 340 its nearly 700 miles per hour!
The top of the wheel is soon gonna reach the speed
of sound. Who knows what that’s gonna do?
90%:
Do you keep in touch with Craig Breedlove?
D.G.:
I haven’t talked to him in a long time,
but I used to. The last thing I saw was a UFO
film, with him being interviewed, because he and
a friend had just seen a UFO . . . he would know.
90%:
Have you been to Roswell New Mexico?
D.G.:
Yes, it was an exciting trip and I brought back
a lot of souvenirs. [Don’s office has lots
of UFO items on prominent display.] I know Bob
Lazar personally, and he worked at Area 51. [Pointing
to a framed picture of a UFO] That’s a craft
he’s worked on, drawn to Hollywood specs.
I saw a program with scientists discussing how
it would be possible to go from one star to another.
Not in a linear mode, at the speed of light, or
any of that stuff, but from Quantum Physics we
do know that because space and time CAN BE BENT,
and I said to myself, ‘I knew this years
ago when Bob Lazar explained to me how the saucers
worked, because he’s worked on them.’
90%:
And he’s got a jet dragster?
D.G.: Just
as a hobby.
90%:
That’s one helluva hobby! Al Hanna lives
near me, I’ve spoken to him a few times,
he recently put his first Jet Car down here in
your museum. He also inducted Roger Gustin into
the Hall of Fame. I was in Al’s office when
Gustin called, and those two talked like teenagers.
Al is an unsung hero of this sport, plugging away
for 20 years making a good living and keeping
jet car racing going.
D.G.: He’s
got a low profile.
90%:
Exactly, which is ironic because he’s got
a marketing degree. (90% Note: psst, Don, Al would
slot right into a HOF nomination..hint…hint.)
He’s still working on a nitro ride . . .
[We began talking about car sponsorship.] It’s
all about demographics. Marketers go after 13
to 16 year olds, and ignore the middle-aged baby
boomers, which is the biggest demographic bulge
there is: We’re working and have money.
It upsets me that guys like Eddie Hill, one of
the most beloved people out there with a tremendous
fan following, can’t get any backing.
D.G.:
I know! Isn’t that strange? What happened
to that deal? When Pennzoil fell through, I thought
he’d have grabbed someone else right away.
90%: The
marketing people have MBA’s, but must have
their heads up their ass or else we’re wrong
about our demographic theory and who’s spending
money. They’re missing the boat with you,
Frank Oglesby, Eddie Hill, Bruce Larson, Shirley
Muldowney . . . and others.
D.G.:
That’s why the movie, when it comes out
- should be 2005 - will change Drag Racing. See
what the Shirley movie did for Drag Racing? It
was a low budget, B movie, and it got the sport
into the homes. I’ll bet this will be the
best racing movie ever made! Better than the Petty
stuff and John Frankenheimer’s famous Gran
Prix, and instead of being a NASCAR or USAC movie,
it will be a Drag Racing movie! It will elevate
the position of Drag Racing in the eyes of the
general public, and totally change what they think
about it. It will be so good for everybody! NHRA,
sponsors, everyone that hung in there all this
time will reap the benefit.
90%:
That’s a “Be careful what you wish
for” thing. I like Drag Racing the way it
is, because, if it goes NASCAR . . . the pits,
standing in the pits when the fuel cars fire up
is awe-inspiring . . . I don’t want that
to go away.
D.G.:
My wife and I have talked about how this movie
will change my life. I won’t be able to
go into a restaurant or anything. I’ve got
the best of two worlds now; famous enough to have
the money, but obscure enough to go where I please
with very few interruptions. [But] I like the
idea of what its gonna do for the sport, and for
the museum, so I’ll just have to “suffer
along” with the rest.
90%:
(Laughing) I was thinking about that . . . you
don’t want to end up in the Michael Jackson/Elvis
Presley world.
D.G.:
That’s horrible. I don’t think it
will get close to that extreme, but it will elevate
me to a position similar to other leading sports
figures, certainly as good as any of the NASCAR
guys. That’ll be fine.
There’s something
else too. NASCAR still has a connotation of Southern
red neck/tobacco chewing/rum running/all of that.
Drag racing was all over the United States, not
just the South. You don’t think of anybody
in NASCAR coming from California, do you? Chicago,
Detroit, Los Angeles, Florida, Washington State,
we’re more of a national sport, we just
have never reached that publicity level. The old
guard at NHRA caused part of the problem because
for many years they wouldn’t promote the
personalities. They said the cars where the stars!
That was a mistake NASCAR didn’t make; the
drivers were the stars. The new management, the
Tom Compton’s and Graham Light’s,
realized that and they’re pushing the stars.
For years a person’s whole head shot was
never on the cover of National Dragster, and now
it’s always a big head shot, and that’s
good!
90%:
So you think NHRA’s moving in the right
direction?
D.G.:
Yes, and I’m happy with the new management,
although I’m not putting the old one down.
They had a different job, taking us from black-leather-jacketed
street hoodlums and making us legitimate. Wally
Parks did a wonderful job at that, but because
of what he was doing, he always saw it as an amateur
sport. He never wanted money to be involved -
hardly even a trophy, maybe a toolbox or Mustang
or something. I won all of that stuff. [The Mustang
Don won is in the antique car building.] Then
the sport got so expensive we needed to get the
prize money into that million-dollar league if
we were going to be elevated in the eyes of the
general sports media. We’re behind what
NASCAR, USAC, and Formula One Racing is doing
now. Those guys are multimillionaires! I don’t
know if we’ll ever reach that level, but
what’s wrong with trying?
I won a race with a flathead
dragster in Lake City Florida. Little Regional
Drag Safari and the club had a little party afterwards.
I was the only one with any prize, and I had won
the event! The President of the club said to me,
“I guess you’ll retire now,”
and I said; “Gee, why would I do that?”
His answer? “You’ll never beat the
Californians!”
90%: Whoa!
D.G.:
That’s what people believed! But I wouldn’t
believe that, so why should I believe we can’t
rise to be as big a racing organization as anything
on the planet? What I see in the future is a family
oriented sport, and I pray they never separate
it into Pros and Sportsman classes in their own
separate races.
90%:
I’d be happy if guys like the Skuza and
Gwynn wouldn’t have to fight for sponsorship,
and sweat out deals every other year.
D.G.: Gwynn
Racing is sweating it out right now I think.
90%:
Yeah, it looks like the Yankees lost their enthusiasm.
I think Darryl and team are a good operation with
great marketability. Darryl is a bona fide hero.
One thing about Darryl’s
accident was it never looked like he hit the guardrail
that hard, it didn’t scrub off that much
speed or absorb that much energy.
D.G.:
I can explain it to you, but I thought everybody
knew!
Darryl got hurt got hurt
so bad (and it was in the beginning of the run,
before the car was even up to speed) because he
did not have his arm restraints on; they were
in the back of his truck in the pits. When they
were sitting in the staging lane, they thought,
‘we’ve never had any trouble before,
so does it matter if we go without them?’
The car was broken already, it was cracked, and
so under the tremendous force of the run the car
broke in two and it held the throttle open from
the cable and it turned over and Darryl’s
arm came out of the car and that’s what
tore his spinal column in two, tearing his arm
off. If his arms had stayed in the car, he would
have walked away!
90%: Another
thing is the judgement with Blaine Johnson at
the 1996 US Nationals, the open guardrail . .
.
D.G.:
Right. As much as we hate those walls, he’d
be alive since they do keep the cars on the track,
and not much can happen to you in there, just
jar you around a little bit.
90%: The
one time I got a press pass, I stood behind the
line watching the Fuel cars at Maple Grove 2001.
I was surprised at how totally unexciting it is
to watch a fuel run behind the car! The stands
are the best place to watch a Drag race, since
you can see what’s going on. I look at Prudhomme
and the crews, they go for decades and never watch
in the stands. I don’t get it?
D.G.:
I would always go to the stands and watch the
Fuel Cars run, if I had the time at a race. So
much can be learned up there! I have a story about
that:
It was at Atlanta in 1979.
We were running about 5.95's/6.0's, and Shirley
was running 5.80/5.85 all day; our eight plugs,
just beautiful, not hurting anything, but we just
weren’t moving. I asked my Crew Chief Ron
Barrow about it, “do you see any clutch
dust coming out of this thing, is the clutch tight
enough? It seems like it moves pretty well, but
. . . ” He said: “No, this motor is
down on power, I’m sure that’s what
it is.” In the final round, Shirley got
lane choice and put me in the bad lane. [I thought],
“I’m going up there to have my throat
cut.” My only chance was if she blew up
or red lighted, and either was unlikely because
she’s a damn good driver, and her crew was
not hurting a thing. After they called us and
we’re getting ready to go, this drunk who’d
been in the stands all day walks up, and says,
“Big Daddy, your gonna let the bitch get
you one more time, ain’t yah?” I said;
“Shut up, it’s bad enough I have to
go up there and be outrun, there’s no way
I can out run her.” He said “Of course
you’re not gonna out run her, the car ain’t
got any clutch in it, it’s carrying black
dust to the 8th mile.” I said; “Ron,
get that clutch cover off that can.” He
said: “Big, its almost spinning the tires
every time! I can see it! If you put anything
on that clutch, its gonna spin the tires.”
I said; “Good! Then people will think I
had more power and I just couldn’t get it
to the track.” So we pulled the thing off
and we put about 10 or 15 grams, it was a Hayes
clutch with the springs, but I put the counter
weight on it . . . 5.75 LOW E.T. of the meet!
I never saw that guy again, but I wished I had
so I could give him a kiss! Like I said, you can
see more in the stands than you can see on the
starting line.
90%:
Great, Don, when this comes out on the Internet,
all the fans are gonna be hob nobbin’ with
all the Crew Chiefs and team owners in the stands!
D.G.: They
should keep a guy in the stands! Just sit there
at about 300 to 400 feet. They’ve got all
the computer stuff now that we didn’t have
then, and you can tell now if its slipping or
moving . . . but there’s still things that
can be seen out there.
90%:
With people fighting for hundredths of a second,
every bit of information makes a difference between
- separates a Dick Lahaie from the rest of the
pack.
D.G.:
I’m going to show you something, turn that
recorder off for a second. [Don showed me an excellent
color photo of his car vs. Doug Kalitta’s
at dusk. The shutter speed captured a profound
difference in the header flames between the cars.
The keyboard Crew Chief in me fails to understand
the tuning benefits of what Don pointed out, but
the picture would be profound to a Coil or LaHaie
that knew what they were looking at.]
90%: The
contingency car: You built the first rear engine
car, and concurrent with that, you built another
front engine car, that you never ran. Were you
ever going to try to use that front engine car
if the rear engine didn’t work out?
D.G.:
Yes! We actually built the rear engine car first;
but in three months of development I hadn’t
gotten down the drag strip and that’s when
we threw that slingshot together. That was for
the upcoming season. My wife saw us out there
and asked why I was doing that. I said; “Well,
if this rear engine car doesn’t work, we
still have to go out and race!” She said;
“Don, you don’t want to run a slingshot
any more. If there’s anybody that can make
this rear engine car work, it’s you, so
stay with it.” After that, we didn’t
give up.
I was coming back from
the Orlando track with Lemons, and Swingle driving
the truck, and said; “If I didn’t
know any better, I’d say the steering was
too fast but that can’t be it because it’s
the same ratio as the slingshot.” Ole Swingle
says; “Gar, it ain’t a slingshot,
it’s a front driver car. If you think the
steering is too fast lets slow her down.”
So we put long arms on the spindles and back at
the drag strip the next morning, the Ramcharger
had just won a big race there a month before with
like, a 6.85, and we went 6.83!
They were the killers of
that era. They didn’t win many races but
they were quick, and always set the ET records.
Once we knew we were quicker than the Ramcharger,
we couldn’t get in the trailer fast enough
to get to the Coast!
Goodyear called me about
that time wanting a show car they could take around
to the dealerships. I told them I had a nice new
slingshot, and they gave me $7,500 with a dummy
engine in it. We rolled the rear engine car into
the little pull along trailer we had then, and
took it apart, put the engine up in the corner,
the rear end over here, and tied the chassis to
the roof!
Pulling into Waterman’s
shop in long Beach, all anyone wanted to see was
the rear engine car. When we opened the door,
there’s the shiny slingshot ready to go,
and they all laughed and said ‘we knew it
wouldn’t work, he’s got a slingshot
just always.’
We dropped the car off
at the Goodyear headquarters in LA, and went out
to the Drag Strip with this all apart. At gate,
there’s Jim Tice from AHRA, who saw it all.
He said, “Let’s just put it together
right here, and when people are coming in they’ll
see you working on it, and definitely know you’re
here with a rear engine car.” So we got
it all strung out, and were putting it back together,
when Prudhomme shows up, cocking his head, (you
ever see the way he does that?) . . . and says,
“Well, I guess that’s one way to get
publicity!”
90%:
One of the things that has surfaced recently is
film footage of your accident at Lions. I’ve
seen it, and it’s awesome.
D.G.:
Yes! A kid sent me the 8mm film. He told me he
was going through some of my stuff and thought
you might like to have it. It was real footage,
and Master’s put it right on Beta for me.
It shows something I didn’t
know: While I was momentarily unconscious, one
of my hands flopped out of the car. I could have
had the same injuries as Darryl, because we didn’t
have arm restraints then . . . I don’t remember
that, only the explosion and the thought that
I was tumbling down at the end. When it chopped
my foot off the shock must have rendered me unconscious
for a moment.
90%:
And the centrifugal force of doing a 360 [degree
turn] strapped in the cage . . . I’m happy
you survived . . . Don, I’ve taken up a
helluva lot of your time . . .
D.G.:
I’ve enjoyed it.
90%:
I’ve enjoyed it too. You’ll be reading
this soon on Deepstage.net. This conversation
has got me going again as a drag journalist, as
I’ve been kind of dormant, but this is the
third time I’ve talked to you, and you’re
still the most interesting guy in drag racing!
D.G.:
Well, thank you!
Conclusion: Big Daddy really
is one of the most interesting people in Drag
Racing. He is an avid reader and can talk at length
about almost anything. The Drag Racing Museum
is wildly successful, if being packed to the gills
with priceless drag cars is any indication, and
the antique car building rivals anything in the
Smithsonian, especially if you like early original
Fords.
If the upcoming movie is
a blockbuster, it could be the turning point for
the public acceptance of drag racing most of us
have been hoping for for decades. And with Don’s
wit and wisdom, I don’t think we’ll
have to worry about an Ocala Neverland Ranch or
2 gallon banana splits at the Garlits house any
time soon. My one closing thought is if they could
get Ron Howard to direct, the movie will indeed
reach the mass audience Big Daddy and the sport
of drag racing deserves. Ron Howard has a fantastic
track record with portraying amazingly heroic
and under publicized American events, Apollo 13,
for example. Cars have been a significant part
of many of his movies – American Graffiti
and Parenthood come immediately to mind. I think
he’d do a great Oscar winning job in telling
Big’s story to the world and Big would get
a fitting tribute to an incredible life, rich
in the spirit that pioneered America and made
it the great country it is today.
