stock elim trivia
here's what TJ recorded in our scrapbook about this mopar(will have pics soon) april 6, '75--she was #3 in an 8 car qualified field--a y/sa 6 cyl chevelle was #2--& the b/sa national record holder from houston was #1. so they finished like they qualified--the y/sa beat TJ in the semi's, then lost 2 the cuda in the final. they built the straight 6 chevelle because of a super low hp factor. if i remember correctly, somebody bombed the record with this combination, so nhra refactored the hp, which moved him up a class. anyhow, for what ever reason, the car disappeared. this happened 2 a lot of old muscle cars thru the years. some super smart class racer would figure out a way 2 coax a little more out of a certain combination & set a new national record, which would bring it 2 the attention of the nhra officials, & they would increase the hp factor on that combo. then everybody else runnin that combo would have 2 go quicker, switch combos, or quit. only the strong(smart) survived. lots of class racers would watch the hp factors & records closely & quickly switch 2 another combo if what they were running suddenly became non-competitive. i figure thats the main reason we saw all the 4 cyl, 6 cyl, & wagons. so many people flogged the popular musclecar combos that very few could be competive with them after a few hp refactors. but, the refactoring had 2 be done 2 keep the classes competitive. pontiacs are a good example. in '68 & '69 base 400's were rated at 330 hp in birds, but 350 in goats. or how about '69 ra4--345 in bird--370 in goat. or ra3 in goat 366--ra4 only 4 hp higher. so you can easily see why somebody had 2 sort all this out & come up with more realistic #'s. anyhow, in mid season our local track went back 2 running off local track records instead of the nhra index(i guess they got tired of TJ winning all the races) & cenla at forrest hill,la closed for good--so we hung it up for '75--no more stock elim for us--although it was fun while it lasted! Thank God for bracket racin that was rite around the corner!
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