Big Daddy Still Racing for Glory and Big Money : He Almost Stands on His Head to Make People Take Notice

Big Daddy Don Garlits has won more drag races than anyone in history, but winning isn’t enough for the 54-year-old self-styled legend from Ocala, Fla.

He is continually looking ahead, not only for an edge on the competition but also to draw attention to himself and the sport he has dominated for most of the last 36 years.

This season he has won five National Hot Rod Assn. events and needs only to win one round of Sunday’s Winston World Finals at the L.A. County Fairgrounds in Pomona to clinch his second straight World top-fuel championship, but he is already planning to scrap his 1986 Super Shops Dodge Special.

“We’re taking a bold, new approach to our ’87 car,” he said. “It will be a full streamliner, designed for total air management.

“Remember those paper airplanes kids folded up when they were in grade school and threw across the room? That’s what it will look like. The paper airplane is one of the most perfect aerodynamic devices in the world--a sheet of paper that flies.”

Garlits glanced up at a party waiting to be seated at the Derby restaurant in Arcadia and interrupted his narration.

“Isn’t that Willie Shoemaker?” he gushed, sounding like any horse racing groupie.

About that time the Shoe saw Garlits and turned to a friend. “That’s Big Daddy, isn’t it?” he asked.

The two old legends, Garlits, 54, and Shoemaker, 55, shook hands, posed for pictures, then rejoined their own groups.

“Wait till they hear about this in Ocala,” Garlits said, forgetting for a moment his revolutionary car of the future. “Ocala is in the middle of thoroughbred country in Florida, and Shoemaker is just about everybody’s idol.”

Anyone who was at Englishtown, N.J., for the Summernationals last July and saw Garlits make the most unbelievable wheel-stand in racing history, is probably dumbfounded that he is even driving.

Garlits had made a fast run, 5.34 seconds, and was trying to back it up with a quick time in the final qualifying round.

About halfway down the 1,320-yard runway, his sleek, black top-fueler stood straight up--at about 215 m.p.h.--and did a pirouette.

“It spun clear around before it came down,” Garlits said, describing the crazy seconds. “It landed on its side, but flopped over on all four wheels. I had braced myself so I had my foot hard on the throttle. Right to the floor.

“The wheels were spinning forward at about 250 m.p.h., but the car was going in the opposite direction. It went backwards about 300 feet before it stopped. There’s no way I could have stopped it, with brakes and parachute, in that short a distance, but the wheels finally caught, and it started off in the other direction. Back toward the starting line.

“There was smoke everywhere from the tires. I was disoriented and didn’t know where I was. When I came out of the smoke, I was still on the throttle. I looked up and saw (starter) Buster Couch right in front of me. I finally got it stopped at about the one-eighth (mile) mark.”

Even though Garlits is almost assured of his World championship, he has been upstaged a bit by a youngster less than half his age--Darrell Gwynn, 25, of Miami. Gwynn has been the No. 1 qualifier in six of the last eight races, has won three races and has broken Garlits’ speed record.

What makes it more galling for Garlits is that Gwynn drives a conventional top-fuel dragster, while Big Daddy already has a streamlined machine with a covered cockpit and a redesigned nose cone.

Gwynn’s edge apparently comes from a computer designed by Dale Armstrong and marketed by World funny car champion Kenny Bernstein. Computerization helped Bernstein win two straight World championships and make the quickest and fastest run in the history of funny cars--5.559 seconds at 265.46 m.p.h.

Today’s final two rounds of top-fuel qualifying for Sunday’s eliminations will also serve as the first two rounds of the Cragar/Weld shootout among eight drivers, headed by Garlits and defending champion Joe Amato of Old Forge, Pa., who is the leading qualifier after rounds Thursday and Friday.

Amato, who also has a computer in his car, raced through the smog in 5.425 seconds at 266.66 m.p.h. Close behind was Gwynn, 5.438 and 261.47; Larry Minor of San Jacinto, 5.448 and 257.95, and Garlits, 5.471 and 266.11.

“I think before the week is over, we’ll see a 5.35 and maybe a 273,” Garlits predicted. “Pomona is a really good track, but the records set at Dallas are out of the question.”

The Cragar/Weld winner will receive $30,000.

“Normally, I wouldn’t want to put so much stress on my best engine the day before an important meet like the World Finals, but as close as we are to the championship, we’ll go all out for (the shootout) money,” Garlits said.

Garlits will collect $75,000 as the NHRA champion if he repeats Sunday.

“I don’t know if we can outrun Gwynn in qualifying, but when we get to the eliminations it might be something else. Just like it was down in Texas at Billy Meyer’s new track.”

Gwynn dominated qualifying, setting NHRA records for both elapsed time, 5.261 seconds, and speed, 278.55 m.p.h., when Meyer opened his $6.5-million track with the Chief Nationals in September. Garlits was a full second slower than Gwynn for most of the week.

“Gwynn had all that help from Dale (Armstrong) and that fancy computer combination, but he still had to drive the car,” Garlits said. “And when something bad happened to his car, it put a lot of stress on him.

“Stress is what a driver has to avoid, extra stress that is. There’s enough of it just sitting there with all those horses behind you. But Gwynn lost an engine in an early round, and his crew had to make a change. When you have to change an engine between runs, the driver is always apprehensive. You just don’t know how it will respond. That adds to your stress.

“Then we had an oil-down just ahead of us and we had to sit in our cars for 30 minutes while it was cleaned up. That gave him time to think about it.”