Big Crowd Watches Underdogs Win

Sunday was not a good day for Winston drag racing champions.

Three of the four champions in professional categories were defeated as a record Winston Finals crowd of more than 50,000 watched an orgy of speed and sound at the Pomona Raceway drag strip.

Ageless Kenny Bernstein upset top-fuel champion Gary Scelzi with a final-round run of 320.85 mph in 4.628 seconds. Bernstein, 54, had an exceptional .411 reaction time in beating Scelzi, who had won his second straight season title Saturday by qualifying for the finals.

After funny car champion John Force dropped out in the semifinals, Chuck Etchells drove a Chevrolet Camaro to victory over Dale Pulde in a battle of old-timers in the finals.

Teenage sensation Richie “The Kid” Stevens won the pro stock championship by upsetting Jeg Coughlin in the final round after Coughlin had upset Winston champion Warren Johnson in the semifinals. Stevens, 19, was in the first final round of his rookie season.

Only pro stock motorcycle champion Matt Hines upheld the reputation of the 1998 champions by defeating veteran Ron Ayers in the final round. Hampered by a flat tire, Hines still won with a run of 184.23 mph in 7.324 seconds. Ayers had earlier sidelined No. 1 qualifier Angelle Seeling.

“We were lucky in the first round, you always need some luck to get through an event like this, but by the time the final round came [crew chief] Lee Beard had our Budweiser dragster running at the top of its game,” said Bernstein.

In the first round, Bernstein smoked his tires but still managed to win when Cristin Powell had worse problems.

Force ended the suspense surrounding his winning an eighth funny car championship early, sending Dean Scuza to the sidelines in the first round. That was all Force needed to fend off challenger Ron Capps, who later in the round also lost.

“This one was the toughest ever,” said Force, who has won every year in the ‘90s except 1992, when Cruz Pedregon surprised him. “There are more good hot-rodders every year. Some years it was easy winning, we let it get away from us when Cruz won, but this year there were more of them hounding us than ever before.

“It’s not true I win everything, though. Cruz beats me at Malibu Grand Prix and [Al] Hofmann beats me to the bar.”

He also didn’t win in the semifinals when the Castrol Mustang overpowered the track and its tires sent up smoke as Force came off the line. Etchells, in the other lane, didn’t let up, however, recording a strong 4.95 seconds run to gain the finals.

“It was some kind of a day,” said an elated Etchells. “We went through three engines in the first three rounds and really didn’t know what to expect in the finals, but it did the job.” Etchells ran 308.21 in 5.119 seconds as Pulde’s car balked coming off the start line.

Force will receive $200,000 at the NHRA awards dinner Tuesday night in Cerritos as champion. Part of that will go toward paying for Don Prudhomme’s custom Harley for which Force bid $40,000 during the Friday night auction to benefit the family of former pro stock bike champion John Myers, who was killed in a highway accident last August.

The celebrity auction raised more than $120,000 for Myers’ wife and daughter.

Upsets started early as former boat racer Jerry Toliver of Huntington Beach, the No. 16 qualifier, sidelined No. 1 Cruz Pedregon in a battle of Pontiac Firebirds in the first round of funny cars. Pedregon, who set a Winston Finals record in qualifying, had the throttle cable break.

“You always hate when a parts failure happens,” Pedregon said. “But today was even worse because we felt our car was dialed in to win the race.”

Toliver, known as the “Mad Man of Funny Cars” because he is sponsored by Mad magazine, came back in the second round with another upset, sidelining veteran Tom Hoover, 56, who was making his final start in drag racing after 35 years in the sport. Last year, nine weeks after undergoing open-heart surgery, Hoover won the Pontiac Nationals at Columbus, Ohio, and was rewarded with the Blaine Johnson Award for “perseverance and dedication to the NHRA.”

Before switching from boats to cars, as did Eddie Hill a generation earlier, Toliver raced 200-mph drag boats in the alcohol class of the International Hot Boat Assn. for seven years. This was his first full season in funny cars.

Toliver comes by his racing naturally. His uncles, Art and Jack Chrisman, are in the NHRA Hall of Fame and were among the pioneers in the sport. Art was the first driver to break the 140-mph barrier in the quarter mile.

On Sunday, his nephew ran 278.63 mph, but Toliver lost in a smoky semifinal when it appeared that neither car would finish. Pulde struggled to the finish line first in 6.798 seconds, slowest winning time of the day.