Friday, August 24th 4:30 pm:

As I drive down Theodore Road toward my beloved Cecil County Dragway my heart is filled with anticipation. Well not really, it's probably heartburn from my lunch at the cafeteria, but it doesn't make any difference. I am returning to the dragstrip of my youth.

But wait, what's wrong? Something is amiss. A quiet has hushed my childhood haunt. A stillness has filled the air. What could be the matter? What hath soothed the savage beast. (OK, enough already with the prose). As I enter the track I soon see the cause for the lack of noise. There has been an oildown. Not just any oildown. This one stretches from the starting line to as far as the eye can see.

And once I park the truck and walk out to the starting line I find out this was not the first one today. It's actually the third. And each one took about half an hour to clean up. And they haven't even run the Alcohol cars yet. Not good.

And to make this scene all the more weird, the Super Gas racer that has just done the dirty, had done it earlier in the day. Yes, the same racer (whose name shall not be repeated) blew up in the morning session, oiling the track. One must speculate that instead of swapping out the offending motor, the racer patched the hole in the pan with duct tape.

Other trackside observers speculated that in their haste to make the next round the team mistakenly put the broken motor back in the car (darn, them motors all look alike, Luke). Track Manager Jim Halsey and NHRA Division One honcho Bob Lang are not amused. Start handing out the Prozac, we're in for a bumpy ride. This is the tip of the iceberg. A premonition of things to come. Next to what's on tap for Saturday, this is a walk in the park.

The owners of the track have arranged to make the Friday night qualifying one of their big shows of the year. They have booked four jet cars in to complement the Federal Mogul qualifying. At all of the other Division One races this year there have only been two qualifying passes for the Alcohol cars. At Cecil the Alcohol cars will have one pass on Friday and two on Saturday during the day. Little did they know that the day easily stretches into the night when Mr. Oildown shows up. But more on that later.

By 5:30 a decent crowd has shown up. My guess it's around three to five thousand paying fans with more coming in the gate. It's hard to tell with stands and pits on both sides of the track. Around an hour after their scheduled time of 7:00 PM the Federal Mogul Funny cars pull up to the staging lanes. There are 11 Funny Cars on the grounds. The usual Division One hitters are here. Bob Newberry, Frank Manzo, and Paul Gill. These racers along with the assorted cast of supporting players such as Bruce Mullins and Craig English should make for an interesting show.

On the Dragster side, Division leader Cliff Bozzelli along with Billy Gibson, Rich McPhillips and Tim Slagle are among the 14 drivers attempting to qualify for the 8 car show. Photographer / Driver Dave DeAngelis is also on hand with his team's dragster. Dave unfortunately will not make the show this weekend due to breakage. I owe both Dave DeAngelis and Dave Bishop a huge debt of gratitude for their patience in helping me over the past few years get started in drag racing photography.

I won't go into the details of each qualifying pass; just suffice it to say it was a long night. Between cars breaking and oiling the track and cars driving down the middle of the track taking out the top end lights, the track crew was busier than one-armed paperhangers. It was nearly 9:30 when the oil line on Rich McPhillips' A/FD came off during his burnout. Dave Bishop (Competition Photo) and I threw our hands up and said, "enough is enough" and left to go eat dinner. Screw the jet cars, that ain't racing anyway. Saturday would bring a brand new day.

And the dinner was good, although late. Dave was treating me to dinner for letting him stay at my house in Newark while he was covering the race for National Dragster. Not a bad deal for both of us. I had the fried shrimp and a few brews and Dave had the, oh let's not go into all that. See you all tomorrow.

Saturday, August 25th 8:30 am:

I should have stayed in bed. I should have stayed in bed. Repeat after me: I should have stayed in bed. After I got up and had coffee I went to my place of employment for about two hours to check up on some experiments I had started the day before. I work for a medical diagnostic company and I often go in on weekends to see if everything is OK. I should have stayed at work. After checking everything that needed checking, I left and went down to the track.

The light at Cecil is great in the morning till about mid afternoon. Later, the sun goes behind the starting line and the shadows are terrible so I wanted to get there and get some shots of the Sportsman racers. Super Stock in Division One is awesome. Points leader Dan Fletcher along with Lincoln Morehead and World Champion Peter Biondo are having a great year with possible World and Division Championship consequences.

So I pull in to the pits and I again notice a hush had come across the crowd. I see grease sweep trucks going up and down the 1320. Hmmm, what could be the matter? Could Mr. Oildown have paid us another visit? You bet. And he stayed and stayed and stayed. At one point during one of the first oil downs in the early Alcohol qualifying session, I left to visit my mother who lives about 20 minutes away.

We had an early dinner (delicious Eastern Shore Crabcakes, umm good!) a few beers and I stayed about an hour afterwards to chat with my dear sweet mother. So all in all I was gone about three hours. So when I returned to the track around 6:00, I expected them to be somewhere in the middle of the second Alcohol session.

Well, as it turns out, the first session had just wrapped up! It took four and one half hours to run 25 Alcohol cars. As soon as the track was cleaned up, the next car down would kick the rods out. Black Gold, Texas Tea, my ass. Well I ended up staying until 11:00 PM. They announced the second session for Alcohol around 9:30 PM and the track announcer covered himself by saying "if any Federal Mogul car would like to make another run that it was OK". They really did not call it Session #2 for fear that Mr. Oildown would take it as a personal invite and stay the night.

It turned out that only a few cars came out from each class and of the cars that made a pass, the only major fireworks were supplied by Craig English in his low buck Pontiac Funny Car. Craig, who on Friday night didn't like either the left or right lane and used the middle one instead, giving the top end lights a haircut, decided to see if his motor would rev to around 20,000 rpms. Well the motor did it's best to get up there but unfortunately the rods and other essential parts decided to leave the safety of the block and go their separate ways. Hello Mr. Oildown. How are Ya?

Since I had nowhere to go I hung around and bench raced with the other idiots who did not have any other place to go either.

Sunday, August 26th 8:00 am:

Dave Bishop is hammering something in the spare bedroom and I hope it's not my wife. No, she is at the beach with friends. So I go upstairs to see what the clatter is and I find Dave putting together plaques for Best Appearing and Best Engineered cars from the race at Lebanon Valley two months earlier. We at Competition Photo and NHRA pick the winner of these categories at each Federal Mogul Points race. It usually takes about a month to get the pictures and stuff assembled. Dave of course is right on time. Only a month late.

Dave leaves to go to the track. They are starting Sportsman racing at 10:00. One of the racers in Super Street wants a photo of his 1975 Vega. Oh boy, now there's a class I want to get into. Super Street is like Super Gas but on Valium. Not really; I like Super Street much better than Super Gas. The cars leave the line harder and for the most part the delay boxes and throttle stops are not as obvious as in Super Gas. Anyway, by the time Bishop gets to the track, they have already run Super Street and the racer who wanted us to photograph his Vega has lost in the first round and has put his car in the trailer. Oh well, maybe next time.

I get there around 10:30 and Super Gas or something like that is running. The day before, Dave had found a great vantage point to get top end shots. There is an old tower right at the finish line and it is a great place to shoot from. The light is directly behind you from 11:00 till about 2:00 so I camp up there for the better part of the day.

While up there I meet a gaggle of racers who see me up there and figure it's a great place to see the action. One of the people I meet up in my perch is Gary Richard. Gary is the president and CEO of P.C. Richard and Son, one of the largest distributors of appliances in the Northeast. This guy has more money than God. He owns two Super Gassers and a Camaro Stocker. Plus, he is thinking about purchasing a SS/GT car for 2002.

Gary is a real gentleman and tells me he has some racing shirts he would like to give me for being the nice person that I am. The only problem is the shirts are on their way back to New York in the trunk of his son's car. I tell him I will catch up to him at Englishtown in two weeks. I love free things, especially T-shirts and hats, and beer. Another guest up in my tower is World Champ Peter Biondo, another class act. His girlfriend Jackie ain't chopped liver either... growl...

Anyway to make a short story long, there were no major oildowns on Sunday. After Saturday, Mr. Oildown had overstayed his welcome. The track personnel breathed a sigh of relief along with the racers and fans. The racing was smooth and fast.

Rich McPhillips, who last year had a killer A/FD, has been struggling throughout 2001, found his tune up and ran a track record 5.59 in the first round of Federal Mogul Dragster. He beat (now get this) Tony Bartone. Yep, THE Tony Bartone, T-Bone, Mr. Wrestling Sponsorship. He of the Fuel Funny Car wars. Bartone returned to Sportsman racing in the family's A/FD that had been driven by brother Michael. Tony qualified fourth with a 5.66 but slowed to a 5.86 against McPhillips.

And in the end the winners were crowned. Cliff Bozzelli won his fifth points race this season in Alcohol Dragster. Frank Manzo marched on in Funny Car. The Subaru roadster of Frank Aragona won again in Competition and solidified his Winston Championship hopes. Robert Pare won Stock for the second time in a row at Cecil and Dan Fletcher took home the Super Stock win for Team Summit. Super Gas went to the roadster of Darlene Staub making her the first woman to win in Division One this year. Jeff Livezey won Super Comp. Oh yes, the Super Street winner was Bob Ferrell in his 1969 Camaro.

Now it's 8:30 at night and I am beat. Time to go home, have a few brews and a little pizza and then to bed. I've got five days of work to do before Indy and I only have three days to do it in.

Left: Ken Montgomery's legendary "Triple Nickel" SS/B '65 Belvedere
Right: Bucky Hess in his wheelstanding SS/AA '68 Barracuda


Left: Peter Biondo crossing the scales in his '00 Firebird GT/FA
Right: Don Stratton Jr. launches his '34 Chevy B/SR


Cliff Bozzelli in his Division One Champion Federal-Mogul Dragster

Any questions, complaints or gripes, please e-mail me at Philip_R._Hutchison@dadebehring.com