Here is my 1'st and only RED, that I drove to 1973 NHRA Div 3 Top Fuel Championship. It was owned by Jerry Newman [Nitro Helper] from Wisconsin, who now tunes a number, [like up to 13] of N/FC, like Doc Hallady's Telstar, and he will be at CHRR to tune Blazes funny car.
The Hot Rod Shop sponsored RED was one of the last cars built by John Buttera in Wisconsin before he moved to SoCal. We ran a low numbered Donovan. I had been driving FED for 9 years up to then, and my dual engine BBC Top Gas dragster ran a best only 2 tenths slower than Jerry's TF up to that point. So I thought, "no problem, I can do this easy" Well let me tell you that car left HARD the 1'st time I drove it at the GatorNationals, we were second in top speed right behind Kuhl and Olsen.
We had a beer company lined up to sponsor us in 1974, BUT, when we came back from racing NHRA World Finals, the country was in the oil embargo, so they said "not now guys, there's not enough gas for people to drive to work, they are going to make racing illegal, so we are just going to build more beer plants".
That's when I moved to Calif, to see if and how drag racing would survive, thank God the beer guys were wrong !
Jon
