In biographical sketches, we have repeatedly mentioned about the pilots, who are so clearly dominated at the peak of his career in the championship that they are almost a win-win series were perceived by the public as a matter of course, and no one has been challenged.
Today we tell about the five seasons, during which five of the legendary men swept all opponents indiscriminately and as a result have achieved a well-deserved victory for the year with an impressive margin, it seems almost impossible in today's reality.
Army Monza Don Prudhomme produced shaped splash in 1975 when the future four-time champion at the wheel of this dregster was the first in six of Event of the national championship of the eight. But few expect that next year Prudhomme takes his second title after winning seven of eight possible Wally. The only mistake on the way to a perfect season of the victorious pilot of the seventies in the Funny Car class was the defeat in the final of the US Nationals Gary Bergin. In addition to the race Don never lost a race at the Shootout on throughout the year. Well, so that you understand how absolute was the superiority of the famous racer in 1976, it is worth adding that Prudhomme was marked the best time of passage of a distance in a quarter of a mile on each event, the seven-times first in qualifying, was the fastest at the finish of the first six stages and twice rewrote the national record. Impressive, is not it?
And if the icon Funny Car at the dawn of professional drag racing under the NHRA is considered to be the hero of the previous paragraph, the Pro Stock class at that time categorically rules Bob Glidden. The high point was the icon of this division in 1978, marked by seven wins in nine of Event, the last six of which Glidden spent without a single misfire. The following season, the owner of three (at the time) the most prestigious titles in the world championship race in a straight line continued its triumphant march, remaining undefeated until NHRA Mile-High Nationals in 1979. Thus, a native of Indiana actually never lost a race at the Shootout for a whole calendar year at the wheel of his long wheelbase Ford Fairmont.
This selection would have looked at least strange without a mention of the award-winning racer in NHRA history, and the stars of the other associations have little to oppose one of the greatest and most victorious characters in this sport. In 1996, John Force on the way to his sixth championship arranged on terror shaped strips across America. At nineteen stages Force marked sixteen times in the finals, of which thirteen came out the winner, and exactly the same on the basis of getting the first qualifying session. Until the pile in Topeka collapsed under the onslaught of veteran hitherto impregnable 4.9-second barrier. Thanks to these achievements father of three daughters, was the first of the pilots who are professionally engaged in drag racing, who won the title of Driver Of The Year. Over the next twenty years, only Tony Schumacher and Greg Anderson became the winner of this prestigious award in North America, established in 1967.
In 2004, one of the favorites of the past year, Greg Anderson put it in his piggy bank second title in the class of Pro Stock, simultaneously setting several notable NHRA records. Of course, the percentage is unlikely anyone will be able to repeat the success of Don Prudhomme, but the absolute performance of Anderson in the middle of the zero beat all existing at the time the achievements of other pilots. Championship then included twenty-three Event on nineteen of which Greg reached the final by defeating fifteen showdown. But the addition of sixteen first place in qualifying and seventy-six wins in the races Shootout was a powerful argument in favor of awarding the Driver Of The Year award to him.
Four years later, Driver Of The Year was awarded the honorary title and Tony Schumacher, who repeated exactly the success of Anderson: fifteen victories in the championship stage, which became the key to seventy-six won races. In addition, during his best season with Schumacher overtook the result of fifty-three won Event Joe Amato, becoming the most decorated driver in the class Top Fuel, Kojima, and is still with an impressive margin. In addition, in the same 2008, the future eight-time champion of the first in the history of the fastest division was the best seven of Event in a row, three of which were part of a two-week marathon of Western Swing, which consists of three events on the West Coast.
This material is now still looks like a set of dry facts, statistics and figures that have become history. But against the background of the expiring of the championship, where nine wins out of twenty-four possible and three won Event row by two-time champion Erica Enders Stephens seemed undisputed dominance, success of these pilots seem truly something unattainable in terms that even the best athletes are fallible, and in all mechanisms is the limit of reliability.
Photo: open source
