Nitromethane is a special racing fuel used mostly in drag racing. It helps the engine make a lot more power than regular fuel, but it’s harder to get and manage, so racing with it can be expensive and tightly regulated.
A piston engine is the classic type of engine where parts move inside cylinders to burn fuel and make power. Drag racers used this kind of engine and used nitro fuel to get more power out of it.
A moratorium is basically a temporary stop or pause on something. In this case, the racing organization temporarily restricted nitromethane at their national events.
The Indy 500 is a famous big race in the U.S. at Indianapolis. Here it’s mentioned because people were talking about whether nitro fuel should be allowed there, and that debate faded over time.
Qualifying is when racers compete to earn their starting position for the main race. The idea in this story is that teams used more nitro for qualifying to get a quick power advantage, then used it differently during the longer race.
AJ Floyd is the driver mentioned here. The host says he used nitro during the actual 1961 Indy 500 and won, which was unusual compared with other teams that mainly used nitro just for qualifying.
“Tipping the can” is racing slang for turning on or switching to the nitro fuel for a short burst. In this story, teams mostly did that only during qualifying to get an advantage, not for the whole long race.
In nitro racing, “engine parts” refers to the internal components that must survive higher cylinder pressures and heat from increased horsepower. As teams used larger nitromethane percentages and more fuel volume, they needed stronger, better-designed parts to keep the engine from failing. The segment ties this directly to the technology arms race between fuel and hardware.
Term
nitro railcar explosions
The host is talking about past accidents where nitro was shipped by train and explosions happened. Those incidents came back into the news a few years later, which helped lead to lawsuits. It shows nitro had real safety problems beyond the race track.
The host says lawsuits were filed after years of buildup. That means nitro racing wasn’t only about speed—it also led to legal fights that took years to play out. The lawsuits are setting up what happens next in the story.
The Atomic Energy Commission was a U.S. government group that handled nuclear research and related programs. Here, it’s mentioned because it supervised the Plowshare project.
The Plowshare project was an effort to see if nuclear explosions could be used for big construction jobs. Instead of digging with normal tools, the proposal was to use nuclear blast energy to move earth on a massive scale.
A mushroom cloud is the big, distinctive cloud shape you see after extremely powerful explosions. The speaker uses it to show how huge the blast was in the test.
In this context, “went pro” means drag racing became more serious and competitive, not just a hobby. As it got more professional, it also got more expensive to keep up.
The March Meet is a drag racing event mentioned to show how many top-fuel nitro cars showed up. It’s being used as evidence that the sport was growing fast.
This is drag racing where the cars run on nitromethane instead of regular gasoline. Nitro lets the engine make a lot more power for a short race, but it’s more expensive and harder to manage.
The Pontiac Firebird is a sports car made in the United States. People often connected it with racing and fast driving, so it shows up in ads and stories about performance fuel. The podcast is likely pointing out that the ad is specifically calling out “racing” use.
Sonoco 260 is a named fuel product brought up as an alternative to other racing fuels. It’s being used to show that high-octane gasoline was available and competitive.
Pure is mentioned as a fuel brand trying to compete with other fuel companies. The discussion is about performance fuels and whether racers needed extra chemical mixes to win.
Term
blown fuel burning hydros
Hydros are fast boats used for racing on water. The phrase "blown" suggests they use a forced-induction setup to make more power, and the host is saying people packed in to watch that kind of extreme speed too.
A piston-powered aircraft uses a traditional engine with moving pistons, like many older airplane engines. The story says Grenemeyer used nitro methane to help achieve a record speed. It shows nitro was used for extreme speed attempts beyond cars.
A top fuel dragster is one of the fastest types of drag race cars. It runs on nitromethane, which helps it make huge power for short bursts. The host is saying Grenemeyer wasn’t just an aviation test pilot—he also raced in this top nitro class.
The SR-71 Blackbird is a famous high-speed U.S. spy plane. The host mentions it to show Grenemeyer was an elite test pilot who worked on very advanced, extreme aircraft programs.
Match racing means two cars race each other directly, one-on-one. The host is using it to explain how expensive nitro fuel could be—because you burn a lot of it over multiple runs in a night.
Nitro Funny Car is a drag racing class where cars run on nitromethane. They’re built to be extremely fast in short races, and the fuel system has to be engineered for that intense fuel. The episode mentions a 1971 event that promoted the nitro funny car scene.
Nitrous oxide is a gas racers inject into the engine to make it produce more power. It works by providing extra oxygen so the engine can burn more fuel, which helps cars go faster in drag racing.
The OPEC oil embargo was when oil supplies were cut off for political reasons, which made gas much more expensive and harder to find. Drag racing felt it because racing costs depend on fuel availability and price.
NHRA is the main organization that runs and regulates drag racing in the U.S. Here, they’re described as changing race schedules to use less fuel during the oil crisis.
The transcript says the government was looking at nitromethane for blasting/excavation work. If nitromethane is being used for other purposes, there’s less available for racing teams.
Concept
Essex
“Essex” is the name of a government program mentioned in the transcript. It’s brought up because it’s connected to using nitromethane for experiments, which could reduce supply for drag racing.
Methanol is another type of racing fuel. Here, it’s discussed as a replacement for nitromethane so the sport could be cheaper and potentially reduce engine damage.
Hot Rod Magazine is an automotive magazine. Here, it’s mentioned because it published articles and a poll about whether nitromethane should be banned in drag racing.
Terry Cook is the person who wrote an editorial arguing that nitromethane should be banned in drag racing. His reasoning is that it would reduce fuel costs and help prevent engines from failing as often.
Richard Tharp is a drag racer (top fuel and funny car) who weighs in on the nitro ban. He thinks switching away from nitromethane would make the cars less exciting because they wouldn’t sound the same.
Person
Don Pradoam
Don Pradoam argues against banning nitro. He believes nitromethane is essential to how the top drag-racing cars entertain spectators.
In the 1970s there were fuel shortages and gas got much more expensive. That made people push for using less fuel, and it put extra pressure on fuel-hungry hobbies like racing.
Smog laws are rules meant to reduce pollution in the air, especially from car exhaust. During the 1970s, these rules got stricter, and racing got criticized because it didn’t fit neatly into those limits.
This is drag racing where the cars run on a special fuel called nitromethane, often just called “nitro.” That fuel lets the cars make huge power for quick acceleration over a short distance.
A “nitro ban” would mean outlawing the nitro fuel in drag racing. That would force teams to stop using nitromethane and switch to something else, which could be expensive or change the whole sport.
AHRA is a racing organization that helps run and sanction drag racing events. Here, it’s described as participating in the process of deciding what to do about nitro.
SEMA is an industry organization for the aftermarket car parts business. In this story, they polled their members to help inform the debate about nitro racing.
IHRA is a drag racing organization that helps govern events. In this story, it’s part of the group collecting opinions about whether nitro should be banned.
Topic
Indianapolis crowd
This is talking about the drag-racing scene in Indianapolis. The idea is that people there were especially focused on whether racers were following the nitro rules.
George Bignotti is described as a former top mechanic for A.J. Foyte. The story says he made a serious accusation that Foyte was hiding nitro fuel in a fire extinguisher connected to the car’s fuel system.
The fuel system is everything that gets fuel from storage to the engine. The story claims someone tried to connect a fire extinguisher into that system to hide or reroute the nitro fuel.
USAC is a motorsports organization that sets rules and oversees events. Here, the speaker says someone might file a formal complaint with USAC about cheating involving nitro fuel.
Tom McEwen was a well-known drag racer. Here, he’s portrayed as arguing that the sport was getting too expensive and that rules should be changed to control costs.
These are drag-racing classes that use alcohol fuel instead of nitro. In the story, racers switch because it can be less expensive, helping them keep racing without spending as much.
A fuel crisis is when fuel becomes hard to get and prices jump. That kind of disruption can spill over into racing because teams rely on consistent access to specific fuels.
“Per barrel” is how oil prices are often quoted—one barrel is a set amount of liquid. The point here is that oil-related fuel costs were climbing fast.
Nitro propane is mentioned as a related chemical used in making nitro methane. If something like that gets restricted, it can reduce how much nitro methane racing fuel can be produced.
CSC is presented as the main U.S. source for nitro methane, the special fuel used in nitro drag racing. NHRA people met with them to try to get the fuel situation fixed.
Carl Olson is mentioned as part of an NHRA delegation that met with the nitro fuel supplier. The story uses him to show how serious the fuel shortage was.
Steve Gibbs is mentioned as an NHRA person who went to meet company executives to try to fix the nitro fuel problem. The point is that the sport was trying to get help from the fuel supplier.
Jim Tice is quoted talking about how expensive the nitro fuel could get before drag racing would struggle. The episode uses his estimate to show the crisis level of fuel pricing.
Joe Antonelli is a drag racer in the story who had to find money just to buy enough nitro fuel to race. It’s used to show how tough the shortage was for regular teams.
Dean Antonelli, nicknamed “Guido,” is mentioned as a top nitro funny car crew chief. The story uses him to show that the family’s drag racing involvement continued and succeeded later on.
A match race is a direct one-on-one race between two teams. Here, it’s mentioned to show that the fuel shortage got so bad that they sometimes didn’t have enough nitro to finish.
“Fuel nightmares” means times when the right racing fuel is hard to get or too expensive. When that happens, racers may have to skip events or find fuel at great effort.
The Cordoba is a car model name that shows up in racing-related stories. In the podcast context, it’s mentioned alongside dragway and promoter talk, which suggests it’s part of the racing scene being discussed. The focus is on the event and costs rather than detailed car specs.
Concept
Herculane runs
“Herculane runs” means racers drove huge distances just to haul fuel. It was the difference between getting to race and not having enough fuel to complete the weekend.
It means when you change something to fix a problem, you often cause new problems you didn’t expect. Here, the host argues banning nitro would lead racers to chase power in other ways.
In racing, “exotic metals” means special, usually expensive materials used to make parts lighter or stronger. The goal is to help the car go faster and survive the stress of hard launches.
A chassis is the car’s main structure. “Experimental chassis” means teams build a new version to try to improve how the car handles and launches, often by making it lighter or stiffer.
Turbocharging adds a device that compresses the air going into the engine. More air can mean more power, which is why racers would consider it if they couldn’t use nitro.
A turbocharger is a device that forces extra air into the engine to help it make more power. Because it changes how the engine breathes, it can also change the sound and feel of the car.
A blown alcohol engine is a drag-racing engine that runs on alcohol fuel and uses a supercharger to push more air in. It tends to sound and behave differently than nitro-powered cars.
Gate receipts are the ticket sales money the track makes from people coming to watch. The idea here is that if the cars didn’t feel as exciting, fewer fans would buy tickets.
Concept
preemptively ended the use of the most major spectator draw element
This refers to removing the biggest “spectator draw”—the feature that most strongly attracts fans to attend. In drag racing, the host frames nitro’s sights/sounds as a key part of the live experience, so banning it would likely hurt attendance and the sport’s survival.
LIVE
As we've learned and explored together here on this channel,
nitromethane and various other volatile liquids have an incredible history in American auto racing.
A special place in advancing people's idea of what was possible in terms of performance and the
power making potential of piston engines and an outsized effect on the cost to do it all.
This video is going to concentrate on the usage and racing of nitromethane through the 1960s
and into the decade that tried to erase it from the motorsports landscape
multiple times and was on the verge of doing that more than once, the 1970s.
In fact, despite what you might think about the state of nitromethane racing in 2025 as I make
this video, there was no worse decade for nitro than the 70s and the fact that it made it through
that choking, desperate era of scarcity and incredible cost is a miracle that I intend to
highlight here. This video will be far less about the science of nitromethane than the first
videos in this series and I plan on concentrating on the ways that nitro was being used in and
out of racing, the exterior challenges that it faced and how drag racers themselves nearly
banned the substance on the belief that it may have been the only way to save the sport at one
point and of course that was during the 70s. Seriously. This video will use a massive amount
of period newspaper reporting to help tell the story of the amazing fuel and the time period
we're talking about. I've consulted books like Wally Parks, Drag Racing Yesterday and Today,
Robert Poe's Tie Performance, magazines from my collection and all those newspaper stories that
will help paint a real and stark picture at times, illustrating how nitromethane was a chemically
endangered species and drag racers were at the end of their wallets and wits to continue chasing it.
The racers tried to ban it themselves to repeat an earlier point and I'm going to show you the
proof. Now that's jumping ahead. We have to get there first and in order to make sense of it all,
we have to pick it up where we left off in the first part of our telling of the story which was
the early 1960s. Well the NHA placed a moratorium on the use of nitromethane at their national
meets in 1957 and it was still a fact into the early 60s as it would be until the 1963
Winter Nationals. It truly was more symbolic than anything. NHA sanctioned tracks did allow cars
to run nitro at their local events. Other sanctioning bodies like the AHRA and ATA allowed the fuel
and because of that when we pick up this story in 1961 the drag racing season was rolling
and nitromethane was flowing through its veins. Now interestingly by 61 any talk of banning the
use of nitromethane at the Indy 500 which I did heavily document in the first installment of this
series had largely faded away. It's fair to say that by this time the majority of teams are adding
some percentage of the good stuff into their fuel mix especially in qualifying. Apparently AJ
Floyd actually ran it during the race which helped him win the 1961 Indy 500 and it was an
interesting part of the story because most teams only admitted to tipping the can during qualifying
to make their best starting spot and use that short burst of power in the track time they had.
They often didn't use it during the long and tortured running of the actual 500 mile race.
It was a practice that as we'll find out was viewed by many as a trademark of Super
Tex's approach perhaps to a fault. The headlines that Nitro found itself in through 1962 and early
1963 were exactly what you'd expect. Race cars of increasingly ferocious performance being aided
by this magical fuel. Some legends were running 180 plus miles per hour and others relatively
unknown but claiming 190 plus were either in the cards or in the books. Collectively racers got
smarter at using Nitro in larger and more potent percentages and with larger and more potent fuel
volumes employed as the technology developed as well as better and better engine parts to support
the additional horsepower. As much stuff as the pioneering fuel racers broke the engineers behind
the scenes were there to develop solutions and once they did that it allowed racers to push even
harder. Amazingly Nitro methane at this time was four dollars per gallon. I say amazingly because
inflation calculators placed that same four dollars in 1962 at about 42 dollars today. Even in the
good old days this stuff was liquid gold to drag racers. Now if you remember from the first video
the Nitro railcar explosions of 1958 they actually popped back into the headlines in 1962 and 1963.
Why? Well lawsuits. Lawsuits four and five years in the making were finally filed seeking
compensation for damaged property, lives lost, injuries and all the other bad stuff that came
along with those monster blasts of a few years back. It would be years later before all that mess
was said illegally and yes like today even all those decades ago stuff turned into a total
morass in the court system. Now perhaps the most interesting thing involving Nitro methane in the
1963 time frame outside of Don Garlett's winning the first top fuel trophy in NHA history at that
year's Winter Nationals were more explosions. These though were absolutely planned and intentional.
They were insane but they were planned and they were part of the incredible plowshare project
overseen by the Atomic Energy Commission. Plowshare was a long-term project that was intended to
examine oh yes the possibility of using nuclear weapons for peacetime projects like the digging
of trenches, canals, small harbors and more. In the simplest of terms it was the idea of using
massive nuclear explosions to speed earth moving projects. Because even the most adventuresome
scientists didn't want to jump into the concept of firing off nukes underground from the start
another explosive method was needed that could be scaled, could be transported
and used in various locations. The chosen chemical was Nitro Methane. Plowshare had an
exceptionally massive long-term vision like dig a second Panama canal via nuclear explosions
massive vision. As we'll see plowshare and Nitro Methane were embarking on a long-term
wildly interesting destructive relationship together. The results of this particular explosive
test were astonishing. Car-sized boulders flying 400 feet in the Nevada desert air, a humongous crater
and an early understanding of what kind of earth could be moved by igniting a hundred
tons of Nitro Methane underground at once. The mushroom cloud rose to 3000 feet and the
200 feet wide and 55 feet deep. The size and shape of the hole created were far more significant
than the scientists originally believed it would be. It was in so many ways a grand success.
When we moved to the 1964 and 65 time frame there was a new narrative developing among drag
racers. It was always there and kind of lingering but for the most part through the 50s and expanding
into the 60s there weren't too many complaints about the cost of things. Yeah the fuel was expensive
but the volume used wasn't that big and the parts were getting a little more expensive to meet the
increasing horsepower but all of it was still pretty manageable. It was a hobby sport that was
taking a turn toward professionalism and all the goods and bads that are associated with that move.
Now there's no denying that as the performance spiraled up the cost began to accelerate at a
rapid rate. It can be argued that 1965 was among the first years that the sport went pro and in the
early term events like the March Meet with way over a hundred top fuel cars showing up
illustrated how much enthusiasm there was for Nitro Power Drag Racing and at that point in time
how accessible it was to virtually anybody who wanted to try it.
The price of Nitro Methane was holding relatively steady in the middle 60s
in that 4 to 450 per gallon range and the government decided to try out their plowshare
ideas in Idaho this time. Different soil type, different environment, same 100 tons of exploding
Nitro Methane fun. This explosion and volcanic rock was to see just how much different the effects
were to be as opposed to the Nevada desert test. A hole would be drilled 80 feet deep and at its
bottom an 18 foot diameter sphere would be mined out and filled with 100 tons of Nitro Methane
to be detonated. Yeah, it made a big boom. In popular racing culture Nitro is making its way
into advertisements for gasoline. Yet this ad for pure firebird racing gasoline specifically
calls out the fact that it is gasoline and not some witch's brew of Nitro Methane and other stuff.
At this time in history companies like Pure were competing with Sonoco 260 and other easily
accessible high octane fuels and winning on the racetrack was good especially if racers could win
with your gasoline without having to dump a witch's brew of other chemicals into it.
Through the middle 1960s Nitro Methane in the news was pretty standard,
stories on upcoming drag races, the occasional racer profile, the continued and seemingly
quickening drumbeat of the plowshare explosions. All of this was happening with a regular cadence and
there wasn't much in the way of alarm bells. The stories showed a healthy sport and the growing
power of the plowshare explosions made for impressive images. After learning what they could
using 100 tons of Nitro Methane, experiments in the mid to late 60s moved to 140 ton payloads
and that certainly made for bigger booms. Drivers and crew chiefs at the Indy 500 and around the
world continued to experiment with the fuel. Jim Clark, he was on Nitro. Andretti, all of them,
every one of the heroes at Indy were certainly using it. Speeds were rising as the horsepower and
tech of the cars kept pace and the drivers became more and more fearless. Tom McEwen mentioned that
he was now paying 550 a gallon for Nitro Methane in the later part of the 1960s. Now gasoline was
averaging 35 cents a gallon in the US at this time to give you just a little perspective on how
skewed the price was and always has been. Now sometime around 1969, the price of Nitro started
jumping. Nitro Methane was running about $7 a gallon by 1969 and with the fuel pumps on the
cars growing and the fuel systems becoming more advanced, not only was the price rising but the
truly felt before. Nitro was always expensive but it was a cost of just doing business. But this,
this was starting to cut into profits. The public couldn't get enough. It didn't matter where this
stuff was being burned, they were packing stadiums to see it. Drag strips on land,
blown fuel burning hydros on the water and even the skies as this story tells us about the legendary
Daryl Grenemeyer resetting the speed record for a piston powered aircraft at 483 miles per hour
using every trick in the book including Nitro Methane. Incidentally, Grenemeyer also ran a
top fuel dragster and was one of the great advanced test pilots of his age flying things like the F104
and most famously being a test pilot for the SR-71 Blackbird project. By 1970, fuel costs alone
over $20 a run and a good night of match racing would cost a guy over $100 just in fuel. Of course,
these numbers seem quaint but you have to put yourself back in this time period.
Some were claiming the astronomical figure of $100 per run all in. Events in the early 70s were
using the cost as a promotional tool and we can check this story out about the legendary
manufacturers meet that happened for the Nitro Funny Car categories in Southern California.
This particular story from 1971 brags on the fact that over $24,000 of Nitro fuel alone
would be used by competitors over the course of the race. All of these seemingly unrelated numbers
begin to add up to one thing. The era of the average guy running on the professional level
of drag racing were rapidly heading the way of the dodo bird. Track preparation was seriously
entering the picture as well. The engine parts are all specialized and getting more expensive by
the month and by 1972 nitrous oxide and nitromethane were playmates in Nitro Funny Cars and Fuel
Dragsters. Of course, not everyone was doing it but enough people were that it warranted
headlines when people were reporting on the races. This wasn't the first time nor the last
era in the sport where nitromethane and nitrous oxide would be used by racers in unison to go
faster. It's pretty interesting that it was common enough to lead the headlines in some of these
moments. This one comes from January of 1973 right before a perfect storm of international events
would turn nitromethane into a scarce resource by early 1974 and by then it was actually being
viewed as a fuel that could bring an end to professional drag racing as the world knew it
and had come to love it. Of course, the 1973 event in question was the OPEC oil embargo that was
triggered by the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The organization of Arab petroleum exporting countries
levied the embargo at countries that had provided support for Israel in that conflict. Countries
that experienced the total embargo were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and of course
the United States. The impact was massive on several fronts. None of them good. The price
of oil climbed some 300% and the country along with others suffered shortages, massive price
spikes and lines at the gas station that looked like something out of the movies. As the price
of gasoline spiked through the year, so did the cost of being a traveling racer. While nitromethane
wasn't immediately affected by the embargo, everything else hit the roof. As the embargo
dragged on through 1973, calls were made to restrict or even ban auto racing of all types in
the United States. Organizations like the NHRA shortened their events, reduced the number of
runs in qualifying and took steps to try to curtail as much gasoline usage as they could.
On the other side of things, the government was continuing to use nitromethane as an experimental
excavation explosive. A new program called Essex, which stood for effects of subsurface
explosions, was being championed by the Defense Nuclear Agency, the US Army Ballistics Laboratory
and the Lawrence Livermore Lab among others. Using 12.4 tons of nitromethane per blast,
the public facing reasoning for these tests was again to study what a subsurface nuclear explosion
could and would do in various areas and soil types. It was predicted to be a five-year program of
blasts in various locations around the country. And then it happened. The leadership of the
Indy 500 finally put the squash on nitro, making methanol the fuel of the race and more importantly,
drag racers began using public interviews to talk about ending the use of nitromethane
in their sport. Tom Mungus Mekuin was one of the prime examples of this. He had been openly
pushing for methanol to replace nitromethane all through the 1973 season as he watched people
being priced out of racing, left and right. But the real bombshell came in the form of two stories
that ran in Hot Rod Magazine in early of 1974. The first was an editorial by Terry Cook that
advocated banning nitromethane from drag racing to take the cost burden of the fuel off the racers
as well as reduce the attrition of blown-up engines and ruined parts. The second story
in the February issue is an actual poll of racers and industry figures to get answers on all sides
of this issue as to what they thought of a potential ban. Some of the quotes are very interesting.
Carl Olson, who would go on to become an NHA executive, wrote,
We can't afford to go racing now because of the costs. I think switching to alcohol would
reduce our overhead and provide better racing for the spectators. The legendary Richard Tharp,
a top fuel and funny car driver, said, I don't want the sport to go backwards and I think it
might if nitro were banned. I don't think it would be so much fun to drive an alcohol car
because it wouldn't shake and thunder like a nitro burner does. I think the spectators like
the noise and the awesomeness of funny cars. However, if every racer did it and there was no
cheating, it might really be a good thing. Don Pradoam, quote, if they want to kill drag racing,
banning nitro would accomplish this end. Nitro is a necessity for today's top fuel and funny
cars from a spectator show standpoint, end quote. Lastly, Ed McCullough, quote,
it's a fine idea as long as the track operators don't cut back on the bucks. If they plan to pay less,
you might as well leave things as they are now, end quote. Hot Rod, like all enthusiast publications
at this time, had thrown heavily into energy crisis stories, stuff about getting better mileage,
tips for saving fuel in any way possible, stretching mileage, etc. Every month there
were stories built around managing smog laws and keeping hot rodders engaged when it seemed like
the whole world was against them because it kind of was. Drag strips were closing, crowds were
shrinking, people were struggling to get by, not just in racing, but in general, and it looked
bleak because it was. Now it's here we enter the true critical part of our story, a five-year
stretch that tried to smother, strangle, and torture nitro drag racing out of existence.
As if the hot rod stories weren't enough, national calls to put an end to motorsports got
louder and louder as the embargo dragged on into 1974. Guys like Don Garlets were having to publicly
defend their own existence in newspapers around the country. The hot rod story itself became news
in papers from coast to coast. Running costs, which were a few dozen dollars a scant year before,
were now up to $300 per run according to champion level racers like Gary Beck. Fuel was now running
at some $9 a gallon where methanol was an actual fraction of that.
By the end of 1974, drag racers at the highest levels of the sport were not just talking about a
nitro ban, they were all but demanding it. At the 1974 NHA finals, the NHA asked every licensed
nitro driver there for an opinion on a ban of nitro. Following suit, SEMA then polled its members.
The AHRA and IHRA did the same thing. The results of these polls from various organizations were
brought to the 1974 SEMA show where unbelievably, Jim Tice of the AHRA, Larry Carrier of the IHRA,
and Wally Parks of the NHA met to discuss the issue and come to some sort of unified resolution.
Hot Rod Magazine was once again at the forefront of this issue with another editorial,
this one a stark, full-page piece outlining the reasons why this would make sense,
how it could help control cost, and then at the end, talking about a potential implementation timeline
and how the 1975 season was so close to happening, it didn't seem a feasible amount of room to allow
the racers to make the mechanical changes they would need to make, so because the 1975 season was
so close, perhaps this ban could be instituted on January 1st of 1976. The meeting at SEMA with the
then three most powerful men in drag racing resulted in one unified response. There would be no ban,
at least for 1975. The Indianapolis crowd kept their nitro paranoia streak alive in April of
75 when A.J. Foyte's former head mechanic, George Bignotti, went on a rant about Foyte continuing
to use nitro and hiding it in his cars to win races. Bignotti made the oddly specific claim
in this story that Foyte was hiding the fuel in a fire extinguisher that was plumbed into the fuel
system. Bignotti threatened to lodge a protest with USAC at the 500, but it seemingly never happened.
Drag racers like Twig Ziggler and Don Pradome were vociferous in their defensive nitro.
The direction of drag racing and how banning it may save some money, but would set the sport back
and do it no favors. Pradome admitted that the sport was out of reach of 90 percent of small
time racers, but he said those guys just simply wouldn't admit it to themselves. January 1st
of 1976 came and went with no action on the nitro front. Tom McEwen was still leading the charge
for cost controls, lamenting the rocket-like trajectory of spending to compete at the sport's
highest levels, and by May of 1976, a drum of nitromethane had crested $500.
The NHRA was starting to see declines in participation in the nitro categories and
were sending explainers to the media as to why people were voluntarily switching to alcohol
categories to compete. Check out the numbers in this report. The stories through 1977 and 1978
carried the same familiar refrain. Fewer cars, fewer dollars for tracks to spend, machines that
were increasing in performance to the point they could outrun everything but their own budgetary
needs and more. Yes, the premier names were still earning significant sums of money, but the idea
of a competitive regular guy team outside of local or regional level action was all but a fantasy
anymore. By the middle of 1978, Don Garlets was stating his fuel costs at $150 per run
and total costs per run of $500. This at a time in American history where the average American
worker was earning $205 per week according to the government statistics of the time.
Garlets made those remarks in July of 1978 about four months before the strike of 37,000 workers
at Iran's nationalized oil refineries that started what would become the Iranian Revolution
and the second fuel crisis of the 1970s was set into motion. Back were the lines, the spiking
prices, the rationing in some states and the general public unease at a seeming repeat level
of what had happened just six years before. The same chorus erupted, ban auto racing. Racers
were now spending $600 a drum in February of 1979 and a few short months later from that point,
they'd look back at $600 with fond memories and wistful sadness. 1979 was the peak year of
nitro crisis and if you've never heard about it before, prepare to have your mind blown.
By March, the price was closing in on $700 per barrel and it was projected to be $800
per barrel by April. With the first round loser money of $1000 at national events,
qualifying for the show was enough for the true threadbare teams to break even,
but the traveling professionals would take a massive financial bath if they lost before
the semifinals and it was only going to get worse. Projections were now saying that by mid-season
fuel could cost $1000 a barrel or more. And all of a sudden, there was a larger problem,
you couldn't find the stuff. It wasn't that a production plant blew up or because of one specific
issue, but there was a legitimate nitro methane shortage in 1979. Now there are some competing
reasons here. Some say that there was some sort of a government ban on 2-dash nitro propane,
which I can't find evidence for, but nitro propane is part of the process of producing
nitro methane, so if that product was banned by the government for use, it would have restricted
the amount of production that was being made out of the various and only small number of plants
that were existing in the United States at that time. More likely is the fact that supply chain
issues, availability of raw materials and even profit margin for production by producers was
all part of the overall issue of volume. By the late spring, the word extinct was being used in
newspaper stories around the country that spoke about nitro fuel drag racing. In this revealing
April story, prices of $1000 to $1200 per drum are thrown out easily. Reps from the AHRA and the
NHRA are quoted and it's said that the NHRA was sending people to meet with CSC, the only producer
of nitro methane in the United States. In fact, I spoke to one of the NHRA men that went to that
meeting with CSC. Steve Gibbs and Carl Olson traveled to Chicago to meet with executives of
the company and plead their case for the sport of drag racing and its nitro methane needs.
While the company lent a sympathetic ear, as you'll see, there was no immediate action made by
CSC to cure the problem. Now in this same story, Jim Tice from the AHRA goes so far as to say that
the sport could actually withstand $1200 a barrel in 1979, but if the price got to $2000 a barrel,
that would be too much. Understand this, at $1200 per barrel, the modern equivalent of over $5300
today, teams were shelling out the money to keep their cars running. Now the teams in the world
of professional drag racing in 2025 and the world of the NHRA pay about $1500 per drum for the stuff
more than four decades later. So that gives you some perspective on just how bad,
financially and volume wise, this situation was. Now there's another familiar name in this particular
story. His name is Joe Antonelli, a fuel altered racer from Arizona. If you're a drag racing fan,
the Antonelli name may ring a bell because his son Dean, known as Guido in the NHRA tour,
is one of the best nitro funny car crew chiefs of all time. It ran in the family.
In Joe Antonelli, supporting his family was scraping together any money he could get
to buy just enough fuel to make runs in his fuel alter. As you may already understand,
Canadian tracks and racers had it even worse with prices of $30 a gallon and a rapidly
diminishing supply of not only fuel, but competitors willing to run it. In fact,
one of the larger race promoters in Calgary admitted that he was openly lobbying for nitro
to be banned to put an end to this issue once and for all. It really is incredible to understand
that this stuff, which was 600 bucks a drum to start the season, was now $1,500 and it was only May.
And check this story out. Tom Hoover was running a match race at Michigan. He had so little nitro,
he and his opponent skipped the final round to save fuel. His booking agent said that Hoover
had as much or more fuel than any other funny car team in the country. One drum. Simon Menzies of
Texas drove all the way to Chicago for half a barrel and the most stunning thing of all
is the NHA being mentioned as the source of this information saying that the entire national
distribution of nitro methane for the month of March 1979 was to be 60 barrels total across the
country. Was this season really going to be the end of nitro drag racing and would they even finish
it? The answer is of course that they would, but this was a sport that was on the rocks in so many
ways. The 70s were a brutal decade on drag racing as a whole and the 1979 season was the culmination
of it all. The Vietnam War had sapped the strength of the sport's youthful fan base and participant
base. Inflation had been crushing the spending power of racers and fans for years, keeping them
at home. The 1973 and 79 fuel nightmares have been disastrous for both local and nationally
touring pros. Tracks were closing with a speed that is still, in historical context, unmatched
and now the country is going to simply run dry of nitro methane for the competitors to use.
No one was immune. Gary Beck cut a 40-ray season down to 10 events because of fuel cost.
Bob Bartell, the legendary promoter at Cordova Dragway, in this news story talks about how match
racing funny car competitors have priced themselves out of smaller tracks, how nitro propane and its
apparent government ban have thrown things into turmoil and that CSE is requiring minimum purchases
of five barrels at a time which carried such a high price tag that only the truly wealthy
racers could dream to afford it. Once again, we see the word extinct being used in the headline.
This was August of 1979. Now we know that nitro powered drag racing survived this most tenuous
of moments. The last few months of the 79 season were a study in the strength of the fiber of the
sport. Those that had fuel and no means to travel about to use it made sure it ended up with the
guys who needed it. Herculane runs were made across huge distances just to get a drum here or
there, a partial drum, or simply enough stuff to finish the weekend. One of the greatest
crew chiefs in NHRA history during the surreal for all the wrong reasons 2020 season once looked me
square in the eye and said, quote, you do realize that drag racing is the cockroach of motorsports.
It's pretty much unkillable. End quote. My immediate reaction was to refute everything
he was saying until I turn and scan the pits to see hundreds upon hundreds of race cars
lined up loaded up and ready to do battle on a racetrack with not a single fan in the stands.
I couldn't argue with him then and after reviewing all the tumult,
squeeze and downright depressing conditions of sport weathered in the 1970s, why would I?
The situation for nitro drag racing is now different, but not really a ton better than
it was during the 60s and 70s. There is still one supplier of the fuel in the sport,
but instead of the domestic factory in Louisiana that is still making this stuff as I make this video,
the supplier now is the country of China, where the entirety of the nitro burn for
drag racing comes from and yes, there have been shortages there too, most notably in the 2008
timeframe and then of course following the madness of 2020, but neither of those compare
to even the smallest margin when set side by side against the 1970s nitro methane problems.
It does raise an interesting question though, what if that meeting at SEMA between Carrier,
Parks and Tice had resulted in all three organizations ending the use of nitro as a fuel in their
premier classes? In my opinion, the law of unintentional consequences would have taken
over almost instantly and the path is easy to see. Racers would have first gone for the low
hanging fruit, their cars would have immediately gotten lighter by any means necessary. Lots more
exotic metals, lots more experimental chassis. Turbo charging would have been the thing very
quickly. In fact, guys like John Anderson of Northern California were already on this idea
in the middle 70s, he built a turbo charged alcohol burning big block Chevy to compete in
top fuel. Well unsuccessful in that regard, it was a fraction of the price to operate than a
traditional top fuel dragster. Now this would not have been the case for very long. As drag racers
have done since the dawn of time, they'd figure out how to spend as much money on this program
as they were on nitro methane, the stuff they were trying to get rid of to save money. It would
no longer be about the cost of the fuel, but the exotic of the parts to chase more and more power,
less and less weight, and to re-achieve the performance levels they gave up when they ditch
nitro methane is what they all would be going for. John Anderson was on an alternative path that
seemed like it was going to be the move of the future, but in reality was sidelined when nitro
methane wasn't shunned by any organization. It was an interesting but orphaned idea at the time.
And then there's the question of the fans. Would the diehard drag racing public still come to
drag strips to see their heroes running a bunch of cars that were slower, muffled by turbo chargers,
didn't make their eyes water or the ground shake? As good as a blown alcohol burning engine sounds,
and it does sound good, it is not the same auditory realm as something on nitro. Adding the
turbos into the mix and the whole idea of literally feeling the sound of the car through your body
is completely gone. It seems delusional to believe that this would not have harmed the gate receipts
it tracks and the sport as a whole. I have to believe that all three drag racing heads of
state didn't agree on a whole lot, but did agree on one point. If the sport ran out of fuel, they
at least went down swinging. If they preemptively ended the use of the most major spectator draw
element of the activity, it was likely a form of professional self-harm that could eventually
squash them all. Then there's this last element to consider. There is no way that these guys trusted
each other enough to believe they'd all stick with the program. In my alternative history,
Tice would be the first to allow a little nitro back into his shows, and before long,
all three of them would have been right back to where they started, acrimoniously. Even if they
had agreed to this self-imposed ban, there is no way it would have worked and no way it would have
stuck. The survival of nitro-powered drag racing through the bedlam, challenges, and downright
hostile environment of the 70s is one of my favorite drag racing stories. It showed incredible
resilience, the desire of racers, the ability to not just set logic aside for passion, but to
send logic adrift into the middle of the sea, going so far off course never to be seen or
considered again. Without that mentality and drive, the sport of drag racing would look
feel and certainly sound different today. Nitro cars still rule the roots for putting people
in the seats of drag strips across the country, and the challenges of operating them at a high
level today are rooted in the battles fought by the racers of the 70s. Much like they survived,
racers today are doing the same. In the next installment of this series, we'll look at how
nitro drag racing not only survived, but thrived through the 1980s and beyond, how the technology
of the cars was better able to handle and unlock while unleashing the power of nitro methane,
and how nitro factored into the Cold War, American pop culture, and a whole lot more.
I'm Brian Loans, thanks for watching, and remember, knowledge is horsepower. Like and
subscribe for more content that explores the history of racing, machines, people, and events,
like none other. See you next time!
About this episode
Nitromethane’s “incredible history” in American auto racing sets the stage for a 1970s story of fuel politics, rising costs, and repeated attempts to restrict the substance. From early moratoriums to mid-60s pricing and then late-60s shocks, the episode tracks how the OPEC oil embargo and NHRA rule changes squeezed drag racing. By 1979, a “legitimate nitro methane shortage” and tiny national distribution nearly ended the sport—yet teams kept racing, like “the cockroach of motorsports.”
Incredibly, nitro powered drag racing nearly didn't survive the 1970s. It is a story often lost to modern history but it's a harrowing tale of shortages, price escalation, racer intervention, and the survival instincts of racers in Top Fuel and Nitro Funny Car.
In this podcast we examine the tumultuous decade that saw performances escalate, star power grow, and in the end, the sport brought to its very knees as its most famous lifeblood was nearly stolen from it.
Would you believe that many racers were advocating for its end in drag racing? They were and the proof is in here.
Drag racing history isn't all about the records set on the track, it's often about the survival of its cars, of its venues, and of its fuel off of it.
