Bob Thomas Writes

The Blue Beast was a 1966 Corvette Stingray. It produced about a gazillion horse power on a good day and it had a lot of good days!
In the early 1970’s I drove ‘The Beast’ for a couple of years on numerous quarter mile drag strips in Texas and Oklahoma. We almost always won. The Beast would hit about 113-117 M.P.H. in a quarter mile. Not fast by today’s standards, but not bad for a car that was being run as “pure” stock. Pure stock meant that there were no modifications made to the car…it was supposed to be basically show room original.
Actually, we may have modified it a little bit. The first engine was a ‘blueprinted’ race engine built by Chevrolet. The rear axle had been shortened and the wheel wells had been cut out and re-fiber glassed to clear the wide slick tires. Over the years it gradually became more and more dragster and less and less “car”!
The “Beast”, just sitting on it’s trailer, could draw a crowd of admirers. They would stare, caress, thump, feel and in general imagine themselves roaring down the strip.
I, on the other hand, would thump, kick, shake, pull and push on every part of the car. I didn’t want something to come loose at 100 plus M.P.H.! Truth was, I was afraid of the “Beast”! I had spent only about three hours driving the “Beast”, but it was comprised of 10-13 second trips at 113-120 M.P.H. After every run down the track I gave silent thanks for “someone” letting me live through it again!

As the admirers gathered around the car in the pits, I would sit behind the wheel, start and stop the engine, rush the motor and do other things the mechanic asked of me. I was the driver, and I knew nothing about the mechanics of the car. I knew that I had to ‘feather’ the accelerator to keep the wheels from spinning too much off the line…I knew that I had to shift gears just before the tachometer needle crossed the red line and blew the engine…I knew that the “Beast” had a natural inclination to head for the left side of the track…(I never knew why!)

(This was prior to the days of on board computers doing all the work! When drivers had to actually ‘drive’ the car.)

After two years of running the “Beast”, we ‘loaned’ it out to the owner’s brother to run for a while in New Mexico. It came back to us 18 months later with a blower sitting on the hoodless engine, spoked front ‘motorcycle’ wheels instead of the stock wheels and new suspension. The radiator was gone. The gas tank was gone and in it’s place was a little stainless steel 3 gallon tank. The battery was gone and in it’s place were two plugs on the back end of the car. The interior and the seats were gone and the drivers seat looked like a metal bucket with straps on it! It looked rather abused and mis-treated. Although it did develop several hundred more horse power, it didn’t like it very much! It seemed like the “Beast” than to run fast…it wanted to run crazy! The Beast had been modified so much, we couldn’t figure out what class she was supposed to be in! So, we decided to run her one more time and then dismantle her. Her engine would live on in a drag boat! The rest would be sold for whatever we get for her.
Bright and early on a Saturday Morning in September we trailered her out to the drag strip. It was closed, but the owner would let us run her to see if she was worth keeping around. Other cars were being worked on and run periodically through out the day , the safety crew was sitting on their truck ‘shooting the bull’. . . the announcer was talking to all of his friends through the track loudspeakers and the weather was great.

We rolled the “Beast” off of the trailer and the owner/mechanic and his brother started wrenching on it. Tighten this, fix that, adjust just a little bit over here, I sat in the car and looked at the various switches, knobs, valves and gauges.
Nothing looked the same as it did 18 months ago. Now there were knobs and switches that said things like, “Fire Extinguisher”, “Chutes”, “Fuel Off”, “Electric Off”, and several I didn’t understand.

Someone hollered, “start ‘er up”. As I reached for the switch, the brother suggested that I might want to put on the fire suit and mask before I hit the switch, because we were burning Nitro/Methan fuel now. I should have left right then! I donned the fire suit, face mask, helmet and gloves and hit the starter switch. The “Beast” roared as if it was being disemboweled with a spoon! The “Beast” was crazy with anger?…Pain?…whatever, it sounded like it was not about to be controlled by me, or anyone else!

After a few minutes of wrench work on the engine they motioned for me to shut it off…I did.
We hooked the “Beast” to a tow vehicle and pulled it into the shade. The brother started mixing fuel. . . nitro methane. He poured a little bit of ‘this’ and a little bit of ‘that’ into the tiny gas tank and declared that “She’s ready to Run!” We towed her to the starting line, plugged in the jumper cables and started her up. Each time I touched the accelerator, the “Beast” shot blue flame out of her exhaust…she trembled as I started to ‘burn her in’ . . . spin the wheels to make them hot and sticky. I punched the accelerator and ran the RPM’s up to about 3500. I lifted my foot on the clutch and the “Beast” jumped like she had been fired from a cannon! The car filled with tire smoke and nitro fumes. Long fingers of exhaust flame reached out for the sides of the track as the beast shot down the strip for about 75 feet before I could get my foot off of the pedal! I stopped and opened the door to let the smoke out as I backed up to the starting line. My stomach was doing the ‘Watusi’ behind my belt buckle and I thought my feet were going to just start running madly across the field, taking me with them! The “Beast” had scared me! Scared me bad! I knew that I had no control over this blue monster! The owner met me at the door and said, “Just get her down the track this time! ‘Bout 12 – 14 seconds”! Who did he think he was kidding? This monster was going to run twice as fast as I had ever driven it before! He was just as scared as I was! The only reason he let me drive in the first place was because he drove the car on a drag strip once! And declared he would never do it again! And that was way back when it was ‘slow’!

Since we were just ‘practicing’ the starter just waved his hand at me and said,”Whenever”! I sat there listening to the “Beast” snarl and growl at me. I knew this would be the last time I ever drove her. The “Beast” and I were going to go our own separate ways after today. I had a kid now, I had to think about him and be a responsible Father..

I brought the RPM’s up to 4000 and let it sit there for a second or two. I lifted my foot from the clutch and the “Beast” went to work! She slammed me down into the bucket seat with such force that I was startled, and for a moment, I was a passenger just along for the ride! I looked at the tachometer and saw it slide past 6800 RPM’s. I jerked the shifter into second gear at 7200 . . .200 over the redline. The “Beast” didn’t like to be wound too tight! She blew a snort of fire out her pipes and broke her tires loose from the pavement. . . traction took a vacation and turned me into an ‘uninvolved’ passenger! I quickly lifted my foot on the accelerator a little bit and the “Beast” got a grip on the ground again! I glanced at the tach and saw the needle headed for the redline again! The car was vibrating so much I couldn’t read the gages, but I could see the black needle slide onto the redline and I shifted. The end of the track was about 100 feet away when I noticed something odd. Really odd! My left front wheel was rolling along beside me! I was pretty sure it should be on the car because that’s where it was when I saw it last. The front end of “The Beast” was being held up by acceleration, G-force or whatever! But, I knew that it was going to come down when I lifted my foot off the gas pedal!

I quickly consider all of my options. I had none. So, I gradually let the “Beast” settle down. I eased my foot back and the nose of the car started dropping. It all happened in less than 3 seconds, but it took about three hours in my mind and every moment is vividly etched on my brain!

The Beast came to rest upside down in the end of the shut down area. I assessed the damage, unfastened my seat belts. (We got them from an F-104 Jet! Thank God!) And stood up and climbed out of the remains of the upside down car. I walked over to the grass and sat down to wait for the rescue crew to arrive.
They drove up and asked me if I was O.K., and then sprayed me down with fire extinguishers!
That’s the way I remember it.

But, witnesses to the event remember it differently.

They say that the car flipped end over end three times, lost it’s roof, slid on it’s top for about a hundred yards (with the top of my helmet hitting every expansion joint in the pavement!) And came to rest in a cloud of fire extinguisher dust! Somewhere in the process of crashing, I pulled the parachute release, turned off the nitro methane fuel valve, turned off the electrics and pulled the big brass ring on the fire extinguishers! Then, they tell me, the car came to a stop and sat for about 3 seconds… at which point I ‘sprung’ from the car, leaped over the upside down wreck, ran to the grass and fell down and rolled around. The crash crew arrived and asked me if I was O.K., I asked, “Am I on fire”?… they heard, “I’m on fire!” Nitro methane is ‘invisible’ when it burns.. no visible flames…so, they assumed I could feel myself burning and blasted me with the extinguishers. At which point I assumed I was on fire because they were blasting me with extinguishers!
I (in my memory) casually removed my fire suit and laid it on the ground. They claim that I ripped it off, along with my shorts and t-shirt and flung like it was live rattle snake! Once I had stripped down to my underwear and had another freezing blast of CO2 fire extinguisher, I was much more comfortable.

The car was in a number of pieces scattered over about a quarter mile. The left front wheel was never found. It’s believed to be the in the North Canadian River now. We sold the car for parts where it sat, took the motor back to the garage, and I retired from racing forever!

Three months later the owner of the car called me up and asked me to drive his all new drag boat!
It was powered by the 700 H.P. engine from the Corvette . . . sounded like fun to me!

A few weeks later I went ‘airborne’ in the boat at about 90 MPH. (The boat caught air under it, and left the water!) I was ejected by the driver’s parachute, which is a lot like being jerked out of a boat doing 90 MPH by a rope tied under your armpits!
The boat landed on it’s stern, sank and as I floated around in the lake I could hear the hot engine block cracking in the cold water. The boat was recovered, loaded on the trailer and hauled back to the garage. I didn’t go with it. I was retired!
Years later I challenged a kid to a race around the block on bikes. I fell down.
I’m totally retired now.