holley hotrod reunion

[scubasteve]

had a great time , nothing like hearing big macs voice coming from the track pa system, hey big mac the incident wth ivos car running into large fathers car( during cacklefest) showed the old man still has plenty of fire in him huh! loved the newspaper article where garlits said back in the beginning we didnt get out of cars and plug sponsors etc etc if we felt the guy hung us out on the line or whatever we went over and knocked his block off. vintage garlits. cant wait till next yr.

 

[PJ]

that was a crazy incident. and WOW was garlits hot afterwards. I didn't see hi damage but he said it was pretty messed up. The Ivo car was banged up pretty good

 

[kingcobrafan]

Details, anyone?

 

[PJ]

During the cacklefest they lined up the gasser and nitro cars with starters up near the start.

The had the old school push start dragsters at the finish line. The idea was once they parked cars were started they would start push starting the others, once started their push vehicle would just follow as the dragster drove up the track then down the return road and stop in front of those bleachers.

Once Garlits was started his push car drove past him(the only push car to do so) The car behind him was an Tommy Ivo remake, although he was not driving that one, he was in a different one of his cars. Anyway the push car was traveling way to fast. Once it finally let go the dragster was hauling. I'm not sure if the driver could see over his engine at garlits or not, without Garlits tow vehicle there he may not have. It looked like he started to go towards the middle of the track, then saw that he was closing fast on the lane on parked cars, ducked back in slightly and then rammed into the back of Garlits. Garlits kept going.

I wasn't able to get to Garlits cars afterwards but did hear him complaining about the damage and how bad it was. The Ivo car smashed in the front cone, and bent most of the steering and control bars. Garlits was walking around fine afterwards and I don't believe the other driver was hurt so thats good.

 

[kingcobrafan]

Thanks, PJ. Going to the CHRR?

 

[Keith Burgan]

PJ,
actuallyTommy was driving Guy's car as they had motor problems with Ron Johnson's Barnstormer repop and had to change plans. George Schrieber aka the "Bushmaster" had failed to attend the pre cacklefest briefing and he was the root cause of the problem when he drove around Garlits' car before they got to the end of the strip as Ivo could not see around the blower on his car. He assumed that Big was still ahead of the Dodge push truck and that he had a clear track. In addition Guy's car did not light (even with the clutch pedal out the motor did not turn over) and Ivo was trying to maintain speed to get off the track. I helped push the car off the track after the incident and Tommy was very upset about damaging what is an absloutely beautiful car. In a subsequent post on another board Ivo has said that he plans to send a "ticking" package to the Bushmaster.

Roo