Majors

[davey]

Now that there is The Countdown I don't consider anything before Indy major. Just kidding. That was for P.J.

 

[NHRADeuce]

Brent....

Snake? in flopper the eight of nine season?

d'kid

I figured Snake, Glidden, Shepherd, Force, WJ, GA, and Large Father were pretty good bets to win a grand slam. So I started looking and to my surprise here is what I found when using Gators, E-town, Indy, and the Finals as the big 4 -

When you include TF, FC, PS, PSM and PST when all 4 are run at the 4 "Majors" there have been 128 opportunities for a Grand Slam since 1974. Very surprisingly even with some insane years of total domination, it has only happened 4 times by 3 different drivers.

1991 - Darrell Alderman
1992 - WJ
1996 - Force
1993 - WJ

Quite a few drivers have come close winning 3/4 -
1976 - Snake 3/4 (no Indy)
1978 - Glidden 3/4 (no Gators)
1979 - Glidden 3/4 (no E-town)
1980 - Shepherd 3/4 (no Finals)
1985 - Bernstein 3/4 (no Indy)
1985 - Terry Vance 3/4 (no Gators)
1987 - Dave Schultz 3/4 (no Gators)
1989 - John Mafaro 3/4 (no Gators)
1990 - Ed McCulloch 3/4 (no E-town)
1990 - John Myers 3/4 (no Indy)
1993 - Force 3/4 (no Finals)
1995 - Dixon 3/4 (no Finals)
1998 - Matt Hines 3/4 (no E-town)
2003 - Anderson 3/4 (no Gators)
2004 - Schumacher 3/4 (no E-town)
2004 - Anderson 3/4 (no E-town)
2007 - Schumacher 3/4 (no E-town)

Interestingly enough, only 3 of the drivers who pulled off 3/4 had a chance to pull it off going in to the finals - Lee Shepherd '80, Force '93, and Dixon '95.

So winning an NHRA "Grand Slam" is actually a lot more rare than I thought, only occurring 3% of the time with no TF or PSM driver ever pulling it off. PS has had it done 3 times, which is pretty amazing when you consider that PS is arguably the hardest class to do it in.

Feel free to double check my work, I used Geiger's results history page to come up with the numbers. (Event Winners)