Todd, you're not far off. Being an old Minnesota Dragways punk myself, the GSTA car was a regular there. GSTA stands for Gopher State Timing Association, a local car club. Anyhoo, the story goes that a few of the guys that developed the car saw it on a drag boat (to help prevent water getting sucked into the blower) and they thought it looked cool so they tried on the dragster. They found it didn't really hamper the performance and since it was unique, stuck with it. Most of the cars they ran over the years had this characteristic.