David Ray

The Life of a Funny Car Driver

Chapter Four - 1972

This will be a short chapter. After several ride-deals fell through, I struck a deal with Jess Tyree to race his '71 Firebird, back east for 1972. Let me start by saying that Jess Tyree is one of the nicest and generous guys, there are in drag racing. It's great to see he is still out there at CHHR doing his thing.

From a performance/win standpoint this year was a downer. Two reasons, an seriously outdated car/chassis and money. This car was built at the end of 1970 before it became apparent that the CrowerGlide was the future. We spent a month at Pete Bagnard's shop updating the chassis, where possible, before going back east, including installing a glide and Lenco two speed. But the Chevy motor had seen its day, as far as being a reasonable power plant in the funny car wars.

I ran about 30 dates that year, mostly open shows requiring qualifying. With a non-competitive car, it was difficult to make any money. But when you only have lemons, the best you can do is make lemonade. The performance of this car was in the 6.80 range on a good day.

The last race I attended was the PRA (Gartlits) race at Tulsa OK

One good thing resulted from this race was, that picture was used in a national magazine on a full page race advertisement

A Special Thank's to David Ray for this story
All photos courtsey of David Ray

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