May 27, 2026 · 36 min · 12 segments
Incredibly, nitro powered drag racing nearly didn't survive the 1970s. It is a story often lost to modern history but it's a harrowing tale of shortages, price escalation, racer intervention, and the…
Brian LohnesHost
While the NHRA placed a moratorium on the use of nitromethane at their national meets in 1957, and it was still a fact into the early 60s as it would be until the 1963 Winter Nationals, it truly was more symbolic than anything.
Other sanctioning bodies like the AHRA and ATAA allowed the fuel, and because of that, when we pick up this story in 1961, the drag racing season was rolling... and nitromethane was flowing through its veins.
Now, interestingly, by 61, any talk of banning the use of nitromethane at the Indy 500, which I did heavily document in the first installment of this series, had largely faded away.
It's fair to say that by this time, the majority of teams were adding some percentage of the good stuff into their fuel mix, especially in qualifying.
Apparently, A.J. Foyd actually ran it during the race, which helped him win the 1961 Indy 500, and it was an interesting part of the story because most teams only admitted to tipping the can during qualifying to make their best starting spot and use that short burst of power in the track time they had.
They often didn't use it during the long and tortured running of the actual 500-mile race.
It was a practice that, as we'll find out, was viewed by many as a trademark of SuperTex's approach.
The headlines that Nitro found itself in through 1962 and early 1963 were exactly what you'd expect.
Race cars of increasingly ferocious performance being aided by this magical fuel.
Some legends were running 180 plus miles per hour and others relatively unknown but claiming 190 plus were either in the cards or in the books.
Collectively racers got smarter at using nitro in larger and more potent percentages and with larger and more potent fuel volumes employed as the technology developed as well as better and better engine parts to support the additional horsepower.
As much stuff as the pioneering fuel racers broke, the engineers behind the scenes were there to develop solutions.
I say amazingly because inflation calculators placed that same $4 in 1962 at about $42 today.
Now, if you remember from the first video, the nitro rail car explosions of 1958, they actually popped back into the headlines in 1962 and 1963.
Lawsuits four and five years in the making were finally filed seeking compensation for damaged property, lives lost, injuries, and all the other bad stuff that came along with those monster blasts of a few years back.
And yes, like today, even all those decades ago, stuff turned into a total morass in the court system.
Now, perhaps the most interesting thing involving nitromethane in the 1963 time frame, outside of Don Garlitz winning the first top fuel trophy in NHRA history at that year's Winter Nationals, were more explosions.
While the NHRA placed a moratorium on the use of nitromethane at their national meets in 1957, and it was still a fact into the early 60s as it would be until the 1963 Winter Nationals, it truly was more symbolic than anything.
Other sanctioning bodies like the AHRA and ATAA allowed the fuel, and because of that, when we pick up this story in 1961, the drag racing season was rolling... and nitromethane was flowing through its veins.
Now, interestingly, by 61, any talk of banning the use of nitromethane at the Indy 500, which I did heavily document in the first installment of this series, had largely faded away.
It's fair to say that by this time, the majority of teams were adding some percentage of the good stuff into their fuel mix, especially in qualifying.
Apparently, A.J. Foyd actually ran it during the race, which helped him win the 1961 Indy 500, and it was an interesting part of the story because most teams only admitted to tipping the can during qualifying to make their best starting spot and use that short burst of power in the track time they had.
They often didn't use it during the long and tortured running of the actual 500-mile race.
It was a practice that, as we'll find out, was viewed by many as a trademark of SuperTex's approach.
The headlines that Nitro found itself in through 1962 and early 1963 were exactly what you'd expect.
Race cars of increasingly ferocious performance being aided by this magical fuel.
Some legends were running 180 plus miles per hour and others relatively unknown but claiming 190 plus were either in the cards or in the books.
Collectively racers got smarter at using nitro in larger and more potent percentages and with larger and more potent fuel volumes employed as the technology developed as well as better and better engine parts to support the additional horsepower.
As much stuff as the pioneering fuel racers broke, the engineers behind the scenes were there to develop solutions.
I say amazingly because inflation calculators placed that same $4 in 1962 at about $42 today.
Now, if you remember from the first video, the nitro rail car explosions of 1958, they actually popped back into the headlines in 1962 and 1963.
Lawsuits four and five years in the making were finally filed seeking compensation for damaged property, lives lost, injuries, and all the other bad stuff that came along with those monster blasts of a few years back.
And yes, like today, even all those decades ago, stuff turned into a total morass in the court system.
Now, perhaps the most interesting thing involving nitromethane in the 1963 time frame, outside of Don Garlitz winning the first top fuel trophy in NHRA history at that year's Winter Nationals, were more explosions.
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