It’s been six long years since Dale Armstrong hung up his wrenches, and frankly, we never thought we’d see the day that the man who helped guide Kenny Bernstein to the sport’s first 300 MPH clocking (with some important help from Ray Alley and Wes Cerny, we might add) would return trackside, but he’s back in action with Funny Car driver Jerry Tolliver.          
Armstrong’s list of quarter mile accomplishments is more than impressive,  it’s legendary.  Along with having guided Bernstein to all of those NHRA championships, he was also the winner of the prestigious Ollie Award as part of the All-Star Drag Racing Team program that was once sponsored by  Car Craft Magazine.  The award is emblematic of one’s career-long contributions to the sport, with other winners including the likes of Don Garlits, Mickey Thompson, Wally Parks and Don Prudhomme, to name just a few of them.

When Armstrong decided to call it a day few thought he’d ever return to action, but when he got the call from Tolliver he just couldn’t resist giving it one more shot.

We caught up with Armstrong in the Rockstar pits for a little conversation.

DALE ARMSTRONG’S BACK, AND HE’S READY TO MAKE TOLLIVER A ROCKSTAR!

 

       
It’s been six long years since Dale Armstrong hung up his wrenches, and frankly, we never thought we’d see the day that the man who helped guide Kenny Bernstein to the sport’s first 300 MPH clocking (with some important help from Ray Alley and Wes Cerny, we might add) would return trackside, but he’s back in action with Funny Car driver Jerry Tolliver.          
Armstrong’s list of quarter mile accomplishments is more than impressive,  it’s legendary.  Along with having guided Bernstein to all of those NHRA championships, he was also the winner of the prestigious Ollie Award as part of the All-Star Drag Racing Team program that was once sponsored by  Car Craft Magazine.  The award is emblematic of one’s career-long contributions to the sport, with other winners including the likes of Don Garlits, Mickey Thompson, Wally Parks and Don Prudhomme, to name just a few of them.

 

When Armstrong decided to call it a day few thought he’d ever return to action, but when he got the call from Tolliver he just couldn’t resist giving it one more shot.

We caught up with Armstrong in the Rockstar pits for a little conversation.

 

COMPPLUS:  Welcome back!  First of all, you’re not going to do this full time, are you?

ARMSTRONG:  Yes, that’s the plan.  First of all, jerry’s a good friend of mine, and we live close together down there in Temecula (California).  He was in a bind, and had this sponsorship going and needed somebody, so I said I’ll get out there and help you until we get it up and going, and we’ll take it from there.

 

COMPPLUS:  When you say “We’ll take it from there,” does that mean there’s a possibility that you could end up going on the road with him?

ARMSTRONG:  Well, I will go on the road with him, at least initially.  Beyond that point, all I can really tell you is, truthfully, I don’t know.

 

COMPPLUS:  How do you feel about where you re now in terms of the tune-up?  Do you feel you’re behind, or are you current?

ARMSTRONG:  The thing that made me even consider (coming back) was that Jerry has a close association with Alan Johnson through the Toyota deal.  Alan really has the Toyota thing, still.  And then they had Jerry running the deal, getting the bodies built and then finding people to run ‘em and so forth, so they’ve had a really good association for the last five or six years.  That was part of the enticement for me to come back, this association with Alan.  Basically, he gve us the complete starting tune-up.  He was just here, helping me with it, and he’s a pretty good guy to be working with.  A good “starter kit,” huh?

To come out and start from scratch after six year, no, I wouldn’t have even considered it.

 

COMPPLUS:  Let’s talk about the six year absence.  How much have things changed from where you were then?

ARMSTRONG:  There’s just been tremendous strides since then.  Even though it’s back to 85% (nitro) there’s equipment out there that wasn’t available when I was here before, which actually makes it much nicer.  When (NHRA) allowed the teams to go to the electronic controls, it’s so much superior to the old air valves, the air timers.  You’d sit down and it might take you a half hour to set those air timers, and you’d go back and forth because one would affect the other.  Now you can just dive in there in staging lanes and change the clutch timers and the fuel timers just like working a cell phone!  Plus there’s other things that have been made, like Alan has made a little thing with the fuel system that gives the engine a better shot of fuel (at the throttle hit).  There have been a number of things that have made things easier.

 

COMPPLUS:  Are these changes enough to fascinate you to the point of wanting to be back out here full time where you might come up with the kind of innovative things you did in the past?

ARMSTRONG:  You know, the door’s largely been shut on innovation compared to a few years ago.  NHRA went overboard, in my opinion.  When they start designating things like where the rocker shafts can be and things like that, that’s overboard, that’s saying no innovation at all.  They say it’s to save costs, but if you’re going to save costs in these classes you’re not going to do it in areas like the rocker shafts and stands.  If you’re goig to do that you’ve got to really get after it, and work on safety things, too.

 

COMPPLUS:  If there was going to b an effort made to slow these cars down from 335 MPH speeds, what do you think is the best way of approaching that?

ARMSTRONG:  I’ve said it for the last 10 years, and I presented it to NHRA, but when they presented it to the racers, they shot it down.  All you’ve got to do is control two things, the compression ratio and blower overdrive.  If you control those two things and you ask any racer out here, What would you do? Well, they’d put more (ignition) lead in it.  Well, sure you would, until you got to the point where you were burning plugs out of it.  Other guys might say they’d lean out the engine, well, you can’t do that because the power’s in the fuel.  If you did those things the sharp guys would still be the winners because they’d work on camshaft designs, or they’d work on cylinder heads.  It would turn more Pro Stock-ish, it would get more technical, but let me emphasize a couple of things.  I don’t like to say slow the cars down.  My point of taking energy away from these cars is to make things be in a safer condition when the car crosses the finish line.

All the damage that’s done, all the stress that’s put in these tires is put in in the first eighth mile.  If you take energy out of these cars you’d be giving us a little safety margin with the tires.  Right now there’s none.  Right now it’s like laying Russian Roulette with these tires.  It scares me to death to stand on that starting line, knowing what’s just happened (to Eric Medlen).  My ides is to just take a little stress out of the whole car.  So what if it runs high 4.70s, 4.80s and 316, 318?  That’s what the cars were running in Houston and I didn’t hear anybody complaining.

 

COMPPLUS:  Do you think the fans care about 330 MPH speeds, or would they rather see side-by-side racing?

ARMSTRONG:  I think it’s one of those things where initially you’d get some disgruntled fans.  There might be some fans who’d say, I remember when these guys were running 335, and now they’re only running 318, but I think they’d get over it, like they did in NASCAR.  Remember, they used to go around Daytona at 212 MPH, and now they go around at 198, and I don’t hear anyone complaining.  I think they’d get over that as long as there was good racing, and that would make for better racing because I don’t think you’d have as much attrition. I guarantee you wouldn’t have as much attrition.  You wouldn’t has as much tire smoke, either.  I think it would be a better show.  That would even attack the costs of racing, it would bring things down a little bit.  All I see are upsides to the whole idea.

 

COMPPLUS:  Off the top of your head, how much more do you think it costs to run a car today than it did six years ago?

ARMSTRONG:  I have talked to a number of people out here, including Alan (Johnson), and the parts attrition has gone up tremendously, and that means a large increase in costs.

 

COMPPLUS:  Do you think part of that is traceable to going to 85% nitro?

ARMSTRONG:  Yes, because back when we proposed the compression ratio and blower overdrive rule we had a big conference call with guys from all over the country, and they were pretty much in favor of going to 90% at the time, because NHRA made it clear to everyone that there was going to b a change made.  It wasn’t up for discussion, there was going to be a change.  It was either going to be go to 90%, or do the compression thing, and the easiest thing to do was go to 90%, and every racer was thinking in the back of their heads, Which would be the easiest thing to do with my combination?  What’s to my advantage rather than thinking what should we do, and the easiest thing was to go to 90%.

I said during the conference call, I know what you guys are going to do.  You’re all going to kick up the compression and run the blower faster.  Taking the nitro away was like taking unleaded gasoline and adding 10% lead back to it.  What’s the first thing you’d do in that situation?  Well, you’d crank the compression back up.  By putting 10% methanol to the fuel it increases the octane, so you can squeeze it harder by going up on the compression.  When they went to 85% they just squeezed the engine harder, and really hurts a lot of parts.  NHRA finally stopped things at 50% over on the blower, but even that didn’t help.  All they’ve really done is raise the pressures inside these engines compared to when I was here six years.

If you run a Top Fuel dragster in the mid 4.50s and you come back after a run and you might have a couple of ring lands down or some squashed bearings, and you might have to put a couple of rods in the engine.  But, if you get into the mid to low 4.40s, you might as well plan on putting all eight rods and pistons in it because it won’t burn the pistons but it’ll crush the ring lands and spread the big end of the rods, and they’re junk (after one run).  I never saw that before.  And crankshaft life has gone down drastically, too.  The attrition is much higher from what I’ve seen so far.