While only a few nitro racers who raced the old configuration of Bristol Dragway still compete in the NHRA Mission Series, and the cars might be as different as night and day between now and then, one aspect remains the same: Bristol is still an extremely challenging facility for tuners. 

Clay Millican crew chief Jim Oberhofer raced many dates at Thunder Valley with Connie Kalitta, the 1979 IHRA Pro Dragster world champion. 

“It’s a challenging place because you’re 1,500 feet above sea level, and you get some crazy air here sometimes,” Oberhofer said. “Usually the sun’s pretty intense, so that makes it tough as well. 

“I didn’t tune cars obviously, but I was with Kalitta in those days, and he always said that this place was a bit of a challenge to get hold of. A lot of it was the air and the sun, and you never knew what weather you were going to get, no matter what. So, it was something.”

If you found the right tuneup and your car made it to the finish line under power, then there was the curved shutdown area to deal with. Oberhofer’s co-crew chief Nicky Boninfante remembers those days very well working with his dad Nick Sr., on the Raybestos Funny Car driven by Richard Hartman.

“The shutdown area had a dog leg [curve] in it, and a lot of times when you ran down there, you couldn’t even see your car after the chutes came out,” Boninfante said. “So you didn’t know what happened. And one year I was here with my dad in 1990, and we had just left Baton Rouge, came here for an IHRA race. Pretty much had a good setup for this place. Went out, hit a few bumps, put some cylinders out, blew the engine up, couldn’t see the car after the shutdown area. 

“Got down there and it had crashed and burned to the ground. So, yeah, it’s a pretty tough place to race at.”