Al Segrini held his own as a nitro racer, posting five NHRA national event wins in nine final rounds and one in IHRA competition. When you pulled to the starting line to race, you weren't exactly enthused to see the popular driver in the other lane, and it had as much to do with him being a popular racer as it did that sometimes bad stuff happened to you in your lane.

Weird stuff usually happened to racers when Segrini was in the opposite lane.

Just to think, it all started in 1974 when Segrini lined up against his hero Jim Liberman for the Summernational final round. 

"My heart was beating a million miles an hour; I was racing my hero 'Jungle Jim," Segrini recalled. "He's over in the other lane doing a wheelstand, and I'm smoking the tires. I wouldn't lift. He wouldn't lift. Finally, he set the front wheel down, and I squeaked out the win."

Drag racing legend and three-time NHRA champion Raymond Beadle could have only hoped for the Jungle Jim scenario. In 1982, Beadle had one of the more iconic Funny Car crashes when his Ford EXP Funny Car shook the tires, then dug in, and when he overcorrected, the car rolled on its roof. 

Only when Segrini got to the other end of his first-round victory at the 1982 NHRA Gatornationals did the then Faberge Brut-sponsored driver realize what had happened. 

It was a friendly rivalry between Segrini and Beadle that led to the mishap.

"Raymond being the world-championship driver that he was, was back in the early days we ran IHRA and NHRA, Beadle was sponsored by English Leather, and Brut sponsored me. So naturally, we paired up against each other," Segrini recalled. "He wanted to beat us. The English Leather beat the Brut car. So he tried hard, and I tried hard and we kind of matched up quite a bit. 

"At IHRA qualifying, it seemed that we always hooked up against each other, and I kept kind of being a needle in his ass, whipping him qualifying. And every time he runs. So we came into the Gators. So we got him first round again, and we go out there, and luckily, I was fortunate enough to leave on Raymond, and he hung in there a little too long, and it shook pretty bad and got himself crooked, and he overdrove it and put it on its roof.

"Naturally, he wanted to beat me. I wanted to beat him. And back in the day, they shook so bad; they did crazy things, so you can get in trouble real easy with him. So, you know, I could see his point there. We laughed about it afterward, and luckily he didn't get hurt, and he put on a better show than I did by winning by standing up, and the crowd cheered. And that was Raymond Beadle stealing the spotlight from me."

Segrini had a front-row seat for Mike Dunn's engine explosion at the 1983 NHRA World Finals, where the engine came out of the car after the body on the Roland Leong Hawaiian Punch Funny Car had disintegrated the body. 

"So we were running, we were qualifying, and we both ran 6.01to 6.01, but I had left on him, and I never seen him at all," Segrini recalled. "And I put the chutes out, and I get down the other end, and I see all this commotion going on, and it was him. That's when he put the engine up on the fuel tank, and the thing flipped over in Roland's car in Orange County. That was a nasty one."

The so-called Segrini jinx wasn't limited to the NHRA tour. Segrini was running against veteran driver Paul Smith the following season when he had a bad accident in Bristol. The dog leg bit Smith as he struggled to stop his Funny Car amid a savage fire. 

"I put the chute out, and all of a sudden, boom, a blur on my left vision. I see Paul's car come by me hauling ass," Segrini said. "And I looked at the chute packs, and they both packed. They never even came out. Well, Bristol used to have that turn. Well, he didn't go to the turn. He went into the woods, and it opened up. The trees let him in. 

"And so I got the car stopped and got out through the roof hatch to see if my buddy was okay. And he comes crawling out on his hands and knees; the little red helmet comes out there. "You all right?" "Yeah, I'm all right, but there's a fireball back there chasing me through the jungle." 

Segrini paused and laughed a bit. 

"Now I've seen some horrendous accidents, and knock on what I never hit anything other than, well, the time the sparks hit me from the clutch at Pomona," Segrini continued. "I never really hit anything solid. So I was fortunate. So I told Paul, after an hour later, he's looking to buy another car. I told him, 'Man, I'd be down at the GM store trying to get signed-on to put bumpers on. 

"My career would be over if I took those rides."

The driver who had the most thrilling ride with Segrini in the other lane? Kenny Bernstein was the man. 

"I was pretty fortunate to get a first-eye view when Kenny Bernstein broke the 300 mile an hour barrier because I was in Billy Lynch's dragster in the other lane, and we struck the tires," Segrini said. "So I got a good view of that one."