Courtesy Mike Griffith For the Californian  Images Phil Hutchison and Courtesy Competition Plus

After Day One at the The California Hot Rod Reunion featuring Nitro Revival and presented by Good Vibrations Motorsports, qualifying is underway with one more session scheduled for Saturday to set the fields for the finals. The following is an excerpt from the local Bakersfield.com .

To borrow a phrase from the “Blues Brothers” movie, Blake Bowser says this year’s edition of the NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion is about “putting the band back together.”

The event, which runs Friday through Sunday at Famoso Dragstrip, started in 1992 as primarily a reunion to celebrate the people and machines from the early days of hot rodding with a bit of racing tossed in as well.

It grew in popularity — both for racers and those interested in the history of the sport. Perhaps the most significant role of the reunion was the interest it built in restoring or recreating the cars of yesterday — primarily dragsters and altereds. Those cars could not race, but they could be started and became known as “cackle” cars due to the sound of the engines burning nitromethane fuel at idle.

Ten years ago, the event was bulging at the seams. Hundreds of race cars and 100-plus cackle cars.

Due to a variety of reasons, racers became fairly unhappy one year and then in 2016 the cackle side was fuming over rule changes implemented just as the event was getting under way.

The cackle cars pretty much ended up boycotting the event and eventually found their niche at Irwindale Speedway with the widely popular Nitro Revival in November.

But the damage was done and the reunion of just a couple of years ago was far from the event it was a dozen years ago.

With the demise of Irwindale Speedway last December, the Nitro Revival group needed a new playground. Enter Famoso, where Steve Gibbs started it all in 1992.

Nitro Revival Event Manager Cindy Gibbs, dad Steve Gibbs and Marge Gibbs were recognized by the NHRA for all they have done to make the event the success it has become 

Thus, the band is back together at the old playground.

Bowser took over promotion of the reunion from the NHRA last October and has been tasked with making it a success.

 

“When I took it over last year, it had a lot of pieces and parts that had fallen off and we’re trying to put it back together and get it going,” Bowser said. “We are slowly building it back to what it used to be. Adding the Nitro Revival as a feature to the reunion is certainly going to help us get there faster, that’s for sure.”

The race remains a primary focus. “It’s our finals, our World Championship for our type of racing,” Bowser said, but there will be a heavy emphasis on the revival.

There will be a revival tent and an entire row of the pits lined with about 75 of the cackle cars. And yes, at the end of racing on Saturday the Cacklefest returns as many of those cars will be push started (just like the old days) in front of the grandstands before turning onto the drag strip where they will idle, spewing flames into a darkening sky.

Don Garlits, who made the tow from Florida and competed in the inaugural March Meet in 1959 and later went on to five wins at Famoso, is attending the event as are Don Prudhomme and Ron Capps. All will be signing autographs at noon Saturday in the revival tent.

On the racing side, NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series Funny Cars, Top Fuel Dragsters and Fuel Altereds headline more than a dozen classes of competition and will be burning lots of nitro throughout the three-day show.

The Funny Cars will feature a 16-car field with 8-car fields for both Top Fuel and Fuel Altered. Bowser said the top four non-qualifiers in Top Fuel will have their own four-car shootout to add to the program.

NHRA Funny Car driver Cruz Pedregon, who competed in the 2016 March Meet, has updated his California Charger nostalgia Funny Car and is among the participants.

Bowser said the overall interest is on the rise this year with a larger vendor row and a big increase in swap meet sellers.

“I have to put on a race, but my job is to bring in a crowd to support the vendors, the concessionaires, the swap meet people,” Bowser said. “All those people depend on people coming through the gates.

“Plus, the revenue from this event supports the NHRA Motorsports Museum (in Pomona) and helps keep those doors open.”