What race cars did you have then? What was the procession?
BM: A ’68 Motion Supercar Club Camaro in A/MP. It was a big-block car and a national record holder. Believe it or not a couple of months ago somebody sent me some pictures of the car as it is now. Guy lives out by you (Tampa). Then I had the Volkswagen. Then the Porsche. That was a 911 that I chopped and channeled and put the motor from the VW in it. It ran in Gas, the same class as the Volkswagen. The NHRA tech guys thought that the car was too low and that I couldn’t race it. That deal was short-lived anyway. The first time I ran that car I won Best Engineered with it. Then I broke my leg.
I remember the broken leg episode pretty well but not what happened after that.
BM: I got involved with (chassis builder) Ritchie Sullivan runnin’ the “Voodoo” BB/FC. Well, there was actually one car in between, a VW rear-engine dragster. NHRA came out with the index system and made my index so low I was breaking transmissions trying to run on the index. I built a rear-engine dragster with Chevy 12-bolt and a Chevy 4-speed transmission. I couldn’t break it. But it really wasn’t that competitive because I couldn’t pound that big of a drivetrain with that (little) engine.
What next?
BM: I scrapped that car and in the healing process with the broken leg, I ran an alcohol Funny Car with Sullivan. It was brief and the only blown 392 Chrysler in my experience. From that, I bought back my VW dragster, cut the back off it, and put a small-block Chevy in it for Comp Eliminator. Then there was the Corvette Funny Car. That ran Comp, too. I’m looking at my history by these pictures on my office wall.
Were you done racing yet?
BM: My first actual store-bought car was an SRD (Speed Research and Development, Malvern ,PA) Monza that I’d bought from Paul Blevins who’d run it in Pro Stock. I put a smaller motor in it and ran in E/Econo Altered. After that, I went back to the dragsters, a series of them in Comp Eliminator. I ran them all the way up until I decided to go circle track racing, which was 1982. A year earlier, I had a back injury and it had happened at the US Nationals. K&K Insurance paid all my medical bills but made me sign a release saying that I wouldn’t enter any NHRA competition for the next two years. I was supposed to be healing and all that.
But you didn’t quit racing did you, Billy?
BM: Not being able to drive, I went to the local circle track where I used to go as a spectator all the time and the light bulb lit up. I hadn’t signed anything that forbid me to drive a NASCAR car, so I bought a NASCAR Modified and raced it at Islip Speedway, ironically enough I remember that when they lined us to start it was on the old drag strip, the same piece of asphalt. That was ’82 and I haven’t missed a Modified season since.
Did you drive after then?
BM: I haven’t driven that kind of car since 1989 but I’ve raced one of them every year since. In ’92, Tom Dauber talked me into sponsoring a Top Dragster in IHRA and a buddy of mine, Mike Stawicki, was running a nitrous Pro Mod in IHRA, so I began getting reacquainted with the drag race scene and got hooked on it again. But I had a commitment to fill with my Modified driver Fred Harbeck. So in ’92 we ran Top Dragster, NASCAR Modified, and Pro Mod. Won the championship in both Modified and Top Dragster that year. I put 170 hours on my plane that year commuting to the track. I’d qualify the drag cars on Thursday and Friday, fly back and run the Modified car Saturday and then fly back to the drag strip for eliminations on Sunday. Won championships with a circle track car and a drag race car on the same day!