Corvette Drag Racing History - Remember When...

All of us have a specific Corvette year or era of which we are most fond. But when you compare Corvette's early performance history, 1957, 1963, and 1965 really stand out. Imagine if you were a Corvette development engineer and were part of 1957's offerings: Rochester fuel injection, Borg-Warner four-speed full-synchromesh transmission, a hot solid-lifter camshaft and Positraction. 1963 unveiled the coveted Grand Sport lightweight Sting Ray road racer, an all-new Rochester fuel injection, a full-scale Z06 SCCA road racer, independent rear suspension and let us not forget the all-new Sting Ray coupe and convertible. 1965 introduced four-wheel disc brakes and the unbelievable Mark IV 396 big-block powerplant.

This 1963-1965 era saw thousands either updating or hopping up their early Corvettes with all of the factory Corvette high performance equipment from the 1957-1962 era. My Dad and I had raced the "*X@#!" out of his '61 270hp 283, and never blueprinted the short-block. In early 1963, we began hearing an internal knocking sound. In a matter of minutes, a piston fractured and took out a cylinder and a head. We replaced the long-block (short-block and heads) with a new "special high performance" Corvette 327 (340-360 hp), then reinstalled the '61 270 hp dual Carter WCFB carbs and the original, smaller 283 harmonic balancer. The C/Sports class was suddenly filled with 327-powered '57-'61 street-driven Corvettes. Almost all ran a lot quicker-in the 13.80s at 102 mph-with headers and slicks compared to our 283's past 14.40s at 99-100 mph. Not wanting to cheat, we entered the "CX" (C/Modified Sports) class. With new nine-inch wide Bruce slicks, 4.88:1 gears, Horsepower Engineering headers, S-W electric fuel pump, re-curved ignition and massaged carbs, we were in the 13.10s at 105 mph. We then did some head porting and installed a Racer Brown R39 roller cam and ran 12.70s at 108 mph. That was all she wrote. We believe to this day that the original fuel pump and stock fuel line would not feed enough gas to go any quicker and faster. When the '63 race season ended we were undefeated. We could run 7.70s in the eighth-mile which equated to 11.90s in the quarter-mile but our best was 12.28 due to more or less running low on fuel pressure and volume in 4th-gear. There were a few quicker Corvettes but we somehow always got to the finish line first.

Winning our class was certainly a thrill, but then we had to compete for Street Eliminator honors. I was 19 in 1963 and a sophomore in college. The class winners which ran each other for the weekly Street Eliminator title were class winners in all Gas classes, Modified Sports classes, plus Altered and FX classes. For me, competing and losing was simply the drag racing experience of a lifetime. At Union Grove, we never won more than two rounds. We usually got a 3-6 car-length "spot," then we drove like heck while betting ourselves if we'd get beat on the top-end. We did win Street Eliminator at Lake Geneva in lesser but still competitive competition. The next best thing about the summer of '63 was that we never broke anything.