My mom came up with it in the 70's & 80's. Her dad was a pro-stock mechanic and originally did some racing in the 50's & 60's around the AHRA days. She said pro-stock was like the most real drag racing there ever was and that the modern day stuff also really wasn't the same as you mentioned. I came up with it between 2002-2009 thanks to her and I feel like it really went down hill after 2008 (when Scott Kalitta died and the track runs were shortened to 1/8th mile).
Call me what you will, but she was cute too. No denying her tuning talents, she was great. Never realized how attractive she was until I saw these videos. Her husband's a blessed man. I was in the Army from 84'-88' so I missed most of these races. Usually they focused on the attractive "women" drivers, not the talented Crew Chiefs. Pretty & brains. Awesome combo.
The fact that she was finding that success with a small block engine when everyone else was running 500ci is a testament to her talent. She hardly ever hurt equipment and whenever she found consistency the other competitors were in trouble. And yeah, she may not have been Lori Johns pretty, but she was definitely easy on the eyes. Of course in '87 by the end of this race season I wasn't even a year old, so I didn't get to see this championship run
I was at the Gator, Spring, and Keystone Nationals that year. And as a 16 year old kid, was one of the faces along the fence in the staging lanes watching the finals @ 29:23. If they had high definition back then, I could probably pic myself out.
I went to my very first event in 87 at the All Stars at the Texas Motoplex got to meet Bernstein, Glidden and John Force before he was a champion he was a totally different person back then because he hadn't won a race yet very humble I'll never forget that I was 7
