SEATTLE — Long before Don Garlits became a drag racer, he and one of his pals passed an auto parts store in Tampa, Fla., and saw a sprint car in the window. They went in and ogled it from every angle.
Garlits noticed the race car had no roll bar or any kind of protection for the driver and he casually said to his friend, “Boy, if this thing turned over, a guy could get hurt real bad, couldn’t he?”
Before he knew it, Garlits said, “I mean, the old man that drove that thing dropped his tools on the table and he looked at me and said, ‘Sonny, if you look at this race car and it scares you, the best thing you can do is go right home to your mommy – because men drive these things, and we ain’t afraid of nothing.”
That was a lesson, all right, but the old sprint car racer missed the one young Garlits had for him. That keen sense of observation, that eye for safety, is one of the hallmarks of Garlits’ legendary career as the NHRA’s “Big Daddy.”
He didn’t get that nickname for being protective, safety conscious and innovative — he got it for being the unmistakable dominator on the drag strip. But he distinguished himself for innovative improvements.
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As the NHRA invades his Central Florida turf this month for the 50th anniversary of the Gatornationals, Garlits and other pioneers of the sport will be the toast of Gainesville Raceway. And this man, voted the No. 1 drag racer of all time in NHRA’s 50th year, always has been way ahead of his time, a true visionary.
In May 2006 — more than two years before Scott Kalitta’s fatal accident prompted the NHRA to move the finish line to 1,000 feet from the traditional quarter-mile (1,320 feet) — Garlits proposed it.
“I believe I’d shorten the distance. Instead of 1,320 feet, I’d move ’em back to 1,000. Then I’d take some of the restrictions off,” Garlits said. “I’d just turn the guys (crew chiefs) loose because they wouldn’t have so far to race and every track would have 300 more feet of shutoff. There’s nobody down there at 1,320 watching, anyway. They’re all back there at the start. I think that would make for better racing. And there are a few other things I’d do where you couldn’t make so much horsepower. The horsepower is what causes the problem with money. If the cars were restricted where they could only make so much horsepower, then they wouldn’t be so hard on parts.
“The tracks were all built in the ’60s, so the cars really haven’t got any business going 350 mph on a 1960s race track,” he added.
That was in 2006. Thirty-five years earlier, Garlits drove Swamp Rat XIV to victories during the Winternationals at Pomona, Calif., and the March Meet at Bakersfield, proving the rear-engine dragster was track-worthy and trustworthy. He admitted he didn’t invent the rear-engine dragster. Plenty of them showed up in the 1950s. Garlits and his brother, Ed, even built one in 1957 but exorcised themselves of the seemingly diabolic contraption.
But Garlits eventually perfected the rear-engine dragster that has been the standard for 48 years.
“I didn’t invent the rear-engine car. I just worked out the bugs,” he said. But he said he counts it as his crowning achievement. He took the results of a vicious accident that sliced off a portion of his foot in 1970 and less than a year later was setting the trend for the modern Top Fuel design.
“We led the way in drag racing for many years: first car over 170, 180, 190, 200, 240, 250, 260, 270. That says a lot,” Garlits said. “I’m proudest of the rear-engine dragster, getting the driver up in front of the engine, out of the danger zone of all the flying parts of the drivetrain.”
In May 2014, at age 82, Garlits took an EV dragster — a battery-powered electric vehicle — and posted a 184-mph speed, proving he has an eye on the motorsports horizon.
The stories behind his forward-thinking designs, tweaks and practices have filled many books and magazine pages and an entire museum on the grounds of his home in Ocala, Fla. Each of the 34 Swamp Rat versions had a purpose, and Garlits said he “loved them all, even though a couple of them almost killed me. It wasn’t their fault. I built them and tuned them to get every ounce of performance I could. I lived on the edge of the envelope and out there are some very nasty things lurking.”
However, he wasn’t afraid of them. He would have made that old Tampa sprint car racer proud. Of that advice, Garlits said, “I never forgot it. When I started racing, I knew what he was talking about.”
Despite all of the safety innovations and advancements he designed or championed, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits confessed back in 2006 that safety was not uppermost on his mind. The stout E.T. slip beat out safety: “The racers are always interested in the good E.T. slip.
“It could be dark. It could be narrow. It could be anything. I just wanted to get there first.”
And most of the time, he did.
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