(3 of 3)
Still, that Sunday at the Gatornationals, the contest comes down to wrenches and walkin'-around sense. Garlits is paired in the finals against Dick LaHaie, an independent driver from Michigan whose crew chief is his 25- year-old daughter Kim. The LaHaies don't have a sponsor; they make their living and cover their considerable expenses from prize money. They are of necessity consistent, a word intoned with a certain wonder in a sport where less conservative drivers push their engines to the raggedy edge and still lose. Lately the LaHaies have been working on a new clutch; the dragster has done wheel stands at the starting line, it has gone out of control and hit a wall, and it has shaken so badly that LaHaie's head got volleyed back and forth against the roll bars. But they've managed to calm it down without losing horsepower.
In the pits before the finals, both sides patch the routine destruction of the day's preliminary rounds. LaHaie, working underneath his engine, smokes and chews gum at the same time. Garlits' crew chief fiddles with his fuel-air mixture right up to the starting line, making it richer, then a little richer still, then a shade leaner.
The starting light flashes, and they roar away. About midway, the machine belts fly off Garlits' tricycle wheels and the aerodynamic front end rips apart. LaHaie's supercharger simultaneously explodes. They cross the finish six-hundredths of a second apart.
Afterward, a reporter asks Garlits' crew chief why he kept fiddling with the fuel-air mixture. Didn't the computer tell him how to set it? "Oh," he says, "we left the computer home."
Big Daddy wins it anyway.