NITRO & NOSTALGIA

A must-attend event for fans of vintage drag racing, the Nitro Revival is a tribute to the golden era of the sport.

- MARC GEWERTZ

Drag racing fans got to relive those memories at the 5th Annual Nitro Revival at Irwindale Speedway, where the pits were once again filled with the legendary cars of drivers and teams like Stone, Woods & Cook, Tommy Ivo, The Surfers, Kuhl & Olson, "Big John" Mazmanian, and many more.

With their metal-flake paint and chrome shining under the California sun, these front-engine dragsters, vintage Funny Cars, and Fuel Altereds that once dominated the quarter-mile were all brought to Nitro Revival to share their stories.

Nitro Revival is about drag racing history, and who better to tell it than those who lived it? Drag racing legends Don Prudhomme, Roland Leong, Richard Tharp, Tommy Ivo, Vance Hunt, Kenny Logan, and Bob Muravez (aka Floyd Lippencott Jr.) were just a few of the legends who reminisced about the good ol' days and talked about their biggest wins, rivalries, and shared crazy stories from their racing exploits.

Nitro Revival was created by Steve Gibbs and the late Ron Johnson, who shared a lifelong passion for drag racing and had the desire to create an event where they could honor the pioneers of the sport they loved so dearly. Gibbs has spent most of his life at the dragstrip. His career began at the old San Gabriel Drag Strip in 1961, when he was just 16 years old. One of his first jobs was writing numbers on race cars with white shoe polish, and he later became the track reporter, writing event coverage for Drag News. Gibbs did whatever the track needed and loved every minute of it.

He got his first full-time job at the original Irwindale Drag Strip, which opened in 1965. He became track manager there in 1968, and he's been a fixture in the sport ever since. Call it fate, or maybe destiny, that Nitro Revival calls Irwindale Speedway home, bringing Gibbs full-circle to his start in drag racing 62 years ago.