Fuel and Guts

Tom Madigan’s latest book, Fuel & Guts: The Birth of Top Fuel Drag Racing, gives the reader an authentic and historic account of how the quest for speed and glory beget the competitive racing we know today. With a foreword by legendary NHRA announcer Dave McClelland, Fuel & Guts recounts the development of the front engine dragster from their infancy in the 1950’s to their ultimate demise in the 1970’s. The author went to great lengths to include personal accounts from those that were on the forefront of developing this racing vehicle to the 8,000 horsepower monster we know today.

Fuel & Guts’ author, Tom Madigan, is extremely qualified to write on this subject matter because he has been a part of the California car culture since the 1950’s. As a young man, Madigan not only raced against the legends of the sport in which he would later recount in this book but wrote about them along way as a contributor to Motorcade magazine and later as the editor for Popular Hot Rodding magazine. Through this experience as not only a racer but as a motor sports journalist, Madigan created tremendous friendships and close bonds with many of the pioneers of the Top Fuel class. These personal relationship are evidenced throughout this book with one-on-one interviews with such personalities as Art Chrisman, Mickey Thompson, Harry Hibler, Floyd Lippencotte, Jr., ‘TV’ Tommy Ivo, Don ‘the Snake’ Prudhomme, Tom ‘the Mongoose’ McEwen, Roland Leong and numerous more to name all at once. These personal interviews, straight from the horse’s mouth, leave no question or open to interpretation of what it was like to not only race but to live in the drag racing culture in that 20 year span.

Madigan’s account of those drag strips that shaped and molded the class that would eventually become Top Fuel is unmatched. You may hear stories of how great it was to race at Lions Drag Strip or ‘the Pond’ (San Fernando) or the legendary ‘March Meet’ in Bakersfield but this book gives the ultimate peek behind the scenes of how it really was. There was a different culture to drag racing between the 1950’s and 1970’s and match racing was a lot more important that running the full NHRA tour. Reading stories of racers scraping together enough money to get to the next race track, praying they did not break any parts and then hoping the appearance fee was enough to get them to the next race was refreshing in light of the way drag racing is run today. The flood of corporate dollars had yet to taint the sport and racers were the ones calling the shots, not the suits in a boardroom determining what will sell better on TV. There was an innocence to this time and the book captures it magically.

Fuel & Guts by Tom Madigan brings you back to a marvelous time when the Top Fuel code of: never blink and never lift, ruled supreme. This time was about horsepower and the kinship that developed from wanting the same result; the baddest and fastest hot rod on the planet. This book captures that era precisely how it happened and you would have to interview hundreds of racers from that time to gain the same insight this book provides. Fuel & Guts is a wonderful trip back in time when today’s heroes and legends were just regular old guys trying to make it in the sport they loved. Now with this book you can feel like you were right there stepping on the gas and just praying it would hold together long enough to get through the finish line.