Mike Griffith: Warren a racing legend, inspiration
| Thursday, May 19 2011 08:33 PM
Last Updated Thursday, May 19 2011 10:23 PM
Images
March Meet exhibit at NHRA Museum. The museum is opening a exhibit featuring Auto Club Famoso Raceway as 2008 will be the 50th anniversary of the inaugural March Meet. File image James Warren walking throught the museum back in August of 2007.
If there are drag races in heaven, the competition just got a lot fiercer. The "Ridge Route Terrors" team is together again.
Former Top Fuel drag racer James Warren of Bakersfield, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease and had contracted pneumonia, died on Monday.
He was 74.
It's been decades, but it hardly seems that long ago when I was bitten by the drag racing bug due to my father hauling me out to Famoso Raceway every year for the U.S. Fuel and Gas championships, .a.k.a. March Meet.
Sitting on hay bales as a kid just a mere feet from where fire-spitting dragsters made the turn from the push road onto the drag strip in the mid to late 1960s left me addicted to the sport, and until Warren's passing, I did not realize how influential he was in my journey to becoming a sportswriter.
In fact, had it not been for the March Meet, and the team of Warren, (Roger) Coburn and (Marvin) Miller, there is no doubt in my mind I would have chosen another career path. Warren and Coburn were the subjects of the the first feature story I wrote (as a freelancer) for The Californian prior to a March Meet in the mid 1970s.
Warren was named the 38th best driver in the history of the National Hot Rod Association in a top-50 list to celebrate NHRA 50th anniversary a decade ago. He is also a member of the International Drag Racing Hall of fame as is Roger Coburn, his longtime crew chief and brother-in-law, who passed away six months ago. Marvin Miller, who provided financing for the team, died in 1996.
Warren and Coburn pooled their resources to go drag racing in the late 1950s and stayed together until 1980, when Warren, tired of travel and the time consumption drag racing required, retired.
He retired in the same manner he raced. Quietly, without fanfare.
The team reached its pinnacle in the mid 1970s by racing to three straight victories at the March Meet --1975-1977. It was a Herculean effort as the field in each of those years consisted of 32 cars, meaning five rounds of competition to make the finals. Warren qualified No. 1 in 1975 and beat Jeb Allen in the finals.
The following year was the best ever for the team, starting with a runner-up finish at the NHRA Winternationals. Next was a victory in a race in Phoenix and then the March Meet, culminating with a final-round victory on a single as Tony Nancy was shut off on the starting line. Two weeks later, Warren was celebrating a victory at the NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.
Warren completed his March Meet trifecta in 1977, qualifying No. 1 and working his way through the field before beating Don Garlits in the finals.
Tall, lean and as cool as a professional poker player, Warren was as gracious in defeat as in victory.
He never gloated over his victories nor did he dwell on his losses, other than the loss to Garlits in the finals of the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis in 1967. It was one that Warren felt they should have won, and a race he badly wanted to win.
Warren and Coburn started racing a twin-engine gas dragster in the late 1950s, switched to a Top Fuel dragster around 1964 and immediately made an impact, winning the Saturday portion of two-day show at Lions Drag Strip in Long Beach.
It was during the 1960s that the team earned the moniker "Ridge Route Terrors" for making the trek over the Ridge Route on old Highway 99 to compete at one of the many Southern California tracks, often coming away with the win.
Other than a select few races, such as the U.S. Nationals, the team limited its racing mostly to the West Coast.
"I had a good car," Warren told the NHRA for a Top-50 article 10 years ago. "We were a team for so many years that we knew what to do for each other. I knew what I needed, and Roger knew how to tune the car the way I liked to drive it. It just seemed like there was a combination there."
A combination that will long live in NHRA lore.
Graveside services will be held Saturday at 2 p.m. at Hillcrest Memorial Park and Motuary, 9101 Kern Canyon Road.
