Although Garlits had driven a similar type car during the Mopar Mile High Nationals last year, that wasn’t the car he drove for the first time ever at historic Cordova Dragway Park on Friday, August 28, during the 56th annual World Series of Drag Racing. That was the day that Don Garlits got behind the wheel of the serial number 001 Drag Pak Challenger and booted it to a 10.62/126+ lap.

He then made several more laps in the car over the next four days, eventually getting the wide bodied Challenger into the mid-10.40 second range and near 130 mph.

We were at the World Series and got the opportunity to spend a little time with “Big Daddy” and talk about his transition into driving a 10-second door car after driving a nitro-burning dragster that ran a quarter mile in around four seconds at speeds over 330 mph.

Asked how he likes driving this car compared to driving his old ‘62 Max Wedge “crossram” stocker, Garlits replied, “Well, for one thing the new car is a much quicker and faster car than my old Max Wedge car. I never got that car to break into the elevens. Low 12’s was the quickest it ever ran”
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How does he like driving this compared to driving the dragster? “Well,” he answered, “for one thing it’s like the lap is never going to end. In the dragster it took around three seconds to get to half-track and about a second to run the back half. In this car it seems like you are never going to get to the finish line.”