Top Fuel Dragster
In the high-decibel, fever-pitch world of the drag strip, PHILIP D. SCHOFIELD '68 and his 23-foot, needle-nosed racer with the exotic orange and yellow paint job are hot contenders.
Drag News nominated him as "Top Fuel Driver of the Year" his second season as a full-time touring pro. In Australia last year, RODsports called him "the complete professional drag racer," a "highly respected competitor on the torrid touring trail" although "the bespectacled Schofield could be taken more readily as accountant than a fueller driver who makes his living at just over six seconds and 230 mph."
The drag lingo is bewildering to the unitiated: "top fuel," "hemis," "flat tappet cams," "funny cars," "tunnel port heads," "rats," and "blowers." They all spell POWER and SPEED.
For speed, Schofield has hit 238 mph on the standard quarter-mile strip; he's covered the distance in 6.03 seconds from a standing start, coming close to joining the dragster elite of only four men who have invaded the five-second range. For power, he has a 1,600-horse, rear-mounted, nitro-methane/alcohol fuelled engine, which he tunes with the care lavished on a Stradivarius.
Known equally for driving skill and mechanical ability, "Flip" Schofield has been racing since high-school days in southern California. He left college in 1966 for a stint as an officer with the Army Engineer Corps, started racing again after his 1969 discharge, firstas a "weekend warrior" on local tracks. He returned to Hanover to get his degree in 1971, meanwhile teaming up with Ted Cyr, a former national champion and master mechanic, and qualifying for his Top Fuel license from the National Hot Rod Association. Schofield and Cyr started building their rear-engine car in September 1971, finishing it at a cost of $10,000 two months later, in time for the 1972 season, Flip's first as a full-time touring pro. That year the car paid its way, through sponsor support and prize money. In 1973, he grossed $30,000, scoring seven wins and breaking eight track records in the early months
Schofield travels 50,000 to 60,000 miles during a January-October season, driving his 54-foot, 17,000-pound truck and trailer rig across the United States and into Canada. Between meets, he heads to the home shop in California, where Cyr maintains the team's headquarters, or to their eastern shop in Delaware. His crew includes one full-time mechanic and, usually, his wife, herself a former race driver. Testimony to the team's skill is the fact that they can completely rebuild the car's motor between rounds and have been known to replace it with their spare and be back on the track within 40 minutes.
The image of drag racing - which draws more spectators than any other motor sport and takes a back seat only to. professional football in paid admissions - as a tawdry business and dragsters as a tribe only once removed from Hell's Angels is one to which Schofield takes indignant exception. Furthermore, he insists in a comment that strains the credulity of the ordinary motorist, "the cars are very safe." The drivers must wear firesuits that can withstand a temperature of 2,000 degrees for 20 seconds without reaching an interior temperature above 180. "I've seen people hit both guardrails, flip over, burn, and walk away," he says, acknowledging that he's "had a lot of fires and had cars up in the air. A car crashed over me once when we were both doing 220, and the top of his motor took the paint off my car." Rear engines minimize fire hazard and goggle obstruction, Schofield says. He also carries a back-up deceleration chute.
Unlike some drivers, Schofield enjoys the mechanical work, where he's proving his prowess only to himself, but he relishes the challenge of open competition far beyond that of the $1,000-guarantee exhibition match race. He's considering selling his car and, with Cyr, building a new one from scratch. He hopes to go on driving for several years, but off-season flying lessons have him thinking that some day he might like to fly jets for a corporation.
But one thing sure: wherever there's Flip, there will be POWER and SPEED.
