Darrell Alderman experienced during the 1991 NHRA tour. He won 11 events in his Dodge Daytona pro stocker and led the NHRA championship points from wire to wire and never trailed anyone between the months of February and October. Warren Johnson was the second place finisher that year and he managed five event wins. Alderman’s point total advantage at the end of the season was (like Bernstein’s above) more than 3,0000.
Things went from great to horrendous in a short span after the 1991 series for Alderman. He plead guilty to federal cocaine charges and was banned from competition with the NHRA for the 1992 and 1993 seasons. He returned with a vengeance for 1994 and won the title over his teammate Scott Geoffrion. There was all the talk of nitrous usage and rampant cheating among the cars in the “Wayne County Speed Shop” camp that were never officially proven on the record but to this day the whispers still linger
from http://bangshift.com/blog/the-top-11-most-dominant-race-cars-of-all-time.html
another account of the Wayne Country Speed Shop that is related to the comment about nitrous and cheating happened in 1996, when believe it or not, I was watching a LOT of NHRA racing, and Geoffrion and Alderman were unbeatable. Suddenly, they stated that a break in occurred at their shop, and that every last engine was hit with a hammer, and they had to stop racing:
the Wayne County Speed Shop team of Scott Geoffrion and Darrell Alderman (see "Laughing Gas," C/D, February 1996). The "Dodge Boys," as they were known to fans, had dominated the Pro Stock division for years. And then in May 1995, somebody broke into the team's shop --or as others speculate, somebody made it look like a break-in --and took a hammer to six engines, destroying them. The Wayne County team withdrew from the series for two years, citing problems in developing competitive replacement engines. The team has since gone out of business.
"Now, I don't know about you, but if I were breaking into a building and putting someone out of business, I wouldn't chop a hole in the side of it in the middle of the night," Eckman said. "I think that would be a little noisy, wouldn't you? I think I'd just burn the place down.
"But they had a hole chopped in the side of their building, with some really quiet chain saw, or a bulldozer, or something really quiet like that, and went in there and damaged all the engines --but not the trailer, not the cars, not the transmissions, and not the machinery. Isn't that strange?"
There are some drag racers who believe the Wayne County "break-in" was self-inflicted, and part of a brokered agreement with the NHRA to punish them, privately, for nitrous oxide use and thereby avoid embarrassing Chrysler Corporation, the Dodge Boys' sponsor. The FBI and insurance investigators pursued that scenario but did not confirm it. http://www.caranddriver.com/features/blowup-feature-suspicious-break-in-page-2
Warren Johnson ""You have to realize the NHRA was a co-conspirator in that whole program," "Wayne County ran nitrous for too long, and it was too obvious. And the NHRA, with its financial investment, and with Chrysler being the dictator there, I think, you know, they were obviously co-conspirators." http://www.caranddriver.com/features/blowup-feature-nitrous-controversey-page-3
Eckman was cheating, and he died because he hid his NOS bottle in the dry sump tank, which overheated the NOS when the hot oil sloshed over it, and it blew up. http://mooregoodink.com/biggest-con-jobs/
A vandal or vandals cut a hole in the back door of the Wayne County Speed Shop that houses the Dodge Avenger Pro Stock cars driven by Alderman and Geoffrion and destroyed all seven of the team's engines.
Team member Jim Musgrave, who discovered the destruction the morning of May 17, less than 12 hours before the team was to leave for Englishtown to compete in the Mopar Parts Nationals and the Du Pont Challenge, said it appeared that a sledgehammer was used to destroy the engines. Nothing else was damaged.
Said Musgrave, "They busted the water jackets and oil galleries, busted the distributors, intake manifolds, and oil pans. They beat the deck in on one of our new $6,000 blocks.
http://www.nhra.net/50th/news/index.html?story=141
http://www.yellowbullet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2455745
http://mooregoodink.com/biggest-con-jobs/
Wayne County Speed Shop was cheating, no doubt about it !
ReplyDeletePeople can cry foul all they want but they cannot prove anything.
DeleteThe Chevy pussies couldnt handle getting beat by a MOPAR HEMI.
DeleteThe dates are wrong in this article. This happened in 1995 not 1996. I went to the Inaugural Virginia Nationals in 1995 and walked the field looking for the Dodge Boys and later found out why they were not there.
DeleteYes they were some outlaws . but Darrell was still a great driver .I kinda liked the no sponsor underdog bad asses .can't take the 3 championship .and was off to another party next . that's a long time to be running nitrous without being caught threw inspection s
ReplyDeleteI live near centralia illinois and i know for a fact that one block survived the breakin. The guy who purchased this block told me it was stored under a work bench covered with a black trash bag. I have personally seen this block at a guys garage in odin illinois. He told me he purchased the block from the wayne county speed shop.
DeleteSo IF Wayne County was using it on their cars, what was KB Racing using in Baby Greg Anderson and Jason Lines Summit cars to give them that last little boost needed at the end of each run? Always did look suspicious. And doesnt N.O.S have a little sponsorship in there? Just wondering...🤣
ReplyDeleteNothing
DeleteThe chevy racers were just pissed because mopar beat them at their own game. The chevy guys were just sore losers.
DeleteThe dirty prick that NHRA president Glen Cromwell is, he couldn't stand to see mopar in the winners circle so he put an rpm limit of 10,500 rpm'son prostock cars because those pussy ass chevy guys couldnt hang with the mopar HEMI. The pro categories are supposed to be run wide open and hope you brought enough to win. I stopped watching NHRA because of this.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely
DeleteI love how so many idiots believe Warren Johnson... The only one saying they used nitrous...meanwhile he was running the same times but losing to them and just a year or 2 later was running faster, and nhra makes rules for the rich, i.e. chevy and harley not Chrysler.
ReplyDeleteI do believe Warren Johnson was the whole problem. I live 30 miles from Wayne County Speed Shop and at that time I lived in Fairfield and my husband worked at the speed shop......They won!
ReplyDelete