NHRA's 50 GREATEST DRIVERS: Ken Veney, Number 46
Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
Ken Veney would rank among the all-time greats of drag racing as a driver even if he'd never been a crew chief. Interestingly, he could rank as high as a crew chief if he had never driven.
Behind the wheel of his Alcohol Funny Cars and Dragsters, Veney was drag racing's seventh-winningest driver when he retired in 1985, trailing only legends such as Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme, and Bob Glidden. Since becoming a fuel crew chief in 1988, he's won 13 NHRA titles with four drivers.
Veney didn't begin racing seriously until 1970, when he was 30. Funny Cars were rivaling slingshot dragsters as the sport's most popular cars, and circuits were springing up around the country for both fuel Funny Cars and their injected, alcohol-burning little brothers. Veney appeared in the final of more than 20 Southern California injected Funny Car races in 1971 with an ex-Gordon Mineo Firebird dubbed the 'Dirty Bird.'
Veney designed and tacked together the first of four 'Veney's Vega' Funny Cars in 1972 and went undefeated for the season. In 1973, he added nitro, dominated local competition, and, in one of his few NHRA appearances in A/FC in Comp, immediately destroyed the national record with a 7.45.
At the 1973 Supernationals, Pro Comp's first race, Veney qualified No. 1 and was runner-up with his injected nitro-burner. At the following event, the 1974 Winternationals, his first race with a blower, he made the first NHRA run in the sixes, and was runner-up to old friend Dale Armstrong, who was driving Veney's A/Fuel Dragster.
After winning the 1974 AHRA championship, Veney traded his big-block Chevy for an aluminum K-B in 1975 and won his first national event, the Summernationals, with the quickest run in history, a 6.76. He won the following race, Montreal, defeating Armstrong in the final. Armstrong then returned the favor at the World Finals.
The following season was the finest of Veney's career. He won Pro Comp at six of the first seven national events and would have won a points-based championship in a landslide had one existed. He also reached the semifinals of every race he didn't win.
Out of money (he had bought a brand-new Kenworth and decided to quit drag racing for a new career in trucking) and out of parts (he had sold everything to Frank Hawley), Veney temporairly retired following his successful '76 campaign.
He eventually returned to the sport in mid-1977 with a used dragster chassis and a one-of-a-kind 351 Cleveland Ford with a hand-built manifold. He had to call Bob Glidden to learn the firing order, but the third time out, he won at the Summernationals.
Selling that car to return to Funny Cars, he came back in mid-1978 with a borrowed engine and a new car he built himself (including the Dodge Challenger body). He completed the car in the pits at the Sportsnationals and won in its debut.
As Veney began to push the envelope on engine performance, he began to experience a frustrating series of cylinder-head failures. Never one to take such setbacks lightly, Veney bought chunks of billet aluminum and ordered cylinder head blueprints from Chrysler. While handcranking on a used Bridgeport mill with no digital readout to guide him, Veney carved 14 heads in his garage. He missed many races that summer preparing his cylinder heads, but returned to the track the week before the U.S. Nationals for a Division 3 event at Beech Bend Raceway Park. Veney promptly set the national speed record and won the event.
Orders for Veney's heads rolled in from across the country. Darrell Gwynn, Kenny Bernstein, Bob Newberry, and Tony Bartone are among Veney's most successful customers.
Veney reset the BB/FC national record in 1979 at 6.50, 213 mph, retired again at the end of that season, and made another comeback the next summer with the Hemi-powered Alcohol Dragster in which he would eventually win the 1980 NHRA title.
In 1981, when Pro Comp was discontinued and Alcohol Funny Car and Alcohol Dragster were given their own categories, Veney won the Alcohol Funny Car competition at the Gatornationals and became the first to run in the 6.50s in all four rounds. He won five of 14 starts, including his greatest victory, the U.S. Nationals.
Ending another self-imposed retirement in mid-1982, Veney unveiled a fuel Funny Car that he campaigned without a sponsor. That car, the first on nitro to have billet heads, huge intake ports, and a roller cam, ran in the 6.0s the first time out. In its fourth start, the U.S. Nationals, Veney drove it to a record speed of 254.23 mph.
Veney spent most of 1983 in fourth place, but did not win again and was forced into retirement, missing events late in the year because because he was out of money. Every race of his year-and-a-half long fuel career was run with the same engine; he never kicked the rods.
Returning with an alcohol car in 1984 for a final stint as a driver, Veney was runner-up in Denver in a Corvette that was still being assembled in the trailer as the team drove down the highway. He advanced to at least the semifinals of every event that year and opened 1985, his last as a driver, with a win in Gainesville. He was runner-up in Brainerd. At Indianapolis, during in his final drive, came within .001-second of low e.t.
Veney's career winning percentage was .668 (141-70).
After selling everything and devoting time to his growing cylinder-head business, Veney was back in 1988 as crew chief on Darrell Gwynn's Budweiser Top Fueler. Gwynn won Veney's first race (the Keystone Nationals), two of their four that year, and three more in 1989 with the Coors Extra Gold car. Included in the '89 season was Gwynn's biggest triumph - the U.S. Nationals, where he lowered the national record to 4.98.
Gwynn lowered the mark again, to 4.95, while winning the following event, then won the 1990 Gatornationals - his last national start before his tragic accident April 15 in England.
Gwynn's replacement, Hawley, won in Columbus two months later in his team debut, then again in Dallas. Veney retired again in 1992, but was back as Gwynn's crew chief in mid-1996, winning just three races later with driver Mike Dunn.
Their finest season together came in 1999, when Dunn reset the national record at 4.50, won four times, and made the three quickest runs ever. After sitting out most of the 2000 season when Mopar terminated the team's sponsorship, Dunn returned for the last three races of the year with Gwynn's N.Y. Yankees entry and set low e.t. for the year at all three.
NHRA's Top 50 Drivers will be unveiled on NHRA.com and through the pages of National DRAGSTER, in reverse order throughout the 2001 season, with a schedule leading up to the naming of the top driver at the Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals at Pomona Raceway on Nov. 11.
As NHRA celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2001, it has emerged as one of the most popular spectator sports, highlighted by a $50 million, 24-event, nationally televised tour. The NHRA has developed into the world's largest motorsports sanctioning body, with more than 80,000 members nationwide, and more than 140 member tracks.
Text Provided by Anthony Vestal
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