Fans of NHRA stock-class drag racing’s glory days mourned the loss of Donald “Dyno Don” Nicholson last week.
Nicholson, 78, a drag racing pioneer, had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease before his death on January 24. His well-known nickname came from his use of a war-surplus chassis dynamometer to performance-tune automobiles in the 1950s, long before dyno-tuning had become a common practice.
At the inaugural running of the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona in 1961, Nicholson trumped the field with a 409-powered 1961 Impala and launched a career that would span four decades.
In the mid-1960s Nicholson became a match-racing sensation in an A/Factory Experimental Mercury Comet-one of the first door-slammers to ever post sub-10-second E.T.s. Nicholson was one of the first drag racers to drive a flopper-bodied nitro Funny Car and frequently dominated the competition on the match race circuit with his Eliminator I and Eliminator II Comets.
By the end of the decade, Nicholson pioneered yet another class of competition Pro Stock, racing against such notables as Dick Landy, Bill Jenkins and Ronnie Sox.
Though Nicholson recorded countless round wins and a number of national victories, it wasn’t until 1977 that he netted an NHRA championship in Pro Stock at age 50. Seven years later, Nicholson finally retired from Pro Stock competition, though he returned to the track years later, racing a Pro Mod and later a Pro Stock Truck.
According to the NHRA, the bulk of Nicholson’s wins came in match race competition, where he usually won more than 90 percent of his races. However, Nicholson holds the record for final-round appearances in the most NHRA eliminator categories, scoring either wins or runner-up efforts in Funny Car, Pro Stock, Super, Comp, Stock, and Street. Among many lifetime achievement honors, Nicholson was voted No. 18 on the list of the NHRA’s Top 50 Drivers in 2001.
“Dyno Don” fans won’t want to miss the April 2006 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machinesfeaturing a tribute to Nicholson through the camera lens of noted drag racing photographer and author Larry Davis.
(This post originally appeared in the February 2, 2006, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)
