I don't know that we've had much on drag racing on this site, if any, but we American fans might know the name Raymond Beadle -- and if not Beadle, there's a decent chance they'd know the "Blue Max" Funny Cars that terrorized drag strips across the country in the 1970s and '80s.
Beadle, who took over from Don "The Snake" Prudhomme as the dominant FC pilot of his day and won three straight NHRA World Championships from 1979-81, died Monday at age 70. Beadle also was far ahead of the game when it came to marketing the Blue Max name and turning it into $$ through souvenir sales and with sponsors, and he expanded the Max empire from drag racing to NASCAR (owning the team that won the Cup title for Rusty Wallace in 1989) and sprint cars.
I had the good fortune to interview him a few years ago for a where-are-they-now story at the drag racing website CompetitionPlus.com -- the site has an obituary at http://www.competiti...eadle-1943-2014, and the feature is at http://www.competiti...ag-racing-world.
