Chemistry teacher defeats student in a Baylands Raceway drag race
Q
I have a story about what another reader called the Fremont Drag Strip, which I knew as the Baylands Raceway. It's kind of long, but I thought you would enjoy it.
At the beginning of my teaching career at St. Francis High School in the 1980s, Japan was eating us for lunch in terms of electronics manufacturing. I was teaching chemistry at the time. I used the analogy that a catalyst functions for a reaction as it if it is a lower mountain pass than the higher mountain pass that an un-catalyzed reaction represents.
One of my students said, “Well, you can't get over any mountain pass with that Japanese piece of junk you drive.” (It was a 1980 Honda Civic hatchback.)
I replied, “My car can beat your car (a compact Oldsmobile wagon) any day.” It was game on.
— Tom Farrell, Santa Clara
A
Indeed it was.
Q
The young man's friends wanted to drag race down Foothill Expressway. I said I was not going to encourage speeding, so I proposed something where each car would have a passenger who would signal when the car reached the speed limit.
Then the group of boys came back with the suggestion that we drag at Baylands. The racetrack would time how long you took to drive 1/4 mile and give you your top speed. You paid $10 to go as many times as you wanted. It was called “Thursday night grudge match” and people could bring their cars, street legal or not, and drag for fun.
— Tom Farrell
A
Gentlemen, rev up your engines.
Q
As each of us got into the line, we were surrounded by not-street-legal muscle cars revving their engines, all brought to Baylands on trailers. We were later told by the boys who were spectators that night that the announcer made a comment about how great it was that “anyone could come out to Thursday Night Grudge Match,” as evidenced by the two small cars, my Honda and the Oldsmobile wagon.
We agreed to go two out of three, but it wasn't necessary, because I won the first two drags by 0.25 of a second with a top speed of 71 mph.
The young man attributed his defeat to the fact that he forgot to disengage the emergency brake on his drive over the Dumbarton Bridge to get to Fremont. The event was announced on the PA the next day at St. Francis. The young man was a junior and in his senior year yearbook, they were asked what they would remember most about SFHS.
He wrote, “When Mr. Farrell beat me in a drag race.”
A
Now that is a yearbook comment to savor.