Jerry Verheul
Another multidimensional person within the sport, Jerry was involved in everything from drag racing cars to unlimited hydroplanes and was not limited to internal combustion engines in doing so. Jerry started his career in the 1960’s when he teamed up with Dave Wiese in a conventional dragster that soon was replaced with a twin Chevy powered dragster. The Chevy car did well, but before long he made the move to Chrysler power when he took over the crew chief chores on Jerry Ruth’s top fuel dragster for the 1971 and 1972 seasons with Ruth picking up a world championship title in the process. Jerry moved from top fuel to funny cars in 1973 when he was crew chief for Frank Hall’s “Green Elephant”. This pairing lasted for the 1973 in 1974 seasons with Frank winning a world championship as a result of their efforts. Next, he became the driving force behind me “Pacemaker” car of 240 Gordie Bonin from 1975-1979. This team racked up one of the most impressive win streaks out of the northwest region ever assembled, finishing in the top ten every year, winning the Gatornationals in 1977, 1979, and 1981. The Winston Finals in 1977 and 1979 and the US Nationals in 1979. The 1979 US Nationals is also where the team solidified Gordie’s handle of 240 Gordie when they moved the funny car record to 246.90 MPH.
About this time, Jerry decided to move into the boat arena, and as usual started at the top by getting into the unlimited hydroplane class. His first experience in this world was with an Allison powered boat, but Jerry didn’t look at the engine as a fugitive from the aircraft world. He decided the big V 12 engine was nothing more than a Chevy with four too many pistons. At this point Jerry pretty much revised the build-up of the Allison, balancing the lower in, designing new camps, changing pushrod ratios, and in general making a hot rod engine out of it. Most important, it worked, providing a couple thousand additional RPM that translated into an absolute winning boat. Jerry’s next venture was to build a twin blown Hemi boat for the class. This soon turned into one of the fastest boats on the circuit, but the overall design of the boat was it undoing; it needed really rough water to perform best, and unless it was really rough at the beginning of the race, the other boats were able to get away out in front. Also, about this time the turbine powered boats began to really outperform the piston powered ones, so Jerry moved to Steve Wommer’s camp and once again began to design parts that not only made the boats faster, but it also made them safer. One of the items he developed in conjunction with Dave Benjamin is a machined forged stainless prop. This allowed the turbines to turn the high prop RPMs they needed to perform at maximum level without the prop flying apart, which was one of the major causes of accidents prior to its use. The other thing that was threatening this form of racing was the high mortality rate of drivers when there was a crash. Again, Jerry and Benjamin teamed up and did a lot of the early development of the “safe driver capsule” that has saved many drivers lives and help save both the unlimited hydroplanes and the drag boat classes.
As much as he enjoyed the boats, Jerry decided to return to his roots in drag racing. His last project was a turbocharged fuel hemi dragster for top fuel. While the car one best engineered at Pomona winter nationals, Jerry died before its potential was ever reached.