Clayton Harris
Clayton Harris was born in Columbus Mississippi and started his racing career in 1959 at the wheel of a blown Chevrolet powered top gas dragster; which was the same car he drove to win NHRA’s Division II Top Gas Championship in 1966. In 1968, he made the move from top gas to top fuel owning and driving a blown Chevy powered dragster. Most of his racing up to this time was on a local basis where he earned the reputation as a tough competitor but in 1971 Clayton teamed up with Jack McKay to drive McKay’s New Dimension Homes dragster. In 1972 Harris really moved into the national scene by being the first to record four consecutive 6.20 seconds ET and set low ET at the NHRA US Nationals in Indy. He followed this performance at the NHRA World Finals where he was runner-up and shortly after that capture the NHRA Eastern Conference Top Fuel Championship.
In 1973 Clayton decided to return to the status of owner/driver and fielded an all-new AA/Fuel Dragster. As an independent he managed to win the NHRA Summernationals in Englishtown, New Jersey, that season and repeated his 1972 feet of winning the NHRA Eastern Conference Championship again. In 1976 Harris one the IHRA US Open Nationals in Rockingham, North Carolina, in 1977 he won the IHRA Fall Nationals in Atco, New Jersey, in 1978 he topped the fuel ranks at Darlington, South Carolina, by winning the IHRA Winter Nationals and later that year he won the IHRA Dixie Nationals in Atlanta, Georgia. He finished the year as the 1978 IHRA Top Fuel Champion. In 1979 he finished second in the IHRA Championship race and decided to retire.
Harris return to drag racing in 1980 when he teamed up as crew chief with Richard Holcomb in a Harris designed and built radically different dragster that featured an extremely narrow rear end among its other offbeat innovations. The team’s efforts produce the third four second run ever at an IHRA national event in Ennis,Texas. In 1992 Harris returned to the driver seat as much to develop a revolutionary fingerless hydraulic pressure plate for the clutch as for the competition. In 1995 he was once again in the winner’s circle this time winning the IHRA Super Nationals in Steele, Alabama. Unlike today’s modern race teams where every job has a specialist along with a crew chief, Clayton was owner, driver, mechanic, crew chief, and tow truck driver.
Before the 1995 season’s end, Clayton again gave up the driver seat, this time to pair up with Paul Romine as the crew chief of Paul’s Carquest Auto Parts sponsored nostalgia top fuel dragster. The pair notched a victory at the prestigious Bakersfield California March Meet in 1996 and later at a race in Morocco, Indiana they became the first nostalgia top fuel dragster to move into the five second bracket. The team captured three more wins on the nostalgia circuit that year but decided they wanted to return to more conventional top fuel dragster class in 1997. In 1997 the team captured the IHRA Top Fuel Championship and returned in 1998 to make it back to back championships. After their 1997 debut in top fuel dragster on the IHRA circuit, the duo reset the associations elapsed time record five times, won seven IHRA national events, won three IHRA drag racing championships, and were the first car to top 320 MPH and set the IHRA ET record at 4.676 seconds.
Unfortunately, Clayton died in a private airplane crash in 2000 but along the way he made some serious waves in the top fuel dragster wars and is credited with three mechanical patents with several more still pending.