Throwback Thursday – Larry Larson and Joe Barry Battle Each Other on ‘Grudge Race’
In drag-and-drive event format, rarely will you see a head-to-head competition between cars. It’s all about the elapsed time in your lane, not beating your opponent in a pairing on the track.
But it’s not uncommon to make comparisons about cars in the same class, and how they would fair if they were matched up in a heads-up contest against each other.
For Larry Larson and Joe Barry, both have show-quality and insanely quick all-steel street cars. Both cars have been proven multiple times on drag-and-drive events.
Both rides are 3500 pounds or more, both pack big block Chevrolet engines with twin turbochargers, and both have been over 200 mph during a drag-and-drive event.
Both drivers have won at least one Hot Rod Drag Week class title. Larry has five class titles on his mantle, but Joe has picked up the most recent, winning the Unlimited Iron class in 2017.
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“Between those two cars, they’ve probably been side by side more than any other pair of cars out there that race Drag Week,” said Joe. “But we have yet to ever have clean passes next to each other.”
So, host Willie B decided to solve that issue, bringing both drivers and cars to Bandimere Speedway in Colorado to determine once and for all who has the faster all-steel car on his show ‘Grudge Race’ in 2016.
The pair of classic Chevrolets battled it out in a best-of-3 grudge race. Who did what? Who won the title? Check out the episode below to see what happened:
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Grudge Race.