Gaines Markley

[370454s]

Former Top Fuel championship team owner, driver Markley dies

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By Phil Burgess, NHRA.com
4/25/2008



Former NHRA Top Fuel world championship car owner and driver Gaines Markley died April 24 at Highline Medical Center in Seattle after a lengthy hospitalization. He was 66.

Markley, who competed out of Federal Way, Wash., raced blown dragsters on gasoline and nitro beginning in the 1960s through the early ‘80s.

Early in his career, he was partnered with his boyhood friend, future Top Fuel world champ Gary Beck, on the successful Markley & Beck BB/Gas altereds and dragsters in NHRA Division 6 competition. Together they won multiple Division 6 Super Eliminator championships with Beck at the wheel, though they took turns driving. Markley funded his cars in the early years by being a mechanic at a Ford dealer then went into the automotive machine shop business with Bob Gage in the early 1970s.


(Above) Markley and Gary Beck were partners on his gas dragster, (shown with Beck at the wheel) that had great success in Super Eliminator in Division 6. (Below) Markley, like Beck, later began driving Top Gas and Top Fuel cars; this is the Assassin entry of Jim Crooke.


In the late 1960s, Markley and Beck went on to drive others cars, Markley initially for Jim Crooke in the Assassin Top Fuel car (the name of which Markley would later inherit), and Beck in Top Gas for Crooke and Dan Ferguson and later, of course, both would win Top Fuel world championships, Markley as an owner and Beck as a driver.

“It's pretty cool to have two friends from grade school who both won world championships; that's special stuff,” said Beck. “We learned how to drag race together and how to win. We went through so much together, on and off the track, in our racing and personal lives. When you've been friends with someone since you were five years old, you'd have to say he's a pretty good guy. He had always been a mechanic and proved to be a very good racecar driver.”

In April 1972, Markley set the NHRA national record for speed at 234.37 in his Assassin entry at the divisional event in Seattle. He reached two final rounds in his Top Fuel car, the first, at the 1973 World Finals at Ontario Motor Speedway, in spectacular fashion. Markley's dragster exploded the supercharger in his semifinal victory against teenage John Stewart. The front half of the car separated from the rear and rolled three times. The car was totaled, but Markley was unhurt. He came back the following year and reached the final of the U.S. Nationals, where he lost to unheralded Marvin Graham.

Markley aligned himself with the fast-rising Bruins in 1976 and together they made history as the first – and still only – team to win an NHRA Professional-class championship without winning a single national event. According to Bruins, Markley suffered an injury to his hand in an accident in his shop in June 1976 and hired Bruins, who had just completed a six-month stunt driving Jim Green's Green Elephant Funny Car, to help him maintain the car. Later that year, just prior to the Professional Dragster Association event at Orange County Int'l Raceway, Markley handed the kid the keys that began a six-year partnership.


Markley and driver Rob Bruins won the 1979 NHRA Top Fuel championship, and did so without winning a national event, although they came close on several occasions, including that year's World Finals where Bruins was leading a tire-smoking Garlits in the final round before losing traction himself. (Below) Bruins, second from left, and Markley, second from right, receivimg their champion's check and trophy.


Bruins and Markley first left an indelible impression on the drag racing faithful at the 1978 U.S. Nationals, where they reached the final round only to lose to Don Garlits, who scored his fifth Indy title, 5.90, 241.28 to 6.00, 241.28. They weren't down for long, though, as Bruins scored the team's first win at the next event, a huge homestate victory at the Fallnationals in Seattle, and followed with another triumph at the next race, the 1978 World Finals at Ontario. They finished third in the championship race, behind Kelly Brown and Garlits.

They started 1979 with their fourth straight final-round appearance, a runner-up at the Winternationals, and also were runner-up at that year's Mile-High Nationals and World Finals to clinch the championship without reaching the national event winner's circle. Their luck was better in divisional competition, where they scored wins in Boise, Idaho; Seattle; Woodburn, Ore., Brainerd, and Marion, S.D.

Despite their success on the divisional trail, bad luck plagued them at the national events. In the Pomona final a broken fuel fitting allowed Bob Noice a solo run. In the Denver final, Bruins was ahead of Brown but pitched the blower belt. In Ontario, at the famous “one-lane blacktop” event, Markley's clutch expertise earned Bruins low e.t. of eliminations and lane choice in the final against Garlits, but both cars broke traction and Garlits squeaked by for the win, denying the team again. Still, they won the championship by a convincing 1,300-plus-point edge over Brown.

Their last race together was the 1982 Winternationals but Gaines continued to race with new partner Earl Whiting and driver Dwight Salisbury.

“Gaines was a thinker,” said Bruins of his longtime friend. “We would talk for hours on the road about fuel delivery systems and theories. We would play with fuel pump and cam combinations. We would compare diesel engine theory to what we were doing on the race car. His lifelong relationship with Gary Beck always assured me that anytime we were to race Gary I was probably in for the ride of my life, and many times our best lap of an event was against Gary. Gaines was a master in the clutch can. As I would get nervous with anticipation prior a round with a tough competitor I'd ask him what changes he had made in the clutch and he would simply wink and say, "Things will be okay, you just wait and see.' "

Markley's need for speed didn't end after he left drag racing. He and his brother, Charlie, set the C Gas Lakester record at 272.371 on August 16, 2004, during the 56th Annual Bonneville Speed Week Record Runs, with Charlie at the wheel. They set the first leg with a 269 run and backed that up with an even better 275-mph pass for the 272-mph average. This also put them into the exclusive Bonneville 200-mph Club.

Markley is survived by wife Annie, daughter Beth, brother Charlie, cousin Chris Cannon, nieces Julia and Maria, nephew John, and sister in law Mary.

A memorial service will be held April 28 at 11 a.m. at Grace Lutheran Church, 22975 – 24th Avenue South, Des Moines, Wash. A reception will be held at Charlie's house, 6051 SW Woods Court, Portland, Oregon on May 3 at 4 p.m.

(Headshot courtesy Larry Pfister/horsepowerheaven.com)

This story is copyright 2008 by the National Hot Rod Association. It may not be reprinted or reused in any way without the express written consent of NHRA.com.


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[Late BrakeU2]

[ QUOTE ]



, at the 1973 World Finals at Ontario Motor Speedway, in spectacular fashion. Markley's dragster exploded the supercharger in his semifinal victory against teenage John Stewart. The front half of the car separated from the rear and rolled three times.

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I was at that race and vividly remember hitting the deck for that one,thirty five years ago amazing..

[370454s]

Last time I was in Seattle I saw him at a Car Cruise. Real nice Guy. He built a 501 Cadillac motor for my buddy 25 years ago. When I was working at the auto parts store his shop was in the NAPA store about a block away.
Mike

[budnate]

dang that blows, Gaines was a super guy, he and Bob did most all of my motor work, I saw him a few years ago and just had not stopped in to visit after they moved the shop.

to young to go, you should have seen him after they set the record on the flats, he was 18 all over again.

a toast to a great guy!