McCulloch Joins Them, Then Beats Them : Drag racing: He moves into top fuel to run against his old funny car buddies, then turns 288.36 m.p.h. on his first day.

For most of the last 20 years, drag racing competition in funny cars was dominated by guys nicknamed Snake, Ace, Mongoose and Kenny. Among them, they won 93 National Hot Rod Assn. major events, 12 U.S. Nationals and eight world championships.

Two years ago, the Snake, a.k.a. Don Prudhomme, and Kenny, as in Bernstein, switched from funny cars to top-fuel dragsters. Last year, the Mongoose--Tom McEwen--made the same switch.

That left the Ace, as Ed McCulloch has been known since the day he upset Jerry (the King) Ruth in a match race back in 1965, as the lone member of the original gang still driving funny cars.

It was too much for him.

McCulloch, who will be 50 Sunday, talked his boss, Larry Minor, into letting him drive the team’s top-fuel dragster this season. It was an easy sell. Minor had a new sponsor, and he felt McCullough was just the man to make the most of it. McCullough took over the top fueler driven last year by young Cruz Pedregon, with Pedregon taking McCulloch’s seat in the funny car.

“I want to race those old guys I grew up with--Bernstein, Prudhomme, McEwen, all my friends from the days when we started out together,” McCulloch said.

“This is going to be a big change for me. Practically all my life has been with funny cars. I always stuck up for funny cars and defended them against top fuelers, but times are changing. Other guys have made the switch, so it’s time for me, too. That’s what I want, more than anything. Anything, that is, except winning an NHRA championship.”

McCullough started on a winning note Thursday. In his first official run in a top-fuel dragster, he powered Minor’s red and white car through the trap at 288.36 m.p.h., the top speed as qualifying opened at Pomona’s Fairplex for Sunday’s 32nd Chief Winternationals.

“It would have been a four-second pass had the car run on all eight cylinders for the first 500 feet,” McCulloch said. “Considering what happened, we’re happy with the elapsed time and very encouraged with the speed. We got our baseline run in, and now we can start turning up the wick.”

McEwen, driving baseball star Jack Clark’s unsponsored top-fuel dragster, grabbed the No. 1 provisional qualifying position with a track record 4.901-second run for the quarter mile. It bettered the Pomona record of 4.934 set by Prudhomme last year.

“It was the first full run the car ever made,” McEwen said. “It made me feel great, but it also makes me sick that a car this good might not run much longer. It’s too expensive a hobby for even a big league baseball player, and if we don’t get some sponsorship before Phoenix (Feb. 23) we’ll park it and wait until next year.”

McCulloch is in fourth place with a 5.022. It was the quickest ride of his career. He holds the world funny-car record at 5.132 seconds, set in 1989 at Texas Motorplex.

Three more qualifying rounds are scheduled, today at 2 p.m. and Saturday at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

McCulloch, who lives in Hemet to be near Minor’s racing operation, said another factor in his switch was the sudden surge in interest in the possibility of drag racing’s first 300-m.p.h. run.

“Getting there (300) is going to be a big, big step, but with Lee Beard as my crew chief, I feel we’ve got a head start,” he said. “Lee’s had a car that ran 296.”

Beard was Gary Ormsby’s crew chief when Ormsby ran 296.05 two years ago in Topeka, Kan.

Shortly before Ormsby died of stomach cancer last August, he sold his racing operation to the Walt Austin family. Beard remained with the team and finished the 1991 season with Pat Austin as the driver. The team won the year’s final event, the Winston Finals, at Pomona.

After the season, when the Austins decided to keep their team in the family with Walt as crew chief, Beard signed a three-year contract with Minor.

“It’s hard to accept the fact that Gary’s not with us,” Beard said. “Minor had talked to me for several years, but I had a feeling of loyalty to Ormsby and turned him down. Then things changed and the opportunity returned. This time I jumped at it.”

Beard, who has tuned cars that have made 16 runs in the 290 bracket--more than any other crew chief--doesn’t believe 300 is attainable just yet.

“It will require everything to be perfect,” he said. “I doubt if it will happen this year. I know how hard it was for Gary to reach 296. Four more miles is going to be like entering the twilight zone.”

Although McCulloch has raced funny cars since 1969, he had a brief career in top-fuel dragsters. He hopes his second time around doesn’t end like his first.

“I was working on a new dragster in 1965 in my garage outside Portland,” he recalled. “It had an innovative transmission, and it was not supposed to come out of gear if it were under power. When we finally got the car started, the idle was high and the car took off.

“I tried to stop it by getting it out of gear, but I couldn’t because it was under power. I had two choices--to hit a bridge abutment or make a turn into four lanes of traffic. I decided on the traffic and hit one car, and it turned into a five-car wreck. My dragster was destroyed.

“The police report read: ‘Has no license plates, no lights, no windshield wiper. Why is it out here? What is it?’ ”