Gary Gabelich, a San Pedro native, also began his racing career as a teenager, winning first place in the stock eliminator drag racing class at Santa Ana at sixteen. At nineteen, won the world's first jet dragster race, topping 250 mph and also traveled 356 mph at the Bonneville, UT salt flats in a jet car, probably a record for a teen-ager.
He was the first man to break into drag racing's seven-second bracket, driving a Double A Fuel dragster at 7.05 seconds in 1967. He drove the Beach City Chevrolet Corvette funny car to speeds over 200 mph, a first for a Chevrolet funny vehicle powered by a liquid gas-hydrogen peroxide rocket engine, achieving an average speed of 622.287 mph, a land speed record that existed for 13 years.
Gabelich who was killed in 1984, will be represented at the ceremony by his widow, Rae Gabelich, a Long Beach 8th District council member. Mayor Bob Foster, City Manager Pat West and Jim Michaelian, CEO of the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, will join the honorees on the podium. |
