Mario Andretti
Amato retired in 2005 as the winningest driver in NHRA history with 57 feature wins and 5 Top-Fuel NHRA championships.(1984, '88, '90, '91, '92)
Joe Amato was born on June 13, 1944 in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. For nearly 20 years he was one of the shining stars in the National Hot Rod Association. He put his name firmly into the record books with five Top Fuel Championships (1984, 1988 & 1990-1992), 52 national victories and 56 No. 1 qualifying spots driving the fastest accelerating race cars in the world.
In the 19 seasons between 1982 and 2000, Amato finished in the Top-10 in NHRA Top Fuel points every year; a total which includes 15 Top-5s. And he was the first Top Fuel driver to exceed 260 MPH and 280 MPH in competition.
Amato started racing go karts when he was 11 years old. Before switching to the Top Fuel division, Amato won three Top Alcohal and two two Pro Comp victories.
Amato got introduced to Drag Racing when, as an 11-year-old kid, some of the men who worked at his father’s auto parts store – which developed into the Keystone Automotive Warehouse chain – took him to local events. That soon led him to racing Go-Karts and then he got his first car which was a 1953 Ford.
Due to his father’s illness, Amato left high school when he was 16 to help run the family business. Then four years later after his father died he was the head of a growing company that had five stores specializing in high-performance equipment.
However, even with all of that going on in his life, Amato realized that his racing success on the drag strip was also something that helped to grow his business and in the late 1970s and early 1980s he ran a series of winning Top Alcohol Funny Cars and Top Alcohol Dragsters.
But in 1982 he made the big leap to Top Fuel Dragsters and from that point on he was one of the most consistent drivers in the supercharged, mega-horsepower rear-engined race cars.
A longtime fan favorite, Amato – who is ranked No. 9 on the NHRA’s 50th Anniversary Top-50 Drivers list (1951-2000) – had an easygoing nature that made him very approachable.
His 52 Top Fuel victories came as a result of competing in 99 final rounds and he won the special Budweiser Shootout in Pomona, California, for the NHRA’s best Top Fuel drivers a record six times (1985, 1987-1990 & 1992) in 16 appearances.
Amato and longtime crew chief Tim Richards are also credited with introducing a new chassis to Top Fuel which featured – among other things – a rear wing that was mounted higher and farther back than it was in previous designs. And with this car in its first outing in March 1984 at Gainesville (Florida) Raceway, Amato was the first driver to cover the quarter-mile at over 260 miles per hour when he stopped the clocks at 262.39 mph.
Then, in September 1987 at Maple Grove Raceway in Mohnton, Pennsylvania, he broke the 280 mile-per-hour barrier with a quarter-mile run of 280.98 mph and he also produced the sport’s first 4.5-second pass – a 4.595-second run in 1996 at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kansas.
Amato’s career-best speed and elapsed time over the quarter-mile standard, however, were 326.67 mph and 4.516 seconds.
Although he never experienced a bad crash in his career, Amato suffered chronic back pain from thousands of Top Fuel runs. But what finally made him call it a career was a detached retina that began to interfere with his vision. Laser eye surgery fixed this problem, however, and he won his final victory as a Top Fuel driver on September 17, 2000, at the 16th Keystone Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway, his home track, in front of a large group of friends and fans.
Amato started his own Top Fuel team in 2001 with Darrell Russell as his driver and they opened the season by winning the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona.
In 2005, however, three-time winning Top Fuel car owner Joe Amato reluctantly made the decision to retire from the sport completely and to concentrate on his other business interests.
Joe Amato was born on June 13, 1944 in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. For nearly 20 years he was one of the shining stars in the National Hot Rod Association. He put his name firmly into the record books with five Top Fuel Championships (1984, 1988 & 1990-1992), 52 national victories and 56 No. 1 qualifying spots driving the fastest accelerating race cars in the world.
In the 19 seasons between 1982 and 2000, Amato finished in the Top-10 in NHRA Top Fuel points every year; a total which includes 15 Top-5s. And he was the first Top Fuel driver to exceed 260 MPH and 280 MPH in competition.
Amato started racing go karts when he was 11 years old. Before switching to the Top Fuel division, Amato won three Top Alcohal and two two Pro Comp victories.
Amato got introduced to Drag Racing when, as an 11-year-old kid, some of the men who worked at his father’s auto parts store – which developed into the Keystone Automotive Warehouse chain – took him to local events. That soon led him to racing Go-Karts and then he got his first car which was a 1953 Ford.
Due to his father’s illness, Amato left high school when he was 16 to help run the family business. Then four years later after his father died he was the head of a growing company that had five stores specializing in high-performance equipment.
However, even with all of that going on in his life, Amato realized that his racing success on the drag strip was also something that helped to grow his business and in the late 1970s and early 1980s he ran a series of winning Top Alcohol Funny Cars and Top Alcohol Dragsters.
But in 1982 he made the big leap to Top Fuel Dragsters and from that point on he was one of the most consistent drivers in the supercharged, mega-horsepower rear-engined race cars.
A longtime fan favorite, Amato – who is ranked No. 9 on the NHRA’s 50th Anniversary Top-50 Drivers list (1951-2000) – had an easygoing nature that made him very approachable.
His 52 Top Fuel victories came as a result of competing in 99 final rounds and he won the special Budweiser Shootout in Pomona, California, for the NHRA’s best Top Fuel drivers a record six times (1985, 1987-1990 & 1992) in 16 appearances.
Amato and longtime crew chief Tim Richards are also credited with introducing a new chassis to Top Fuel which featured – among other things – a rear wing that was mounted higher and farther back than it was in previous designs. And with this car in its first outing in March 1984 at Gainesville (Florida) Raceway, Amato was the first driver to cover the quarter-mile at over 260 miles per hour when he stopped the clocks at 262.39 mph.
Then, in September 1987 at Maple Grove Raceway in Mohnton, Pennsylvania, he broke the 280 mile-per-hour barrier with a quarter-mile run of 280.98 mph and he also produced the sport’s first 4.5-second pass – a 4.595-second run in 1996 at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kansas.
Amato’s career-best speed and elapsed time over the quarter-mile standard, however, were 326.67 mph and 4.516 seconds.
Although he never experienced a bad crash in his career, Amato suffered chronic back pain from thousands of Top Fuel runs. But what finally made him call it a career was a detached retina that began to interfere with his vision. Laser eye surgery fixed this problem, however, and he won his final victory as a Top Fuel driver on September 17, 2000, at the 16th Keystone Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway, his home track, in front of a large group of friends and fans.
Amato started his own Top Fuel team in 2001 with Darrell Russell as his driver and they opened the season by winning the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona.
In 2005, however, three-time winning Top Fuel car owner Joe Amato reluctantly made the decision to retire from the sport completely and to concentrate on his other business interests.