The Winternationals first ran in 1961; now, for more than 50 years, the annual Mellow Yellow NHRA Winternationals opens the drag racing tour. Plenty of excitement in all those years, but this 2014 edition unveiled many new firsts.

The first woman drag racer slipped in the elite three-second-club when Alexis DeJoria coaxed her Patron XO Cafe Camry to a 3.997 ET during qualifying to claim a third place start in the Sunday finals. Fresh off her cameo in the best drag

racing film, Snake and Mongoose, since Shirley Muldowney’s Heart Like A Wheel in 1983, DeJoria took an acting lesson from professor Gary Densham who edged her off the line in their sleepy launches. As she began to pull away, tire smoke billowed from under the Toyota; she pedaled but Densham got the break in his Densham Motorsports Charger and ran a little further before he, too, spit smoke. As FastNews Network exclaimed, “Upset alert!” DeJoria did not win the booby prize, the first woman knocked out in the pro brackets for 2014; that honor passed to Leah Pritchett’s Gumout Dragster.

After leaving on Spencer Massey’s Battery Extender Dragster, Massey’s better rail never trailed though Pritchett looked good in her run. Maybe DeJoria deserves a credit for first out in a tire-fest.

For the first time, the broadcast over the extended qualifying days speculated if legend, John Force, would up his Sweet Sixteen championships to a “Love Me Do” 17. See, back in 1962 the Beatles released this, their first ever single, in England. It peaked at 17. On the flip-side of the 45, back when records were the download of the day, the song reflected most fan’s admiration of the incredible Force: “P.S. I Love You.” Certainly that might “Please Please Me“–the later album containing the two aforementioned hits–so Ford might delay their planned pullout of support for the sport and the fans who stuck with them even when their retail cars were, nicely stated, out of style. As the saying goes in The Godfather classics, Ford would say, “It’s only business;” we still love you. This action if consummated would be the first major blunder Ford made under the Alan R. Mulally reign as its President and CEO. See if he ever gets invited back to a drag strip . . . .

First memorable line of the year came when one of the broadcast blurted that Force is now eligible for the senior discount at Marie Callenders, a well-known California chain. Their tag “Home Cooked Happiness” would appeal to the Funny Car champ as winning the Winternationals in his Ford (!) Mustang in his home state might just fry the remainder of the field, allowing him to careen unseen to number 17.

Ever popular Ron Capps won the first highlight film-clip of the season when the NAPA Auto Parts Charger spread the back-half of the car over much of the track during qualifying runs. He gave the fans a taste of that disaster when in elimination’s quarter-finals his Charger pushed him to the wall, tagging it “You’re it!” style, and thus winning the season’s first DQ–“We ask you to kindly leave the track now as you are officially disqualified from this round. Thank you.”

Now in his general manager’s position with the Al-Anabi team, Brandon Bernstein makes it the first time since 1977 a Bernstein hasn’t been in a dragster. Remember 1977? Apple became a company, the Sex Pistols rock sound was nixed by EMI, Jimmy Carter became President No. 39, and like this year, the Great Lakes Blizzard slammed the Northeast; that was all in just January, too.

Effervescent Clay Millican celebrated a birthday during the weekend by sitting down the Top Fuel Champion, Antron Brown’s Matco Tools ride, with his own Parts Plus Dragster. The significance of this upset is shown in their past races: Brown had taken all ten of them. Brown isn’t slipping, it is Millican is showing he is a Milli-CAN, not a Milli-CAN’T . . . with apologizes to Johnny Depp in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the 2003 film where that line originated. Brown told the broadcast, “We’re not going to get down. We’ll head to Phoenix and try to win there; lean and mean,” becoming the first champion of the 2013 to lose in 2014. There’s always some honor in dishonor in losing. I know. I’ve done it enough.