the Pisano Bros.

The demise of this beautiful car was tragic ....... Sush Matsubara, who also drove the Mondello & Matsubara Fiat altered, was as "hard headed" as they come ............ he refused to back out of the throttle during a wheelstand (or if the car got a little out of shape) ....... he was able to get away with his antics with his little short wheelbase Fiat but the longer wheelbase, heavier funny car wasn't nearly as forgiving to his antics.

The destruction run started with a wheelstand from the right lane at Irwindale .......... Sush stayed totally on the throttle and tried to ride out the wheelstand rather than backing off and letting the car settle ........ the car crossed the center line and immediately was in no-man's land (the center area between the two lanes of the drag strip was not prepped with traction compound and was slick compared to the racing lanes) ............ the car pulled immediately to the left as the left slick lost traction first, and the car slammed nose first into the left lane safety barrier tearing the entire nose off the car ....... the car quickly swapped ends and the rear of the car heavily impacted the left safety barrier totally destroying the rear of the car ......... this sequence happened a second time before the car finally came to a stop broken into multiple pieces ............ pieces were all that Joe and Frank Pisano were able to load onto their transporter and take back to the race shop ....... the amazing thing to me is that Sush continued to drive for the Pisano brothers and destroyed two more funny cars in the same fashion before parting ways with the Pisano brothers ....... I don't know the dynamics of this group, but I have a hard time understanding how someone could lose multiple funny cars to the same hard-headed driver ........... Sush wasn't known as the "Kamikaze Kid" for nothing