{"id":99878,"date":"2025-02-12T13:04:02","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T21:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=99878"},"modified":"2025-02-12T13:04:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T21:04:02","slug":"jet-car-drag-racer-big-al-hanna-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/jet-car-drag-racer-big-al-hanna-has-died\/","title":{"rendered":"Jet Car Drag Racer Big Al Hanna Has Died"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Big Al Hanna’s Eastern Raider Funny Car – photographer unknown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Alan Thomas Hanna, known to his friends in the straight-line motorsports community as Big Al, has passed away at the age of 82. A longtime resident of Enfield, Connecticut, Hanna was the force behind Hanna Motorsports, an enterprise that built and raced jet cars, as well as a parts supplier to the sport. His exploits, especially during New England Dragway\u2019s Jet Cars Under the Stars and Night of Fire events, always excited fans of the sport.<\/p>\n

Hanna\u2019s \u201cEastern Raider\u201d Funny Cars entertained fans and frustrated competitors for years along the Eastern Seaboard in particular, although he was known to travel to other racing circuits to share his talents. Hanna was always known for his attention to the appearance, as well as the aptitude of his machinery.<\/p>\n

Hanna, who had been in the sport of drag racing for nearly 60 years, started by building models of street cars and, while still in high school became a member of local car clubs. He started by racing a Ford Fairlane, but while seeing Funny Car action at his local Colchester dragstrip, Big Al became hooked on Floppers. His first Phantom Cuda morphed into Eastern Raider funny cars. That ended when his workshops were raided and robbed.<\/p>\n

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After that tragedy Hanna began to build jet cars, which he built and raced for more than 30 years. While he did return to nitro competition for a short time in a Top Fuel dragster, Hanna made his mark on the sport by building equipment for the nitro classes, including the extended bell mouth seen on all the jet funny cars currently in operation.<\/p>\n

Hanna and his wife of more than 62 years, Ellen, spent more than 40 years in the sport and, together, owned more than 40 race cars, won many jet car championships and set many records in that arena. While he was employed by Sun Electric Corporation from 1978 through to 1992, it was Hanna Motorsports Pro-Race Inc. that was his baby. He is survived by Ellen, two sons and their wives, Scott and Diane Hanna of Memphis, TN and Richard and Jennifer Hanna of Enfield. The Hannas have eleven grandchildren.<\/p>\n

Services are scheduled for February 12, with visitation and memorials set from 10am to noon on Wednesday at Browne Memorial Chapels, 43 Shaker Road, Enfield, CT. Burial follows in Mt. St. Benedict Cemetery in Bloomfield, CT. Donations in Big Al Hanna\u2019s memory may be made to D.R.A.W., the Drag Racing Association of Women, 4615 South Hazelton Lane, Tempe AZ 85282.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Thomas Hanna, known to his friends in the straight-line motorsports community as Big Al, has passed away at the age of 82.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":99879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029],"tags":[11537,11541,11540,11539,2010,11542,11538],"class_list":["post-99878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","tag-big-al-hanna","tag-d-r-a-w","tag-drag-racing-auxiliary-of-women","tag-eastern-raider","tag-ford-fairlane","tag-hanna-motorsports-pro-race-inc","tag-jet-cars"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/utf-8Image-2-11-25-at-11.10u202fAM-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-pYW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99878"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99889,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99878\/revisions\/99889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}