 |
    |
 |
|
|
Grandpa's Back at it Again
|
 |
|
Bobby Warren is still showing the young racers how it's done
|
By Thomas Pope Photos by Dave Kommel, www.autoimagery.com , Roger Richards |
The last time Joel Warren saw his granddad win a race was ... well, Joel hadn't even been conceived. All Joel knew of his grandfather's once-vibrant racing career was from the trophies he'd cradled, the pictures he'd studied, and the collection of yellowed newspaper and magazine clippings. That all changed on May 3, when Bobby Warren - three-time NHRA world champion Bobby Warren, that is - won the NHRA O'Reilly Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, Tenn.
To collect the 14th "Wally" of his storied career, Warren, who turned 70 earlier this year, had to survive seven rounds of eliminations. All six of the drivers Warren beat in head-to-head competition - he had a bye into the finals - were younger than him, and the Bristol triumph gave him the distinction of being the oldest winner in NHRA history. “At my age, I can't really expect to win," Warren said. "I'm just out there enjoying myself, and seeing friends that I don't see anywhere else except the race track." Warren 's drag racing career dates back to the mid-1950s, when he would accompany another Clinton drag racer, Earl Smith, to the fledgling tracks that were popping up in eastern North Carolina . Smith usually drove on Friday and Saturday, but Sunday often found Warren behind the wheel. Not until the late '60s did Warren 's newfound passion drive him to pursue regional and national championships. He would leave his tobacco farm behind to tackle NHRA Division 2 meets and the occasional national event, and in 1970 he became NHRA's Stock world champion when he won the World Finals at Dallas . More championships followed. In 1974, Warren added the Super Stock championship to his growing collection, capturing the World Finals, and in 1978 he racked up another Super Stock crown. Warren won from coast to coast, from Englishtown , N.J. , to California , and the further he advanced in eliminations, the tougher he became to upend. In his first 12 national-event finals, Warren batted 1.000. Not until someone poured syrup in his gas tank at the U.S. Nationals was he finally toppled in a final round, and it wasn't long after that incident that Warren decided to take a break from racing.
Warren had given up farming to open a race engine shop and parts store by then, and he turned the family business over to his drag racing sons, Jeff and Joey. To take the place of racing, Bobby bought a motorhome in which he and his wife, Willa, set out from Clinton to see the parts of North America they hadn't viewed while chasing the NHRA circuit. But after two trips around Alaska , forays into Newfoundland and Nova Scotia , and treks to the Grand Canyon , Warren decided he had had enough of riding without purpose.
“There was nowhere else I really wanted to go,” he said, “and I wanted to race some more.” He fed that desire by turning a 1997 street Pontiac Firebird into a 130-mph racing machine equipped with a four-speed manual transmission and electronic fuel injection. The Bristol race was only Warren 's second outing the season, and he qualified 29th in an 89-car Stock field. Warren 's Firebird covered the quarter-mile from the high 10.30-second range to the low 10.50s, depending on how he adjusted the engine tuneup. Luck would have it that each of his opponents were in slower cars, which gave them, as Warren put it, “the chance to make the first mistake” -- launching before the green to turn on a red disqualification light, or running quicker than their chosen dial-in, which is also grounds for elimination. Three of Warren 's six opponents blew it at the finish line as he hunted them down, running quicker than their dial-in to hand him the win.
In the final round, Warren faced a full-time sportsman racer, Mark Faul of Tacoma , Wash. , who was fresh off of victories against some of the biggest names in Stock. Warren conceded nothing, however, drilling his 37-year-old foe with a better reaction time, running right on his 10.43 dial-in at 10.433, and adding insult to injury by forcing Faul to break out by 15/1,000ths of a second. “I'm sure he underestimated me,” Warren said. The victory was the first for the three-time NHRA world champion since 1992, when he struck gold in Sonoma , Calif. The Bristol triumph ran his final-round record in NHRA national events to 14-2, and despite the roll he was on, he said he was surprised by the outcome. “There are lights mounted to the wall beyond the finish line on both sides of the track, and they light up in the winner's lane so you know what happened,” Warren said. “On that last run, I saw the light come on and I said, ‘That thing's on in my lane.' I was pretty pleased, pretty tickled.”
So was his 10-year-old grandson Joel, who is a frequent Junior Dragster victor at Dunn-Benson Dragstrip and won that portion of the IHRA Division 9 meet at Kinston Drag Strip earlier this summer. As uncle Jeff, the 1999 IHRA Hot Rod world champion, and dad Joey, an NHRA national-event winner, tracked their father's performance via the Internet, grandson Joel was there to see it firsthand. “He stayed primed up the whole time,” Bobby Warren said, “and I kept trying to keep him from getting his hopes up too high. I honestly figured I was going to lose directly.”
He figured wrong, much to the delight of his grandson, who suddenly had plenty of news to share with his fifth-grade classmates at Harrells Christian Academy the next morning. “I sat in the bleachers and watched it,” Joel said. When the win light came in his grandfather's lane, Joel “jumped up and just ran to the end of the track to meet him. I was just really happy. “He said, ‘How's that for waiting 12 years (between wins)?' I said, ‘That was pretty good, wasn't it?' He said he was just tickled to get to the final round again.” Warren doesn't know how much more racing he will do, but he has already exceeded his own expectations for his age. And at his age, he appreciates the less-celebrated parts of racing as much as he does the winning. “We've all got motorhomes and travel together, and we got together one night at Bristol and somebody cooked a big batch of shrimp. “Hey, even when you lose, you've got that going for you.”
|
