A former new kid in NHRA’s ultra-competitive Pro Stock category and two veterans with double-digit series championships between them will be attempting to add another overall title when 2008 competition begins next month. 
 
Justin Humphreys, a 2007 Road to the Future (rookie of the year) nominee, Bob Glidden and Richard Maskin gave the assembled masses a glimpse of the RaceRedi Motorsports Pontiac GTO team’s potential in the Auto Club Finals at Pomona, Calif., in November.  The result – a final-round loss to new champion Jeg Coughlin by a slender seven-thousandths of a second – has gnawed on the psyche of Glidden and Maskin during the winter months.
 
So much so that Glidden spent much of the “off-season” at Maskin’s Detroit-area DART Machinery headquarters.  The engine shop’s goal is to provide more horsepower for Humphreys when he mashes the pedal for the first time at Pomona in the CARQUEST Auto Parts Winternationals, Feb. 7-10.  Maskin motors have won 65 national events in Pro Stock and Pro Stock Truck and three Pro Stock championships with Jim Yates (1996-97) and Jeg Coughlin (2000). A former new kid in NHRA’s ultra-competitive Pro Stock category and two veterans with double-digit series championships between them will be attempting to add another overall title when 2008 competition begins next month. 
 
Justin Humphreys, a 2007 Road to the Future (rookie of the year) nominee, Bob Glidden and Richard Maskin gave the assembled masses a glimpse of the RaceRedi Motorsports Pontiac GTO team’s potential in the Auto Club Finals at Pomona, Calif., in November.  The result – a final-round loss to new champion Jeg Coughlin by a slender seven-thousandths of a second – has gnawed on the psyche of Glidden and Maskin during the winter months.
 
So much so that Glidden spent much of the “off-season” at Maskin’s Detroit-area DART Machinery headquarters.  The engine shop’s goal is to provide more horsepower for Humphreys when he mashes the pedal for the first time at Pomona in the CARQUEST Auto Parts Winternationals, Feb. 7-10.  Maskin motors have won 65 national events in Pro Stock and Pro Stock Truck and three Pro Stock championships with Jim Yates (1996-97) and Jeg Coughlin (2000).
 
“I’m optimistic,” said Glidden, a Pro Stock icon with 85 victories and 10 championships.  “We have been working hard on the engine program We’ve had the opportunity to get our problems straightened out. We’ve also worked on the chassis and the car ran really fast in testing at Bradenton (Fla.). But we won’t know how good we’ll be until we run our new stuff at the Las Vegas test session (and Pontiac Pro Stock Showdown, Feb. 1-3).”
 
Humphreys shares Glidden’s enthusiasm.  The Monrovia, Md., resident is a former Sport Compact and Nopi Series champion who turned to Pro Stock last year. “Ending the season on a strong point like we did was a huge morale boost for us and it definitely gave us something to look forward to this year,” he said.  “Bob and Richard are ready to get back to the track. I think they are just as excited as I am about it.”
 
Glidden, who joined Humphreys for the last eight races, felt the team was “capable of winning last year. We made progress.  I made bad (tuning) calls at Richmond (first-round loss) and Las Vegas (second-round loss) and we hurt the engine in the finals at Pomona.  It was still a pretty decent year . . . at least we were going in the right direction.  It was good to finish on a good note.”
 
During Glidden’s short time with the team, he and Humphreys bonded.  The champion with 40 years of racing experience offers solid driving tips and observations that the second-year pro eagerly accepts and implements.
 
“He does a good job driving,” said Glidden, who rarely doles out praise.  “I am impressed with his ability and more so with his mental approach.  He’s a rookie and he wants to be better.  I’ve seen a lot of new guys come and go . . . you can’t tell them anything.
 
“I can see things from outside the car and Justin wants to improve as a driver.  It’s not criticism.  I tell him (how to improve the run) and he works on that and comes back and asks if he did it better.  I like his attitude.  What we are striving for here is for him to be a top Pro Stock driver.  The good ones make their own luck (with reaction times at the starting line). There are guys out there right now that don’t want to race Justin.”
 
Humphreys was solid on the lights, recording career-bests of .003 seconds twice. Each time, however, the effort went for naught due to mechanical problems.  In the nail-biting Finals finish, Humphreys’ reaction was .025 seconds to Coughlin’s .042, but Coughlin lit the win light with a 6.638-second time to Humphreys’ 6.662.
 
“We want to show what we can do this year,” added Humphreys.  “Maybe drivers will look at us a lot differently when they get up (at the starting line) next to us. I’ve learned a lot from Bob – little stuff on driving style, like staging the car and the ways to do burn outs, stuff that makes things easier.  It’s a whole combination of little things.
 
“Last year was such a huge learning curve.  We struggled early in the year, but once Bob got there, he turned it around and started us moving in the right direction.  It just took us a little while for all of us to get on the same page.  I think we definitely showed our capabilities at the end of the year.  The tools are there; we just have to make it all work.”