SCOTT PALMER - "MEANING OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP"
Scott Palmer could have whined that if it weren't for poor luck he'd
have none at all. Or he could have grumbled that no good deed goes
unpunished.Instead, the Top Fuel driver found out just how many people care about him.
Call it karma. Call it proof that drag-racing folks aren’t jaded. Call it a sign that decent and generous people still step up to help a friend in need.
How Scott Palmer found this out started with a phone call from the IHRA office. Today's sudden economic downturn had taken its toll on the Top Fuel class preparing for the recent President's Cup Nationals at Budds Creek, Maryland. Only six drivers were planning to attend, and Palmer, who was fourth in the standings after scoring his career-first No. 1 qualifying position at Milan, wasn't among them. So IHRA Director of Operations Sharon Ramlow called Palmer and persuaded him to make the 22-hour trip from Marionville, Missouri, to Maryland International Raceway.
Top Fuel's Scott Palmer discovers true friends
Scott Palmer could have whined that if it weren't for poor luck he'd have none at all. Or he could have grumbled that no good deed goes unpunished.
Instead, the Top Fuel driver found out just how many people care about him.
Call it karma. Call it proof that drag-racing folks aren’t jaded. Call it a sign that decent and generous people still step up to help a friend in need.
How Scott Palmer found this out started with a phone call from the IHRA office. Today's sudden economic downturn had taken its toll on the Top Fuel class preparing for the recent President's Cup Nationals at Budds Creek, Maryland. Only six drivers were planning to attend, and Palmer, who was fourth in the standings after scoring his career-first No. 1 qualifying position at Milan, wasn't among them. So IHRA Director of Operations Sharon Ramlow called Palmer and persuaded him to make the 22-hour trip from Marionville, Missouri, to Maryland International Raceway.
"We weren't prepared at all to go to that race," he said. However, within three hours, he bought expensive last-minute airline tickets for crew members, loaded the hauler, and left for the racetrack -- in his words, "like an idiot. But we've done crazier things than that." He said his kind of racing "addiction" is "the worst ever."
Joking aside, Palmer said he mobilized quickly because "IHRA has been so good. They honestly appreciate the racers, and I said we would try to do our best to put on a good show. IHRA really appreciates you being there."
We had racers fighting for us," he said. "It made me glad I went. I do not regret going. It's nice to know that people at least have a little respect for me. You can’t buy that -- you have to earn it. Everybody wanted to help out with something. I would never take anything from those guys. But that makes you feel real good. IHRA did not leave us hanging, though. - Scott Palmer
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Scraping together as much money as his bank's ATM would allow him, Palmer and a friend traded truck-driving duties and stopped only twice to buy gas. He said he calculated that the trip cost him about $1,800 -- more if one considers the emotional toll.
Palmer and his crew, which was already short-handed because Don Prudhomme just had hired one man to work on Larry Dixon's dragster, arrived in Maryland in time for Saturday's first session of qualifying. He said he hadn't put a new burst panel in the manifold, so on the burnout, his dragster blew up. Then the rain came, washing out the final qualifying session. Palmer did not qualify.
IHRA, fellow racers show they care
That's when not only the IHRA but also his fellow racers showed Palmer the utmost respect. IHRA looked for every loophole in the rulebook that would permit Palmer to race that Sunday but simply couldn’t find one.
As for IHRA, Palmer said, "They did more than they had to do to help us out. They even asked me, 'What do you think we should do?' I said there is nothing you can do." Later in the year, he said, any points he might have accumulated by being allowed into the Budds Creek race could be the ones to make a difference. "I don't want to be involved in any kind of controversy," he said.
Even though he said the Budds Creek debacle and the fact that a long-ago-booked July 19 match race at Wichita will prevent him from racing at the IHRA's Grand Bend national event and "will definitely kill our championship deal," Palmer said he felt as though he had let down the IHRA.
He said IHRA officials Ramlow, Skooter Peaco, Mike Baker, and Aaron Polburn "were noticeably disappointed. If that happened in NHRA, there would have been no effort to make any kind of concession. NHRA is just not as close-knit. It's more different, more corporate. Aaron Polburn is genuinely concerned about his racers."
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On-track rivals Bruce Litton and Bobby Lagana, along with Bob Gilbertson's Nitro Funny Car team and others petitioned IHRA to let Palmer into the already short field. Litton offered to write a check to help defray Palmer's expenses. Lagana, notoriously underfunded, even volunteered to donate $500 he could ill afford to give away.
(But it was for an honorable cause, Lagana said he figured. "Our motto is if there's money in our pocket, we're going to spend it. We've never made a dollar drag racing, ever." Besides, he said, "I've got a lot more than money that makes me rich.")
Lagana said, "Pretty much all the field wanted him to be in. Scott's a good guy. And c'mon, man -- he came all that way and Saturday and then dropped an intake valve and then it rained. And to get nothing at all . . . "
In the end, no one had to donate any money to Palmer, for IHRA helped him out, theorizing that it got him into his mess and that it should at least help to get him out of it.
"IHRA did the right thing, over and beyond," Lagana said of Palmer's situation. "I was proud of them."
Palmer was pleasantly surprised. "We had racers fighting for us," he said. "It made me glad I went. I do not regret going. It's nice to know that people at least have a little respect for me. You can’t buy that -- you have to earn it. Everybody wanted to help out with something. I would never take anything from those guys. But that makes you feel real good. IHRA did not leave us hanging, though."
That crazy weekend, Palmer said, "worked out good for us."
Maybe that "I'm blessed no matter what" attitude is why Palmer's fellow racers like him so much. Or, as Lagana put it, "Karma's big."
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Everybody loves Scott
What's big, too, is Palmer's circle of friends in the NHRA side of drag racing.
"Jim O (Oberhofer) and the Kalitta Cowboys have helped me a lot. So has Johnny West, and so has David Powers. David will tell me about the track conditions and what to look for, how to drive my car around those spots. He doesn't have to do any of that, but he has. I guess I've been lucky."
Blessed might be a better word. Smart is appropriate, too, although Palmer jokes that "I'm not smart enough to quit." He said, "When I have a question, I go to the top teams out there. The worst thing for a Top Fuel team is tearing things up. It's easy to look stupid in a Top Fuel car. If you're not being competitive, you want to leave that racetrack and nobody knows you were there."
As for the notion of being blessed, Palmer just happened to find a friend in Rob Flynn, who's best known to folks as crew chief of Hot Rod Fuller's CAT Dragster.
In 2004, the season-opening Wnternationals were rained out and rescheduled for the following weekend. "It was just me and Spencer Massey. Spencer was doing the clutch and was in charge of the whole car. We did everything in Ozark, Missouri," Palmer said.
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His crew members had flown home and, typical of a low-budgeted team, they really couldn’t afford to return. Palmer picked up a pair of Australian hands, Mark and Pete, who had just bought a race car from Jay Payne and had been working for Steve Harker. Flynn was between jobs at the time and asked if Palmer would mind if he hung out at his pit. Palmer didn't object.
Palmer's first run, in Friday night's session, resulted in a near blowover. But the next day, he qualified No. 12 with a career-best 4.633-second, 314.75-mph pass on a scary run. At about 1,000 feet, the engine exploded and cut the left rear tire. But Palmer, who debuted in 2002 and still had fewer than 20 passes in a dragster, stopped the car without further trouble -- and ran his career-best speed (which he eclipsed at Topeka in 2005 with a 328.70 -- career-best elapsed time is his 4.572 at the Norwalk 2007 event).
Palmer was a no-show that Sunday morning, but he proved a lot to the NHRA regulars that he could handle a 7,000-horsepower race car properly. And he established a rapport with Flynn.
That came in handy as he earned his career-first top-qualifier award in IHRA competition at Milan, Michigan, in May. "We didn’t have a crew chief, and Rob gave us a baseline tune-up," Palmer said. After his superior performance, Palmer declared that Flynn "is a god!"
Flynn, by the way, told him, "I keep getting phone calls now, asking for God." But, Flynn said, "You don’t have to keep thanking us. You're doing this on your own."
No matter how that turns out, it is a great feeling for Scott Palmer.
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