Cinderella has nothing on Top Fuel racer Bobby Lagana Jr.

Sunday, March 15th at 3:30 PM, EST looked an awful lot like midnight as the Cinderella story for the veteran low buck Top Fuel racer from Scarsdale, N.Y. danced his last dance in the semi-finals at the NHRA ACDelco Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.

Lagana smoked the tires at the hit of the throttle while opponent Cory McClenathan exploded an engine down track and coasted through the lights with flames in tow.

After knocking off Spencer Massey and point leader Antron Brown, his 8,000-horsepower carriage turned into a pumpkin.

Oh, what could have been.

Cinderella has nothing on Top Fuel racer Bobby Lagana Jr.

Sunday, March 15th at 3:30 PM, EST looked an awful lot like midnight as the Cinderella story for the veteran low buck Top Fuel racer from Scarsdale, N.Y. danced his last dance in the semi-finals at the NHRA ACDelco Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.

Lagana smoked the tires at the hit of the throttle while opponent Cory McClenathan exploded an engine down track and coasted through the lights with flames in tow.

After knocking off Spencer Massey and point leader Antron Brown, his 8,000-horsepower carriage turned into a pumpkin.

Oh, what could have been.

“That was kind of crazy. It’s one of those things you still don’t believe it really happened, but it did,” Lagana admitted.

The not-so-funny thing for Lagana is that it really almost didn’t happen. He almost didn’t get to race due to a technical infraction discovered on Thursday.

The NHRA changed the way Top Fuel wings are certified and not being a regular on the tour, Lagana missed the change.

That’s when Don Prudhomme Racing tuners Donnie Bender and Todd Smith called in a favor with wing specialist Mike Magara to keep Lagana and the Tire Kingdom-sponsored dragster in the game.

As happy as Lagana was in reaching the semis, he was equally disappointed in returning the favor by defeating Bender and Smith’s driver in the first round.

“I felt kind of bad,” Lagana admitted. “Those are some real nice guys. I had never even met Donny before this weekend and he still went out of his way to do us a huge favor. It was kind of weird going up against them but it was one of those things, what are you going to do?”

Lagana, and younger brother Dom, plan at least six more stops on the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series and wouldn’t mind running a seventh except the event in Englishtown, his hometown venue, conflicts with an IHRA national event. He is committed to run the ten-race IHRA tour.

Part of Lagana hates to see the larger teams lose sponsorships and fall by the wayside, the other part of him, the competitive side, enjoys the opportunity to compete and have a better chance of success, like the outing he enjoyed in Gainesville.

“It’s opening a door for us, and smaller teams to win, that was about to close a couple of years ago,” Lagana explained. “That last qualifying run [in Gainesville] was really unnecessary because we were already in.

“It’s nice to make that run knowing you’re already in and you can learn stuff. Normally we wouldn’t make this run but we wanted to learn more stuff about the car.”

Tire Kingdom ended up on the side of Lagana’s car when their normally sponsored team, owned by Paul Richards, didn’t have a car completed in time to compete in Gainesville.

The Gainesville outing was the kind of positive spin Lagana needed following a disastrous season where he lost a good portion of his sponsorship when a key backer went out of business.

“My mom and dad, they taught us to go at our own pace and go slowly and everything else around you will slowly come back to pace,” Lagana explained. “You just have to stay focused on what you have to do.”

Lagana barely finished his positive message when he continued with praise for those who got him and his Cinderella story to the dance.

“I’m so lucky to have my brother, the Weinert family [IHRA officials] and we’ve kind of invaded them right now. Their kids are working on our car. We just have a ton of support; you just can’t help to do well when you have that much support.”

If you’ll notice, when Lagana has the least he’s able to extract the most success.

Last year, Lagana opened the season in a style most lesser financed racers would love. He towed to the IHRA Texas Nationals in San Antonio, Tex., with an eighteen-wheeler large enough to fit his whole independent operation inside.

He’s no longer in that transporter and has since returned to a duallie truck and tag-along trailer, the same combination he used to get to Gainesville.

Lagana was back in his comfort zone in Gainesville.

“I don’t think we could imagine any other way,” Lagana said about the return to penny pinching.

“It’s funny because last year at San Antonio we went to the race with a tractor trailer and two major crew chiefs and a huge motor home, but when we went right back to where we were supposed to be so did the comfort level. Even if we had to quit tomorrow I believe we’ve made it and I’m satisfied with what we’ve done.

That’s why Lagana hasn’t missed his glass slipper in the least.