One can never downplay the tenacity of Funny Car driver Gary Densham.  He’s been down – more than once.  But, he’s never been out, and it looks like he’s going to avoid another knockout punch in 2009.  There’s no question that the year began with Densham trapped in the corner, absorbing body blows – not from his competitors, but from his bank account – or what was left of it.

He struggled through the Winternationals, but then picked up some needed assistance from Asomroso Tequila for the Lucas Oil Slick Mist Nationals in Phoenix.  If reality had been staring Densham in the face before then, a few days prior to the AC Delco Gatornationals he faced it full on, and reluctantly informed his every-loyal mechanics that they had come to the end of the road, and wouldn’t be making the trip to Florida. One can never downplay the tenacity of Funny Car driver Gary Densham.  He’s been down – more than once.  But, he’s never been out, and it looks like he’s going to avoid another knockout punch in 2009.  There’s no question that the year began with Densham trapped in the corner, absorbing body blows – not from his competitors, but from his bank account – or what was left of it.

He struggled through the Winternationals, but then picked up some needed assistance from Asomroso Tequila for the Lucas Oil Slick Mist Nationals in Phoenix.  If reality had been staring Densham in the face before then, a few days prior to the AC Delco Gatornationals he faced it full on, and reluctantly informed his every-loyal mechanics that they had come to the end of the road, and wouldn’t be making the trip to Florida.

“I was miserable at home all during the Gators,” Densham readily admitted to CompetitionPlus.com.  “I got to go to Houston and my dog will love me when I get home because I was kicking him around the house during Gainesville, and my wife was threatening to move out to a motel I was so miserable.  They were happy to see me leave to go to Houston, and now they’ll be happy to see me coming home.”

Densham’s Houston “partnership” with Terry Haddock was put together when it looked like there would only be 15 Funny Cars at the race.  It was a seemingly ideal scenario for both.  As Densham says, “I was planning on just gently running the car down the track so (Haddock) would get his ten grand, and I’d get the 30 points, but they ended up getting more cars, and it did turn out to be kind of a war.  I figured I’d need every point I could get if I managed to put something together to run the full year.  I’d need ‘em if I had any hope of making the Top 10.”

Contrary to rumor, Densham claims he’s not in debt.  “You can only spend what you have,” he says, but he does acknowledge that running the second half of last season without the proper funding “was probably a mistake. It wiped out whatever savings I might have had.  I’m not complaining, it all turned out great, but financially it was a disaster.”

Densham will be heading to Las Vegas this weekend with additional backing from AsomBroso, but things will be a bit iffy after that.  It’s unlikely that he’ll be able to run the remainder of the Full Throttle Series, but he does say that “If my guys don’t have full time jobs, or I can put together some help, I’m going to try and run Sonoma, the second Las Vegas race and Pomona for the Finals.  But, the truth of the matter is that you can’t really make any plans on that right now.”

In 2002, when Densham won the Last Vegas race, he went off at 14 to 1 odds on the Palace Station books, and this writer was fortunate enough to have cashed in on his victory.  Assured that if the odds are good enough we’d wager on him again, Densham said, “See if you can find one of those multi-million dollar slots that’ll pay off on a couple of quarters, okay?”