Longtime Top Fuel owner-driver Bruce Litton’s race shop and hauler business sit right across the street from the main gate of Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis.
 
Yet his path back to NHRA competition in his dragster for the first time in three years in NHRA action, at the 2013 Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals, has wound from Orlando to San Antonio, through Edmonton in Western Canada to Ontario’s Grand Bend, and south to London, Ky., north to Martin, Mich., and final down along the Mississippi River at Memphis.
 
Moreover, Litton has spent more time since 2014 in a nitro Funny Car than he has in a Top Fuel dragster.
 
So why has he made such an unlikely tour?
 
The two-time International Hot Rod Association Top Fuel champion has a loyalty to and a fondness for that sanctioning body, but the IHRA dropped the Top Fuel class. So Litton bought the Boninfante family’s iconic U.S. Male Funny Car operation and has been running that, along – at selected events – with his dragster. Nicky Boninfante, currently Del Worsham’s crew chief, is a longtime friend of Litton and his former tuner and consultant.
 
“I stayed with the IHRA. I’ve been with the IHRA since 1990, 1991. So I’ve been there a long, long, long, long time. We’ve had a lot of success at IHRA. Through all those years up to now, you could barely count the events we missed on one hand,” Litton said.
 
However, he said, “My heart’s with the Top Fuel car. It’s what we like to run. We’ll see how it does. We’ve tested the car a little bit. We ran it last week at the World Series [of Drag Racing, at Memphis International Raceway]. It shows good promise. Of course, our goal is always to be competitive. I want to be competitive and see what happens.”
 
He was plenty competitive at Memphis. In a flashback to the mid-2000s, he faced Clay Millican, a six-time Top Fuel champion, in the Top Fuel final round, just like in the “old days.” Millican set a track record to win, but a runner-up finish has Litton buoyed.
 
“We’ve been running the Funny Car the last two and half years or so. It’s just something to play around with,” Litton said. “We never got real, real serious with it, but the car runs pretty good. [We like to] just go out and have a good time. It’s a little bit easier to run than the Top Fuel car. There are some guys who are really flying in these cars. We’re probably considered a middle-of-the-pack kind of car. The car goes down [the track without drama] usually. But Jason Rupert and Mike McIntyre are running really, really good. So we just play around with it. I did the Frank Hawley Drag Racing School] and got my license.
 
“Now we’re concentrating on what we call our ‘A’ car, our NHRA car. We’re really trying to make it look good this weekend,” he said.
 
Litton was quick to share that running and maintaining a dragster and a Funny Car at the same event isn’t nearly the thrill it sounds like it is.
 
“At Michigan [at the Aug. 12-13 IHRA Northern Nationals] we ran both cars. When you run two cars at the same time,” Litton said, “it’s not twice as much fun. It’s three times the work.”
 
It’s no secret what’s keeping Litton from entering more races.
 
“It’s more money than it is anything,” he said. “I would like to run everything I can with the IHRA. I’d like to run some of the NHRA races. It has to do with money, and there’s not enough of it to go around. We do what we can do and accept that. That’s just what it is. If we can get there more, we will. And if we can’t, we won’t. The Top Fuel car will eat you out of house and home.
 
“We went and bought a bunch of parts. We got a good line on stuff. We’re just trying to make this car competitive,” he said.
 
And that’s the hitch.
 
“I don’t want to go there just to go. I want to go there to try to go some rounds,” he said.
 
That desire compounds the spending.
 
Litton is fully aware the NHRA Top Fuel class has changed since he raced the last time.
 
“I keep up with what’s going on. I watch every bit of it I can on the Internet. I’ve seen the fields are
tighter, and I’ve seen a lot more of the cars going faster,” he said.
 
In his most recent appearance at the U.S. Nationals, in 2013, Litton missed the cut, last among the 25 entrants with a 4.165-second elapsed time. Morgan Lucas sat on the bump at 3.878. Antron Brown led the field with a 3.811-second effort, as just .013 of a second separated the first seven in the order. For perspective, Brown was top qualifier less than two weeks ago at Brainerd, Minn., and his low E.T. was 3.679 seconds.  
 
So that’s a significant change. And Litton said he’d like to be part of that performance surge: “That’s our goal, to go out there and have a good time of it.”
 
In the meantime, another Litton arrived on the scene: Bill Litton. The newcomer, who owns a financial planning company in La Jolla, Calif., is no relation to the Indianapolis-based Bruce Litton. Bill Litton made his NHRA Top Fuel debt at Denver and competed in the Western Swing races there and at Sonoma, Calif., and Seattle in a Chuck and Del Worsham-owned dragster that began at Morgan Lucas Racing and saw action with driver Steve Chrisman at Phoenix and Las Vegas. Among the team members is Jeff Arend, a longtime Funny Car driver.
 
The NHRA has room for all Littons. But Bruce Litton isn’t going away, even though his across-the-street trip took several thousand miles to complete.