Two-time NHRA champion Del Worsham understands when he rolls through the Texas Motorplex gates next Thursday for the Funny Car Chaos season-opener, he will do so with a target firmly etched on his back.

Worsham is a Big Show regular making the bounty on beating him at a premium.

In the interest of fair reporting, the opportunistic opponents will be gunning for Worsham's reputation, which is as top-notch as it gets. However, he's coming to race with pretty much the same outfit as many of his adversaries have.

"We have a 40-foot gooseneck trailer and a duallie that we use for licensing and upgrading," Worsham admitted. And when we go run the Alcohol Dragster that I grew up running."

And before one concludes that Worsham is running is essentially a clone of Alexis DeJoria's Funny Car; think again.

"There's nothing out of our race trailer," Worsham said. "There's nothing common between her car and this car. It's the same parts, but it's different parts. We didn't steal anything out of the inventory to make this happen. So that takes a little bit longer to go through and make old parts and fix them all up and make shit work.

"Every part has to be massaged a little bit and I didn't really spend any money on it cause I'm cheap. So I used stuff that already existed that we had here that needed to be massaged on a loved on a little bit. I know. As I told my wife, everything we do here, it takes longer because you don't just plug it in and play; you have to go through and make it work for what we're doing."

Lest one thinks Worsham is competing willy-nilly with a potluck combination, think again.

"The things that really count, like the cranks and rods and pistons, are brand new," Worsham said with a smile. "Don't mess around with those, don't want to blow up. And it's got a new master cylinder and good brakes on it, so it'll stop. The parts that'll blow you up and catch you on fire are new. So I did make sure of that."

Worsham says he's happy to climb behind the wheel for the first time since 2019.

"I'm excited," Worsham said. "I haven't raced in any real competition since September, elimination-style. I did go over to Qatar, and I ran for Sheik Khalid in an exhibition. And then in 2019, I ran at Cordova for the World Series of Drag Racing in a match race format. And that was fun. We got to the final there, but it's the first time I've really been at elimination-style format in two and a half years. So definitely by far the longest I've been without driving."

Driving to Ennis, Texas from Southern California, old school style, Worsham admits, is a bit like a Woodstock journey. For the seasoned veteran drag racer, it's a throwback to the days of Bill Doner's 64 Funny Cars up and down the West Coast he attended as a kid.

"It reminds me of when I was a kid, we got to OCIR and my dad raced a little Alcohol Funny Car with Richard Day and we'd get out there and everybody ran everybody," Worsham said. "So you could pull up, like, I remember one time we pull up next to Henry Harrison in the Super Chief, and it was a blown fuel nitro Funny Car, versus our little Chevrolet powered Corvette. And it was fun. It was exciting just getting raised like that; even though you probably don't think you have much of a chance and drag racing with traction and everything else that's involved you're still kind of 50/50."

Worsham said he learned valuable lessons while racing Nostalgia Funny Car that he can apply to racing next weekend at the Texas Motorplex.

"The first thing I learned about racing Nostalgia Funny Car if I can apply this, is that if you win, you're supposed to win," Worsham said. "If you don't win that they beat the champ or they beat the professionals. So you really don't win. There's really no winning this, but you can definitely go out there and have fun and I'm going to do that. I'm going to give it a hundred percent."

"We can pull up next to an Alcohol Funny Car with a torque converter and two-step. There's no telling what we're going to race when we get there with 64 Funny Cars, and the only rule is that you have to have a Funny Car body on it. There's just no telling who we're going to get matched up with. So there's a good chance we're going to race somebody that I've never heard of, or I've never raced against then. It should be exciting. My whole life, I've raced against pretty much the same common 25 people. So this is going to be 60, probably 60 people. I've never raced against before."

Worsham credits promoter Chris Graves for pulling off a feat he never believed would happen in the modern era.

"I didn't think we would ever have a 64 Funny Car race again," Worsham said. "The format that Chris has put together for Funny Car Chaos allows this to happen again. The rules are relaxed enough that you don't have to live by any kind of spec racing rules or any performance rules. We do have safety rules, which is good for everybody, but being able to bring whatever you have and race it. It's neat. It's fun. And you can see what happens; they lifted the performance rules, and all of a sudden, bam, there's 64 Funny Cars here. There may be something to be learned from this."

With such a sentimental event on tap, Worsham cannot help but look at his own improbable career where a BMX racer learned how to drive a fuel Funny Car before even procuring a California driver's license.

"I knew at a very young age I wanted to be a drag racer, but I never actually knew at what capacity," Worsham recalled. "Sonny Bryant introduced us to a guy named Art Hendey. He was just as excited as I was about racing and wanted to be a professional. So that's how we ended up racing in the Nitro Funny Car class. And to be driving that car within a couple of years of when all that took place was never in the plans, no one ever planned that out, just kind of worked that way. And when the opportunity was there, I just made the most of it."

Worsham is regarded as one of the top Funny car tuners, and he's content in the role. However, he is far from being retired.

"I'm satisfied with my career, but I'm definitely not over driving, but it's not something every day I wake up and try and figure out where am I going to come up with the funds to get back in the seat," Worsham said."I got out of the car on my own terms. Several times, two or three different times now because the opportunities not driving seemed better than the ones driving at the time. That's not really been true a hundred percent that way, you know, you work hard to get somewhere and to do something. And when you achieve it, I'm the kind of person where I have to have a lot of things going on, and when something gets achieved, or a goal gets achieved, then all of a sudden, my mind is racing off to do something else pretty fast."

Truth be told, Worsham admits he could have been content if his career hadn't taken the path it did.

"I'm fortunate to have the opportunities that I've had so far, whether it was winning Atlanta in 1991, which at that point I was good with my career being over," Worsham said. "I could have not driven again after winning the Southern Nationals at 21 years old and thought that my career was complete. I was lucky at that point.

"But to go on and get sponsored, win races and then get to drive for Alan Johnson and win a Top Fuel Championship, and then get to drive again for Connie Kalitta and race with my buddies, Nicky and John O, that whole team, and winning a championship in Funny Car was just, it's been icing on the cake since then. So I'm a very lucky guy."

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