Forrest and Charlotte Lucas to keep Garlits' dream alive

Forrest
and Charlotte Lucas and the company they founded, Lucas Oil Products,
will help legend "Big Daddy" Don Garlits honor the pioneers of the
sport by becoming the title sponsor of Garlits' International Drag
Racing Hall of Fame.

Celebrating its 20th year in 2009, Lucas Oil Products already supports
so many current drag racing programs and drivers, the Lucas Oil Drag
Racing Series, and national events in Phoenix, Brainerd, Minn., and
Indianapolis. So when Chrysler was forced to scrub its 19-year
association with the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, the
company was quick to jump and help keep Garlits' dream alive.

Laurie Cannister and the Kalbones Racing Alcohol Funny Car team have put their racing plans on indefinite hold.

The
team was in the final stages of preparing the Funny Car for a
late-spring NHRA debut when team owners Kevin and Wendy Sims received a
phone call informing them that longtime business partner and close
friend, Mike Couch passed away March 6, due to complications of an
illness. Couch was diagnosed with the undisclosed illness just a few
short months ago.

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.

Past
NHRA Pro Stock champion Jim Yates confirmed in his NHRA.com blog that
he's going to call it quits following next weekend's NHRA O'Reilly
Spring Nationals in Houston, Tex. After 405 consecutive races in a
Pontiac, Yates said that he was having a hard time letting go of racing.

Drag Racing is the ultimate competitive sport where every racer has two
goals in mind, maximum performance & win lights. After countless
hours of sweat, blood & tears, Mike Moran has accomplished his
first goal, now he looks forward to the challenge of part two. Behind
the wheel of his familiar ’99 Monte Carlo, Moran became the first
turbocharged competitor to enter the 5 second zone on March 12 at South
Georgia Motorsports Park, running a staggering 5.973 elapsed time @
250.41 mph.

Confidence in the combination is at an all time high. Although the ¼
mile numbers are quite impressive, a quick analysis of the time slip
indicates that much more performance is available. “We definitely left
a little bit on the table on that pass” stated Moran. “We have been
consistently 1.01-1.02 to the 60’ & usually around 195.5 mph to the
660’ on our previous shots, but we had a little extra wheel speed off
the line on that pass, so there is definitely more to come.” The full
incrementals on the pass were 1.036 – 60’, 2.708 – 330’, 3.994 @ 194.52
– 660’, 5.072 – 1,000’ finally resulting in the historic 5.973 @ 250.41
miles per hour.

Nancy Bellemeur, the mother of Top Alcohol Funny Car competitor Sean
Bellemeur, passed away on Wednesday, March 18, at the age of 62 after a
nine-year battle with lung cancer. She was beloved in the drag racing
community while she supported the endeavors of her husband Gregg, who
raced his “Easy Rider” altered entries on the West Coast in the 1970s,
and her son Sean, who came up through the Jr. dragster ranks and has
had success behind the wheel in the Top Alcohol Funny Car and Nostalgia
Top Fuel classes.

The NHRA has received notice from SFI, Inc. that a Notice of
Decertification was issued to Impact Racing Products, Inc. regarding
certain products (listed below), and that Impact will issue a Notice of
Recall of such products. Therefore, effective immediately, the products
listed below will no longer be accepted for use in NHRA racing.
NHRA.com reports that Impact will issue a recall notice today.

If you’re a fan of the Fuel Altereds then you’ll want to be in
Bakersfield, Ca., on May 2nd and 3rd when their Dragfest event kicks
off.

This event, for the first time in over three decades, will have the
legends together on the same strip in competition. CompetitionPlus.com
has learned these AA/FA entries are run by the original families and
crews and they emphasize this is not a cacklefest and these cars will
run side-by-side.

If you watched Bob Tasca III win on Sunday in Gainesville, you might as
well have been watching John Force win another national event.

Tasca, No. 2 in the NHRA Full Throttle Champion Drag Racing Series
Funny Car points standings, considers the 14-time world champion to be
a mentor. He also had a good measure of Tony Pedregon teaching as well.

Between the two seasoned drivers that experience accounts for 16 world
championships, and one huge national event victory last Sunday.

The grandson of noted Ford dealer Bob Tasca, Tasca remembers a
conversation with his elder that led him to travel a successful path.

Force and Pedregon taught him how to win on the track. Grandfather pushed him to make it happen.

There was a time when John Force was the long Mustang driver in the NHRA Funny Car field.

Force had an exclusive on the Mustang body style in the nitro Funny Car
division for nearly a decade but after comments made in a Ford
teleconference yesterday afternoon that exclusivity might be a thing of
the past.

Bob Tasca III was the first team owner to transcend that exclusivity by
debuting a Shelby Cobra version of the nitro Funny Car body in 2008.
The rookie team owner expanded his team to include Tim Wilkerson,
previously a GM frontrunner.