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THURS GALLERY FRI. GALLERY SAT. GALLERY

 

 

SUNDAY NOTEBOOK -  TOP FUELERS, TAKE COVER – JUSTIN ASHLEY AND ANTRON BROWN STORM COMING

TOUGH CLASS, BUT ASHLEY READY TO BE AT TOP – When Justin Ashley won the Top Fuel final at last October’s NHRA Texas Fall Nationals Stampede of Speed, he got the dubious treat of donning a cowboy hat, straddling a mechanical bull while trying to handle a 12-pound Wally trophy, and celebrating like a city-slicker Suburban Cowboy.

“That, I wasn't so sure about,” the Phillips Connect / Vita C Dragster driver said this weekend during preseason training at Chandler, Ariz. “Being from New York, wearing a cowboy hat, riding a bull, that stuff doesn't really go with me too well. But you learn from each experience, right?” 

If he thought that – and scrambling to complete the winners circle photo shoot before an unforgiving tornado was about to bear down on the East Texas landscape – was a challenge, he knows he has an equally daunting task awaits him. Starting this coming Friday, the Lucas Oil Winternationals at California’s Pomona Raceway will kick off a 22-race season that is expected to feature the most grueling competition the Top Fuel class ever has seen. 

Preseason hyperbole is nothing new, and every year observers predict, “The class is tougher than ever.” But this time that just might be a right-on-the-money forecast. Eight-time champion Tony Schumacher and relentless 2019 rookie of the year Austin Prock are back. Steve Torrence aims to extend his consecutive-championship streak to five. Three-time champion Antron Brown is ready to prove both his sport-growing business acumen and resurrect his on-track dominance. Leah Pruett is helping the new Tony Stewart Racing team make an impressive debut on the track where she won last summer. Doug Kalitta has a powerful new weapon this year in tuner Alan Johnson as he pursues his elusive first series crown. Shawn Langdon and Brittany Force, both titlists, want to relive their glory moments. Mike Salinas continues to live up to his Scrappers Dragster name. Doug Foley, Buddy Hull, and Josh Hart have stepped up their games and are eager to prove that single-car teams can be right in the leadership mix. 

And Ashley won’t be blindsided. 

“You see the way the Top Fuel field is this year. It's going to be tough. It's going to be competitive. It really is. This year is a special year,” Ashley said. “I think it's probably the toughest year we've seen in maybe a decade. It's going to be that difficult. Top to bottom, the field – even qualifying – is going to be stressful. 

“We have to always be in our A game, right? There's no race where we can go out there and say, ‘Oh, we'll have to just put that on the back burner.’ We have to stack round wins and stack national-event wins to be able to be even in the conversation to make the top 10. That starts here in Phoenix,” he said. 

He had only to look across his pit area to see one of his biggest pillars of support: the newly established Antron Brown Motorsports and its top-drawer owner-driver, crew chief brain trust, business savvy, and experience. Ashley and the Phillips Connect/Vita C team from Mike Green-led Dustin Davis Motorsports has forged a technical and marketing partnership with Brown’s Matco Tools/Toyota/Sirius xm/Hangsterfer’s-sponsored, Mark Oswald-/Brian Corradi-orchestrated operation, and Brown, who quickly is emerging as drag-racing’s role model for performance and professionalism. 

“It's pretty cool. Coming here for the first time for testing is exciting, and pulling up and seeing your rig parked right next to Antron’s is cool,” Ashley said. “To be able to lean on each other is really going to be healthy for us,” Ashley said. “Knowing they [the conglomerate of crew chiefs] were going to be working together as a team is really exciting for me. It's one of those deals that I just know is going to be mutually beneficial for everybody involved.” 

For all the respect Ashley expressed for his rivals and for the fierceness he is expecting to encounter, he said he has to put on his blinders. 

“You see a lot of different storylines, and there's a lot of people that are back running full time, right? We have Prock, we have Schumacher, we have Josh Hart. Those are all really good drivers and really good teams. So when it comes to that stuff, we can't worry about it. That's not going to do us any good,” Ashley said. “We have to focus on ourselves and being the best version of ourselves that we could be. And then wherever we are at the end of the day, we'll know that we put our best foot forward.” 

Ashley finished fourth in the 2021 standings, and he said, “I think there are really two ways to look at it. One is with gratitude, right? We're grateful that we finished fourth. That's a big deal. We're racing against the best people in the world, and I felt that we had a fantastic season, but you always want to be No. 1, right? That's why we're out here. We're out here to win races. We're out here to win championships, and that's our goal this year – just like it's Antron's goal, just like it's Steve's goal and Tony's goal and everyone out here. We all have that same goal that we're trying to reach, but at the end of the day, there's only one champion, and that's what makes it so special. But make no mistake about it, we're out here starting in Phoenix, putting our best foot forward to prepare ourselves for a long season so come Pomona we're in the hunt to be able to win the championship.” 

At this past weekend’s PRO Nitro Spring Training, he said he was concentrating more on learning about his brand-new car and its qualities and putting some laps on it: “We want to make sure that everything works like we expect it to work. We made a lot of changes in the off season that are hopefully going to help improve our performance, just the new . . . everything. Made a lot of changes in the clutch department and the brand-new chassis.” 

And when he gets in a groove and starts to add to his two-victory count, Justin Ashley will be able to enjoy that winners-circle photo opportunity. He might not get a commemorative hat or be cajoled into settling into a saddle. But one thing is certain. Ashley is planning to storm the scene this season, and a tornado is coming. 

ASHLEY-BROWN PACT POWERFUL – The phrases “single-car team” and “multi-car team” seem like they’re pretty elementary to define: single-car team, one car . . . multiple-car team, more than one car. Ahh, but it’s not that simple. 

Take, for instance the curious pairing of Justin Ashley’s Phillips Connect /Vita C Dragster team and Antron Brown’s Matco Tools/Toyota/Sirius xm/Hangsterfer’s Dragster outfit. Each has one car. Each has one driver. But they’re linked for data-sharing, research-and-development, and marketing/promotional ventures, with ambitions to help not only their team but also the entire sport to flourish. 

So is this a multi-car team? It isn’t by definition – each has a different team owner and is a separate corporation. In another, perhaps harder-to-explain sense, it’s one entity. One aspect is easy to understand, though – both Ashley’s team and Brown’s will enjoy the advantages that obvious multiple-car teams do this season and beyond. 

In making the announcement in early December, Brown said, “The goal with this partnership is to make both of our programs stronger overall. It’s not just about the collaboration between our brain trust of crew chiefs, but this will also help us in being able to secure the best parts and pieces. We’ll have stronger purchasing power. We’re both looking to this alliance to help us compete on a high level and go toe to toe with the heavy hitters in our category.” 

Ashley said. “I think that you can really look at it in two different aspects. You look at it from a research-and-development side, where we're sharing data and information. We want to be able to share as much data and information as possible, because we know that the more we have, the better off we'd be. So we know that OK, if Antron goes down the track and makes a run or if we go down and make the run, we can adjust and talk to the other crew chief and go from there. 

“And then also something that we got to touch on is on the marketing side, right? Antron and I working together, we're sharing a hospitality area. We're going to have certain events and do certain activities with our sponsors so they engage with each other, because that's going to help us work together on the marketing side to be able to grow both programs in the long run,” he said. 

It seems almost like an embarrassment of riches because both, along with Kalitta Motorsports, lead the way in adding marketing partners when other teams might be losing ones or having no luck in finding them. Ashley’s and Brown’s teams and Kalitta Motorsports have found the knack for adding new collaborators all the time. Ashley suggested it’s less about gobbling up more and more possible relationships than serving the ones they have. 

“I think that more so than anything else, it's about working with the existing partners that we had, to make sure that they grow their business,” he said. “So that's where our priorities are, whether it's Phillips Connect, Vita C Shot, Toyota, Lucas Oil, Auto Shocker, Kato, Baked in Brooklyn, all of them. 

His newest affiliate is Aladdin Bakers’ Baked in Brooklyn brand of assorted snacks, tortillas, and wraps. He said, “We're working with them to grow their business. The idea is to be able to grow together. At this stage in the game, it's all about generating return on investment for these companies.” 

Already the business-to-business aspect of the drag-racing platform has piqued the interest of Aladdin Bakers executives. When they revealed their association last month, Paul Kasindorf, the Brooklyn-based company’s sales and marketing senior vice-president, was quick to key on Ashley’s existing connection to the Menards chain:  The partnership with Menards is a huge benefit to this relationship and we are looking forward to building our brand and expanding our customer base with Justin this season. We are looking forward to introducing some of our Aladdin Bakers brands, especially our Baked in Brooklyn pita chips, to NHRA fans this season.” 

The task becomes busier when each marketing partner has a different expectation than another one does.   

“It's always something different. So with each company, you really have to work backwards,” Ashley said. “You have to figure out, ‘OK, what do they want to accomplish by getting involved?’ And then coming up with a plan to be able to meet that goal. So every company is different. Every company that we have on this car has a different objective when we put plans together in place for them to use this platform to be able to meet that goal.” 

By the same token, the opportunity to cross-pollinate with marketing is attractive, and that opportunity grows exponentially when Ashley’s resources combine with Brown’s. Primary and associate sponsors for the race cars have chances to form their own alliances in addition to the drag-racing team itself. Ashley said that’s something he and Brown are working toward, finding creative ways to put unlikely marketing partners together but that it’s “it's going to take some time.” 

Ashley said, “We’re not even at the first race of the year yet, but I think a big key to it is going to be hospitality. Getting people out to the racetrack, using that to be able to generate more business for our sponsors, and I think you'll see some ideas and some creativity start to develop as the season goes on.” 

Helpful to the Brown-Ashley alliance is the fact that Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald have known and worked with Mike Green for years. “And Antron and I have known for each other for a lot of years. So that's why it was kind of a natural fit,” Ashley said. “If we were ever going to be teammates with a car, this was, I think, the best-case scenario for Antron and for us. 

“When I first met Antron, I was 12, 13 years old,” Ashley said. “I actually credit a lot to him for the reason why I was able to make it up to Top Fuel and have a lot of success because he was able to guide me and kind of point me in the right direction, explain to me how to approach things. 

“In my opinion, he's the best representative NHRA has, in terms of on and off the racetrack and everything that he does for the sport and his sponsors,” he said. “So I try to use him as somebody that I can lean on and somebody that I can use for guidance and advice. To be able to race with him now makes our relationship a little bit different. But if you would have told me years ago that we would be in this position and we'd be racing against each other, with each other, I would have called you crazy. So it's a really, really cool deal.” 

Brown told the NHRA’s Brian Lohnes, “Justin’s my little brother, but he’s a big brother now. He grew up, and he’s out there, slaying those giants on the racetrack. I’m just so proud of him, where he’s at right now. And to align ourselves with Justin and with Dustin Davis Racing, it’s going to be one of those deals where everybody’s pulling a rope in the same direction. And we’re all going to pull it hard. And if you’ve got everybody doing the same thing, that’s when those incredible, unbelievable things happen. And that’s what we’re looking forward to. 

Corradi and Oswald won’t tell Green everything. Likewise, Green will keep at least some cards close to his vest. Brown and Ashley know they have to watch out for each other when they line up against one another at the starting line. And they both know that in addition to an all-star line-up full of champions and champions-in-waiting, they each must contend with other true single-car team owner-drivers such as Buddy Hull, Doug Foley, and Tripp Tatum (although Tatum has a close alliance with Torrence Racing). 

“It's still Buddy Hull and all these guys are great, right? They have great teams. They're great drivers. That's why it's going to be super-competitive, because you have what? – 13 fulltime cars,” Ashley said. “And then, I mean, do you want to call Tripp Tatum a part-time car? Or Buddy Hull or Doug Foley a part-time car? They're capable of winning races.” 

He said of himself and Brown, “We're better together than we are apart. The way the Top Fuel field is moving, as competitive as it is now, we need to try and get every competitive advantage we can – and this is the way to do it.” 

Brown told Lohnes, “We want to come out for this 2022 season with a bang. And when I mean bang, I ain’t  talkin’ about blowing up our cars. We’re talking about lighting it up on the racetrack. We wanted to come together and form a unique alliance so we can go after those teams like Torrence Racing with Steve and Billy, go after Kalitta Racing with Doug [Kalitta] and Shawn [Langdon], go after those multi-tiered teams. We want to go out with our one-two punch, too. 

“Justin has been lighting it up,” Brown said, re-emphasizing that he wanted to join Ashley’s effort “so we can both grow together. And we want to go out there and compete on another level that’s higher – and hopefully it’s higher than everyone else’s.”

OH WHAT A FEELING - Kalitta Motorsports and J.R. Todd unveiled the new Toyota GR Supra Funny Car to the public during the PRO Nitro Spring Training test session outside of Phoenix. 

The newest Toyota Funny Car design, which had thousands of man-hours invested into the design, construction, and ultimate creation of this racecar, hit the ground running after a precursor test session in Palm Beach, Fla. 

Todd, along with Toyota Gazoo Racing North America specialist and his two crew chiefs, Todd Smith and Jon Oberhofer, has worked tirelessly to find a consistent tune-up. The two test sessions have shown steady improvement both with elapsed time and speed performance, and Todd feels more comfortable with every pass. 

Winning next weekend in Pomona would definitely put the Toyota on an even more upward trajectory. 

“It would be nice to go to Pomona and pick up a win,” Todd said. “That is one of our ‘Majors’ and is a race I definitely want to win in my DHL Toyota Supra Funny Car. You can’t win or lose the championship in Pomona but is a good morale boost to get that first win of the season.” - Bobby Bennett

 

WAY COOL - Leah Pruett isn't intimidated at the prospect of driving a Top Fuel dragster. But then again, she never had a fuel-burning Funny Car pull alongside her while she was piloting one of the long sky cars either. 

That's precisely what happened on the final day of the PRO Nitro Spring Training test session. Pruett and Tony Stewart Racing teammate Matt Hagan decided to give the fans a treat and run side-by-side.

"When I hear another dragster next to me, it's like, they just sound to me a little bit more high pitched," Pruett explained. "And maybe because it was my first time being against somebody in this car, I have a more encapsulated cockpit than I've ever had before. Maybe the percussions of another car; that was my first time hearing that. And so that had caught me. Not caught me off guard, but I'm like, 'Man, that thing definitely got your attention being next to it in the burnout." 

If Pruett's dragster is the canine equivalent of a greyhound, Hagan's car definitely is a pit bull. 

"That was super cool," Hagan said. "I mean, where do you get an opportunity to do that other than here at testing and to have Tony [Stewart] up there in between both cars, something just bought and purchased, and be able to go up there and actually stage a Top Fueler and a Funny Car together was pretty cool. The only part that wasn't cool was when at 330 I could see her nose, so I knew I was getting beat."

Yeah, in virtually every instance, a greyhound will outrun a pit bull. Or, in Stewart's other world, a stock car will outrun a sprint car. But, it was still a fun experience for the drivers and especially the fans. 

Neil and I had talked about it just right before that run of like, 'Okay, this isn't a race." 

"But we all had like an extra 20% of adrenaline. We were just dialing in our own performance and felt comfortable being up against somebody. So if we were to be up against anybody, I rather it be our teammate. We're never going to have that opportunity this year to do that again; for us both to make pretty much a full pull, it was really wild."

Pruett used the run to make her first full pull to the finish line and her best pass of the test session - a 3.706, 330.47.

On the other hand, Hagan was on a planned 800-foot shutoff run. The temptation to run it out the back door was there.

"It's tough, man," Hagan admitted. "It's always tough not to get out of. The car's running good, and we're making some planned shutoffs and stuff like that just to make sure we're not hurting parts and pieces, but you always want to run them down there at the end."

Hagan said the willingness for Stewart to run his cars against one another is just another example of why his team owner is good for drag racing. 

"It's one of those things where it was just cool," Hagan said. "There's this environment over here at TSR; there's just really no pressure, laid back. Everyone knows that we're expected to perform. We have the tools and the capability to do so. And Tony's been great to work with. When you're expected to do something, you're don't have to be told all the time to do something. Our morale's great. 

"I think that that comes from Tony just being laid back and being able to just take it all in and enjoy it. And that's what he come up and said, "I want your dad to show up here and just watch you race and enjoy it. And you enjoy your racing and just have fun doing it." 

Racing Funny Cars against Dragsters epitomizes fun. 

"We're all just giving each other high fives [in the turnoff]," Pruett said. 'We were out of the car screaming at each other, 'What did yours do?" 

"And I'm like, 'Mine was just pulling the whole way." 

"I haven't been 330 miles an hour in a little while."

And neither had she run against a Funny Car, either. 

 

SATURDAY NOTEBOOK - FOLEY’S FAIR SHOT IN PIVOTAL SEASON ENABLES HIM TO HELP SPORT GROW 

All Doug Foley wanted was a fair shot.

With a brand-new Morgan Lucas Racing-built car that crew chief Aaron Brooks put his handprints all over before it was finished, along with quality parts and a trustworthy crew, the ProTechs Construction Dragster co-owner/driver just might have that for the first time.

That makes this a pivotal year for Foley & Lewis Racing.

“I want to be quality. I can tell you if this shot that we're taking this year is not what me and Tim [business partner Lewis] consider successful, we may go away,” Foley said. “We discussed it last year, but we figure we didn't give it a fair shot. We need quality people, quality help. We need a quality guy steering the ship. And we needed to give that fair shot at it to say, ‘Did we give it our all, and it still didn't work?’ Well, then we'll make a decision based on that.

“But if this thing goes out there and runs like I think it will, and we're competitive, and we can give these guys a run for their money, [we’ll stay in the sport],” he said.

Foley’s aim, along the way, he said, is “hopefully [to] generate some new relationships” and cause fans and potential investors to say, "Wow, these guys are pretty good. I don't care if they're part-time. They're pretty good. Their numbers that they're asking to partner with them are pretty reasonable, and they're not asking for a million bucks. So maybe this is something that I could be part of and help grow to another level.’"

Even powerhouse team owner John Force is scaling back his ask. Likewise, Foley is seeking a collection of marketing partners rather than one mega-donor (who has become almost extinct).

“When you come over here to a one car team where it's family owned, and there's no pecking order other than everybody's important, and a guy comes in here and says, ‘Hey, listen, I'd like to help you out for three races. Let's just see what three races does. I'll give you a couple dollars. Let's talk about it. After the three races, we'll see how it's going.’ That's something that we could participate in and get to know that person and what he needs out of it and try and grow those relationships. That's where we're hoping for,” Foley said.

If that happens on a snowballing basis, he said, his schedule could increase.

Before he made his first pass of the year, Foley said, “It could be if we don't do too much damage and stuff, it may be 12 or 13 [events]. You never know. We've doubled our sponsorship since last year – and we haven't even started the car yet. So I think if this thing runs halfway decent, there'll be other people that we don't know that'll come introduce themselves and maybe we'll race together.”

And that’s where Aaron Brooks comes in.

The respected crew chief, in general an aggressive tuner, knows how to put up gaudy numbers on the scoreboard.

“He did say to my kid the other day, ‘Your dad better hold on. Hold on for dear life’ – because this thing is not going to run like it used to.”

Brooks has proven he can swing for the fence on those kinds of situation when he needs to.

With a chuckle, Foley said, “The problem is Aaron Brooks does it when he doesn't need to. That's just who he is. It's not a problem for me. We've invested a lot of money and tried to give him the parts and pieces he needed. Of course, there's still more stuff that he would want, but I think we've given him what he needs, at least to show his talent. The thing is if you don't give him enough to show the quality of the level that he's at, then what was the purpose? If you handcuff him, then it was no purpose of doing it.

“What we had thought was going to be the budget, needed to bring it up to partnerships, was not even close, not even close. It’s really scary, really scary. But at the same time, as myself and Tim also look at it and say, if we don't give him what he needs, then we're not going to see the results that we want.”

So is Brooks really the star of the show in the Foley & Lewis camp?

“Oh, absolutely,” Foley said. “I am just a monkey pushing the pedals. As far as I'm concerned, he's the boss. Then Tim Lewis. I'm somewhere like fifth or sixth. My wife is probably third [although] she's always No. 1. We truly do it as a team, where we don't have to have a No. 1. A No. 1 is just as important as the No. 6.”

 The new car has him jazzed. “We're very excited about that. I haven't had a new car in I don't know how long. There literally hasn't been one piece that either hasn't been replaced or looked at or modified or whatever to his liking,” Foley said. He said it took “90 days of four or five guys in the shop, constantly just making sure that we had something that was good.”

Foley continues to chase funding and said, “We have done OK. I will say we've doubled our sponsorship from last year. We're still working on it. Everybody is. But are we running full time? No, no. We don't have the money for that. It's probably 10 races right now. We're putting more emphasis on ‘Are we a quality car more than we are a quantity car?’” he said.

One day soon, maybe instead of people saying, "I want to be like T.J. Zizzo [who coined the term “super-part-timer], they might say, "I want to be like Doug Foley."

To make that happen, he’s going to have to face some of the toughest competition in class history.

“This is probably the hardest year in drag history in the last 10 years. Going back further than that, back in the '00s, 2007, those were ridiculous years. It was a lot of good quality, but it tapered off a little bit; just the amount of good cars tapered off.

“This is probably one of the better years. I'm not a full-time car. But you're going to see on top of the really good fulltime cars, you're going to see cars like us, Tripp Tatum, T.J. Zizzo, and some others that are going to show up to races that are going to upset the apple cart, I can tell you that.”

Then-rookie Josh Hart, winner at the season-opening Gatornationals and later during the Countdown at Charlotte, proved in 2021 that a part-timer can buck the status quo. (He’s a full-time racer this season.)

“He’s a good competitor. Ron Douglas is [a strong tuner]. Kudos to him. He's done a great job over there, and we feel Aaron Brooks can do the same thing here that Ron Douglas did over there. And I think the money will come as we do it.”

“Our focus is quantity of parts, quality of parts, quality of help, and then let the chips fall where they may. And our goal here is to be consistently top half, have lane choice on Sunday. That's our goal. If we can have lane choice on Sunday, then it falls where it falls on Sunday. You bring your A game, you do the best you can. But I truly believe that we've given everybody here, including myself, everything needed to go out there and be competitive. I think by the time I'm back here, whatever, three weeks from now, we'll know did we accomplish our goal or not.”

While he stays out West with the team until the series heads east, Foley said, “We're going to find some parts and pieces and some organizational stuff that we're still working on to try and make sure that those semis and final-round maintenances are a little bit easier and streamlined, so if we're fortunate enough to go that far, that we're ready.”

Foley is looking to start his season with the Pomona, Phoenix, and Gainesville races. “After that, unless something really different happens, you won't see us in Vegas. Definitely Charlotte, maybe Houston. We'll see. I'd like to go there. But it's really about what makes the most sense,” he said.

That, he said, will depend on “how much maintenance is necessary to keep it at the level we want to keep it at. You may have to skip a race just for that purpose. Your money may be there. But you may have to skip a race just because without all the full-time manpower, you may need to do it. You may need to skip a race just to catch up.”

WHY IS THIS MAN SMILING? - No one who has spent any significant time around Buddy Hull can miss his ever-present smile.

“I'm thankful to be on this Earth, you know what I mean?” the new Top Fuel team owner said. “I don't know. Something happened to me when I was a teenager that forced me to, I guess, want to be different, you know what I mean? And not different in bad way. And I don't even know what it was. I had some experiences with some friends that were not the best experiences. I can think of a hundred reasons that happened between age of 12 and 15 that I decided that I just didn't want to be like everybody else, quote-unquote. I wanted to choose a different path in life, and I wanted to really enjoy my life, and so anything I've decided to do, I don't care what it is, I go all in –101%, all the way in.”

His link to the sport came naturally.

“I grew up around race cars. My great uncle started drag racing in the '50s, and then my dad and my other uncle followed in his footsteps. And my mom's dad is a hot rod guy, ’32, ’33, ’34 Fords and Mercurys and Cushman scooters, so I had it on both sides of the family and it’s in my DNA,” he said. “There was an interim there where I didn't really participate very much.

“It was because my other passion that I found through my outlet to keep myself out of trouble when I was a kid was working out. So I became a professional powerlifter, which just happened that way. And a lot of people know that history about me because of my build, right? It's pretty obvious. And I'm not a typical-looking race-car driver, and I'm not a typically built person. I've got a beard and I'm not built like anybody else, that's just who I am,” he said.

“I'm smiling all the time, because why wouldn't I be? I'm able to do something that most people absolutely, 100-percent only can dream about, right?” Hull said. “And it's not because they can't do it – a lot of people that dream about things, they can do them, but here's the difference: Those who do it are the ones who take the steps necessary to get there. There's millions of people on this Earth that have the most amazing business ideas and they could become so successful, but what they don't do is they don't act on it. They just say, "OK, OK. Well, yeah, that's good,’ and they just let it go. They never actually act on their ideas. Or they work somewhere where they know they could actually open the same type of company but do it better, but because of their insecurities or because of their lack of motivation or mental toughness, they don't do it.”

But himself? He said, “I don't care - take it all away from me. I'll have it all back in a year.”

That's the same mentality 16-time Funny Car champion John Force had years ago. He said, “If I was still driving a truck, I'd be head of the Teamsters." He knew he was meant for leadership, just like Hull.

“I turned a hobby into a career. My weightlifting turned a hobby into a career. I became an executive vice president of a Fortune company [LA Fitness] through that. I was executive vice-president of that company for nine years, and I got to manage thousands of people there – and got what I would call a double triple Master’s degree in business and learned that I didn't need a boss. I didn't need someone to tell me to get out of bed and work. I didn't need anybody to get me going,” Hull said.

“So I said, ‘Why am I working for somebody? I need to work for myself,’ and so here I am. That's what I did. And life's gotten infinitely better since, because when you're in charge of your own life, you not only can create your own destiny, but you can help other people achieve their dreams. Each one of these guys,” Hull said, pointing to his crew working just a few yards away, “this is their dream, too. This isn't just mine.”

He put all of their dreams on the fast track, taking advantage of the small window of time between the Finals at Pomona and this preseason testing opportunity. Everyone knew about Antron Brown and Ron Capps starting their own teams in the off-season and Krista Baldwin buying out grandfather Chris Karamesines for sole control of her Top Fuel dragster, but many might have missed the effort Hull was making away from the limelight.

“Building a team in two months, everything from a truck, a trailer, tools, race car, all the people, all of it - it's a lot of work,” Hull said. He’s just three months into team ownership after debuting in Terry Haddock’s dragster last year. And he knows he and the crew have a lot to learn still.

Hull made the decision to start his own team while pondering his next move in drag racing: “I was really thinking about what I was going to do next year [in 2022]. I have a fuel altered that I can make a big-show fuel Funny Car, just changing a few parts and put the Funny Car body on it. So I thought about kicking that around and crossing my license, and I said, ‘You know what? I really enjoy Top Fuel. I've got to find a way to stay in that class.’  I really started going through my ‘memory Rolodex,’ if you will, about cars that were out here, but not often, and could be for sale and, dumb me, it was the obvious. It was right in front of me.”

He has known Funny Car veteran Tim Wilkerson for about 32 years but didn’t think of him and his dragster right away.

“I literally had this epiphany,” Hull said. “I was driving down the highway and I'm like, "Wait a minute. I'm like, ‘Tim's got that car. He only ran it four or five times last year, whatever it was. I'm calling him.’”

So he phoned Wilkerson and asked, “Hey, what are you going to do with that car?”

Wilkerson said, “I don't know. Chad Green [a fellow racer Wilkerson helps with his Funny Car] wants to race fulltime. I don't know if I'm going to have the time to mess with it. Why? You want to rent it?”

Hull said, “No, I want to buy it,” and Wilkerson kind of pooh-poohed the idea, telling him, “You don't want that thing.”

“Yeah, I do,” Hull said. And he flew from Dallas to Wilkerson’s shop at Springfield, Ill., and spent a few days with him. Hull said, “We went over every single part and piece and made sure I fit in the car, and all that stuff. And we struck a deal. And he's tuning the car for me, so that's a blessing.”

Wilkerson told him he’d tune Hull’s car if Hull “put together a good group of people,” because, Hull said, “he doesn't want to have his hands on something without a bunch of good guys. And I got a great group of guys. I got a clutch guy and another overall guy and then my truck drivers and my cooking guys, so it's nine people, nine full-time guys. I have nine permanent people, which is a big team” – and a big financial investment.

However, Hull said, “I know that you can have the best race car, the best parts, the best tools. Without the right people, you don't have anything. No one of these other teams found these guys, and my guys, no doubt, without question, after three or four races in, there'll be just as good as the rest of them. They're mechanics for a living. They work on diesel trucks for a living. They're all hot rod guys.” One owns a fuel altered.

“They already know all about this stuff. They just don't know every detail. So we’re working with Tim's guys. Tim's guys are training these guys, and after four or five races, I'd put these guys against anybody else,” he said. Everybody on his team – including himself, he said, “is learning together, and we have a great coach. Tim's an incredible coach. We have all his guys coaching all these guys. So of course, we can lose, but we've created a formula that makes it hard to lose. And I don't mean lose a round of drag racing – I mean lose at the racetrack. And I really believe that we have a race car that can actually win rounds of drag racing. If I do my job, we're going to win rounds this year.”

He has some valuable help to try to make that happen.

“Two of my guys are from Dallas, myself and those two guys who will be servicing the car. One of them is from Phoenix, and the other three are from Denver. And I have guys in Dallas,” Hull said. “For example, Jim Oberhofer, he's one of my buddies. He's a good friend of mine. He's going to come over and pitch in, probably more often than not, because he enjoys being around the cars. A couple of Paul Lee's guys live in Dallas, and so they'll probably come over when they're not in Indy and maybe tinker a little bit. So we'll have a lot of other help at the shop besides these guys.”

What he saw with the car so far, especially Thursday, was encouraging: “We made a run yesterday and [had] career-best incrementals up to the eighth-mile. I clicked it off at the eighth-mile. It was looking like it was going to run a low [3].90 at about 315 or 320 [mph], so that would have been a career-best for me when I first ran the car. So that's a blessing.”

He said the plan is to enter seven races this season.

“The reason I'm doing seven, it's not because I don't have the parts. I actually do. I have probably as many parts as most of the big teams,” Hull said. “I have, right now, three fully prepared short blocks. I've got five sets of [cylinder] heads. I've got three blowers. I've got racks.

“I've got all the stuff,” he said, “but I don't want to get frivolous. I want to be able to run the car a couple times, bring it home, take it all apart, rebuild everything, check everything over, put it back together, and do it the right way. Learn. Don't just keep throwing money at something because you have money, but actually learn what you're doing. And we got to keep the rods in this thing.”

Could he play the same sort of role Josh Hart (who has stepped up to a fulltime schedule) played last season?

“No,” Hull said, “and I'll tell you why. Could I randomly become him at a certain race or two? Yes. I can't be him, because I don't have the schedule that he has, meaning I won't have the runs. By mid-season he will have made last year probably 40, 50 runs. By mid-season this year, I'll have made 15.” He cited other factors, such as “frequency with the guys, training the guys, getting them better, more laps on the car so you learn what the car wants.

“The goal is when we leave [the shop at Dallas], when this thing pulls out, I want to have a fresh motor in the car, three fresh motors in the trailer, five fresh sets of heads, three fresh blowers, and four fresh racks [of pistons].

“I'm not playing around. I'm not joking,” he said. “And if I can't do it that way, I'll stay home. There's no reason for me to go otherwise. If I can't do it this way, I'm not going to do it. I'm not showing up with two motors and two sets of heads and a supercharger. That won't work. It doesn't, because there's not enough time to service the parts between days and rounds to be able to have a fresh race car to go up there for the next round if you win. We need an hour and 10 minutes. Wilkerson, last year at Indy, he barely made every single round. He was barely getting up there and he's got a great team. [And he won.]”

FRIDAY - TEAMS PLAY MUSICAL SEATS; PROCK, HIS RACE CAR CHANNELING POSITIVE ENERGY; WILL TORRENCE-SCHUMACHER DUEL LIVE UP TO HYPE?  
 

RETURNING WITH SMACK TALK? – Idle Top Fuel racer Jordan Vandergriff, who’s trying to make a comeback for the first time since 2019, took Tony Schumacher’s Maynard Family/Scag-sponsored car for a 3.764-second, 321.58-mph blast Friday afternoon, just to get the feel for driving a dragster with a canopy. 
 
Vandergriff, who is planning to give it a second and maybe third try here, said he is engaged in talks with potential marketing partners but has not closed a deal yet.
 
“They’re lucky I’m not out there,” the bold 26-year-old told Competition Plus. He said he would make his rivals – including Austin Prock, with whom he battled for 2019 rookie of the year honors – “very miserable, if they aren’t miserable already.”
 
He took it a step farther after making that initial pass.
 
Engaging in a little role-playing, Competition Plus asked him for his “elevator speech” – What do you have to offer Corporate America?
 
Vandergriff was stumped at first, but he laid it on thick once he started to answer:
 
“Well, that's a good question, isn't it? That's the million-dollar question, isn't it?”
 
He composed himself, summoned up the chutzpah of Muhammad Ali, and went on: “I'm the youth, the youth of this sport. That's what this sport needs, a personality to take this sport into the future. You know? We've had John Force, Don "The Snake" Prudhomme, The Mongoose, Shirley Muldowney. We've had those greats. Don Garlits. We've had the greats. I'm the next great.”
 
That’s bold, indeed, for a racer who hasn’t competed in more than two seasons. And he knows it. 
 
“It’s been a little over two years since I’ve driven a car,” Vandergriff said, acknowledging he’s tired of being merely an observer. “Believe me, I’ve hit my limit there. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I think it’s been said. I look forward to the future and will be much more appreciative and grateful for the opportunity when it arises – possibly soon.
 
“I’ve realized the opportunity that I’ve had and the situation that I was in and realized how fortunate I was to have that. Now it makes me work even harder to get back there. You learn to appreciate it a little bit more,” he said. “Sometimes things can be handed to you a little bit and you don’t kind of grasp the full blessing of it. When you’ve been away, you find the appreciation for it.”
 
After losing his sponsorship and his uncle Bob Vandergriff leaving the sport for the second time, Jordan Vandergriff never pursued another class of racing. 
 
He said, “Well, once you drive one of these things, it's unlike anything else. It's an experience you crave, you know? You won't want anything but this. You want to drive the Top Fuel car.”
 
He did Friday, and he looked like a seasoned pro rather than a twentysomething who had one year behind the wheel, and not even a full schedule at that. 
 
“Yeah. You know, it's been over two years since I drove a car. I got the opportunity to come out here and make a few test laps and get back into it. I wanted to experience it again. It's been so long. And it was great. It was fantastic.” He said it literally took his breath away: “Absolutely. I'll tell you what, I got to about half-track, and I wasn’t breathing. So, I gathered my thoughts. It was kind of drifting to the right a little bit. So I moved. I brought it back a little left and finished the run. But yeah, I felt great. I think I ran a 76. So a great first run back, after two years.”
 
He said he has “been talking to Don for a while, and I wanted to get back in a car, and I wanted that feeling again. I wanted to get used to it, because I'm working on some things that may find me out here again. So, I talked to Don. I asked him if I could come make a few runs, and he said, "Yes." So, I found myself in Tony’s car.”
 
And Vandergriff said he knows he needs to practice his sponsorship pitches and packages constantly: “If you want a long career in this sport, you’re going to have to learn to do that and do it well. And you need money to run these cars.
 
“I’ve learned a lot since I’ve raced these cars, and I’ve grown a deeper appreciation for everybody who comes out here on a fulltime schedule and works really hard,” he said. “My goal is eventually to end up back here, maybe this year or next year.”  
 
Vandergriff said, “Everything’s going to happen the way it should happen. And eventually it will happen for me.” 
 
HULL BEING GRACIOUS – No smack talk is going on in Buddy Hull’s Top Fuel pit, but like Schumacher, he is yielding the cockpit of his car this week to Funny Car driver Chad Green’s son, Hunter, so the Midland, Texas, native can complete his Top Fuel license. 
 
Hunter Green drove this same car for two or three passes last October at Dallas, just before Keith Murt used it to compete in the Texas Fall Nationals Stampede of Speed. And Friday he made a run in Hull’s Vertex Roofing Dragster. (He also made a handful of passes Thursday in Randy Meyer’s Top Alcohol Dragster.)
 
“We want him to finish [his licensing] in the same car he started in, so we’re letting him finish it here,” Hull said.
 
“He may end up driving it a little bit, if he wants to,” Hull said. “We could possibly work a deal where we could let him drive it a couple of times a year, if it makes sense financially. I don’t know – I haven’t even talked to his dad about it. We haven’t talked about it, but I’m just saying I’m open to it. Why not help him out?”

WHILE THE DRIVER’S AWAY . . . – . . . Dad Gary Densham will play. The 75-year-old drag-racing veteran erased any speculation about who’s the driver of their family-owned Ford Mustang Funny Car. It’s his son.
 
“Steven’s the driver. I’ll be driving here and I’ll be driving at Pomona – only because the Super Bowl screwed us up,” Gary Densham said. 
 
He was referring to the NFL’s decision to add an extra week of regular-season play, therefore sliding the playoffs and Super Bowl further into the new year. The NHRA schedule-makers traditionally try to dance around the NFL’s Super Bowl and NASCAR’s Daytona 500. And sometimes, no matter how hard they try to give the season-opening Winternationals the most favorable slot on the calendar, it’s not possible. And that’s what has the Denshams adjusting their plans. 
 
Patriarch Gary said, “Steven’s got a group of friends. They’ve been friends since high school. They went to college together. All got married about the same time, and all started having babies at about the same time. It’s hard for me to believe they all used to be running around my house. They’re all going to turn 40 this year. So they decided before they really get old, they ought to have one more party. 
 
“Years ago they started planning a trip. They rented a villa in Costa Rica and are going to go down there for a week and go hiking and scuba diving and all that, having a good time, leaving the kids with the grandparents, all that kind of crap,” he said. “So he came to me and he said, ‘Make sure I get the right date.’” 
 
But, of course, even the most well-thought-out plans can get messed up – and they did in this case.
 
“Bottom line,” Densham said, “is he is our driver. I’m not saying I won’t ever drive it again after Pomona, but as much as you hate to admit it, you’re getting older. Before everybody started this crap of deep-staging and all this other junk and they kept track of all those statistics, all though the ’90s and early 2000s, I was the best [on the starting line]. I’m not bragging. It’s just a fact. Now I’m just average. Well, Steven’s really, really, really good. And with cars running as close together as they are today, a hundredth or two on the starting line is huge. And I can’t give that to the team like I used to be able to do. He can. So that helps us all do better.
 
“And I’ve enjoyed stepping back from it a little bit,” he said. “I still love driving the car; don’t get me wrong. Unless something changes, he’ll drive the rest of the year.”
 
The plan, Densham said, is to open at Pomona, then compete at Las Vegas, at one of the Western Swing races (at Denver, Sonoma, or Seattle), probably Brainerd, and Las Vegas and Pomona to close the season. “So it’ll be six of them total,” he said.

NOT MISSING A BEAT? – Top Fuel racer Austin Prock never has telegraphed the slightest bit of self-doubt, and even though he has sat out the past two seasons, he’s showing no signs of it as he returns in the Montana Brand / Rocky Mountain Twist Dragster.
 
“I think our car will be able to race with the best of ’em. We have every piece of the puzzle to go out there and succeed. There’s no doubt in my mind we can go out and contend for a championship,” the 26-year-old who’s youngest in the class said. “We’ve got a great group of crew members put together. I can’t wait to get back into that competition mindset and go out there and [drive] to the best of my ability. And we’ll see how the cards fall.” 

Prock, the 2019 NHRA rookie of the year, said, “There’ll be a lot of good energy going around. The race car can feel that. And I think that’s going to lead us to some success. All of us racers are a little bit superstitious. But if you get a group together that has good energy and you’re all on the same page, I believe that you perform a lot better. You all have the same mindset, and you work better together. With that mindset, you don’t make as many mistakes, and that’s exactly what we’re putting together.” 

He has Rahn Tobler sharing tuning duties with Joe Barlam, and Prock said the addition of Tobler was a bit of a coup.

“I was pushing so hard to get Rahn Tobler. I thought he’d be a good pairing with Joe Barlam. They’ll be a good yin and yang,” Prock said. “Barlam’s a fairly aggressive tuner, and Rahn’s a very smart racer when it comes down to Sunday. His record speaks for itself. So they’re going to be a great pairing. I can’t believe that I have that caliber of crew chiefs going into my second full season, especially for Rahn coming out of retirement to come be a part of my team and our operation. So I’m really looking forward to it.

“I just can’t wait to be back,” he said. “We’re building beautiful race cars. I put my blood, sweat, and tears into these cars, making them as nice as possible and as light as possible.”

He raced last January at the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals at Tulsa, then made a cameo appearance on track at the June NHRA race at Norwalk, Ohio (where he advanced to the semifinals). Otherwise, he spent his timex out of the cockpit working with elite crew-chief dad Jimmy Prock on Robert Hight’s Funny Car.

As satisfying as it was to work alongside his father, and as proud as he is to have learned the intricacies of a supercharger by building and improving them for John Force Racing, that wasn’t what moved the needle for him.

“This is my lifelong dream. I got to live out my dream at 23 years old in 2019, and when that got taken away from me, it made me depressed, honestly,” Prock said. “It was tough going out to the racetrack and watching all my peers go and do what I love to do. So I’m happy to be back.”

“I worked with my dad, which was really cool. It’s something that not many people get the opportunity to do. Sometimes it can be hard working with family. We didn’t argue once,” Austin Prock said. 

Jimmy Prock kept his position as three-time Funny Car champion Robert Hight’s crew chief, but brothers Thomas and Sam are joining him on his team as clutch specialists, and experienced sprint-car driver Colton Maroney, son of fellow Top Fuel racer Jim Maroney, will handle [piston] racks and cylinder heads. “And,” he said, “Rahn Tobler’s a family friend of ours. And Joe Barlam, he’s a great friend of mine.”

So it’s a family atmosphere at the Prock pit. Even if it weren’t, Prock is thrilled – grateful – to come back. Before he took to the Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park dragstrip, he said, “I can’t wait to stand on the gas again. It’s been way too long. Two years was a long time to sit around and wonder if I was ever going to do it again. Now I’m back.”

The day he announced that his deal was finalized, Prock said he was “like, shaking right now, just talking about it.”

Team owner John Force said that after he had to park Prock’s dragster, “I fought to get it back, because I promised the Prock family. And Frank Tiegs made that possible.”

Tiegs also owns Flav-R-Pac Fruits and Vegetables. His companies will rotate primary sponsorship of Brittany Force’s dragster, as well. Tiegs’ Flav-R-Pac also is the title sponsor for the July 29-31 Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways, near Seattle.

He said, “It’s great to be involved with a second dragster at John Force Racing and to have Austin back with Montana Brand / Rocky Mountain Twist, the brands that started his career. It was exciting watching Austin race in his rookie season. And now, having Brittany under Flav-R-Pac, too, it’s going to be a fun year. I have a lot to look forward to with two dragsters in the hunt for a championship.”

Drag-racing legend Don Prudhomme paired Tiegs with Force to fund Prock’s rookie season, and Force called it “a great partnership in 2019,” with “so much room to grow. Now we’re able to start that process. I’m really looking forward to seeing what that team does with Joe Barlam, who was on my car last year, and Rahn Tobler handling the tuning duties. It’s going to be pretty exciting to see how this partnership grows.”

Austin Prock said before he left Indianapolis earlier this week that he couldn’t “wait to get to the Phoenix test and start burning some nitro again. I just can’t wait to strap into that thing again. I’ll finally be back at home.”

And this time he arrived with plenty of time to make some shakedown runs without chaos, unlike in his rookie year. For the second straight time, Prock has found out late in the offseason that he will have a ride. But this time he had about a month’s notice. In 2019, he had only a few days to grab his gear, get here to Chandler, Ariz., and make a few passes before heading to Pomona to qualify for his Winternationals career debut.

“This is the most prepared we’re going into a season – and we still got a late start. We only found out we’re racing a couple of Mondays ago. To get the crew members and the team we have on such late notice, that says a lot. The first time we went racing was a thrash to get it together – and we still had success. Now we’re the most prepared we’ve ever been, and I think it’s going to show in our performance.”    

LAW AND (PECKING) ORDER – One of the juiciest storylines in this year’s Top Fuel class will be the inevitable comparison of the performances from reigning champion Steve Torrence and eight-time champ and decade-long class commander Tony Schumacher, who’s returning to a fulltime schedule for the first time since 2018.

That’s especially true after Torrence – still enjoying the shine last November from his fourth consecutive title – teased about Schumacher, “I’m going to tell him, ‘You left, and I’m the sheriff now.’”
 
To that Schumacher laughed and said, “That's what makes our sport so awesome, man. I think we've had good battles. It makes it fun, man. He’s gone on and tried to take what I had. And unfortunately, I wasn't here to stop him. So now we are.
 
“And he's going to have a couple of years’ advantage on me, but at the end of the day, I think the fans are the ones that win, because this is what they keep asking for, he said. “I'll be out there.
 
“And look,” Schumacher said, “we can blow smoke up both our asses and tell us we’re the two sheriffs or whatever. But there are some bad-to-the-bone cars out here. I sure don't want to be the one talking smack, looking around at the group. We got an epic battle ahead of us this year. We'll all stay humble till the end of the year, because this is going to be one for the freaking books.”
 
Torrence today is taking his own tongue-in-cheek remark from November with a grain of salt.

He said, “Tony’s a great driver. You don’t get to be an eight-time champion by not being [great]. Just because he’s been out of the seat, you can’t take him lightly. We’ll do the best we can. We do what we do, and we don’t worry about the rest.”
 
He said (and understandably so), “I think that the media’s trying to hype this up as it’s a different deal than it was. And it’s really not. Right now, you just don’t have anything else to talk about.

“Ultimately, we’ve got to go out and do the same thing we’ve done and execute with the car and me drive well, and the rest will take care of itself,” Torrence said.

“I love driving these things. I love racin’. I enjoyed the time off, but I’m looking forward to getting back in it and racin’ and just having a good time. We do this as a family, and we do it for fun. We brought on Toyota, which is another feather in our cap as far as some data acquisition for the racetrack. I’m just really looking forward to this year. I think it’ll be a lot of fun and we’ll have a good time.”

OK – for those who can’t help themselves and want some comparative statistics . . . Torrence became the first in 13 years, since Schumacher in 2008, to win at least half the races on the Camping World Drag Racing Series tour. During Schumacher’s run of six straight titles, he won 77.6 percent of his individual races (312-90). Torrence has won 81.7 percent of the time in the past five years (263-59). Torrence joins Schumacher, the class all-time leader with 85 trophies and eight championships, on the title-streak list along with Don Prudhomme, Kenny Bernstein, Lee Shepherd, Bob Glidden, and John Force.