If you saw the father race back in the day, then you have an idea of why the son is regarded in such high esteem.
If you saw the look of frustration on the opponent’s faces of those who
raced and lost to the second-generation racer, then you’d get a pretty
good idea of what legends Ronnie Sox, Dyno Don Nicholson, Frank Iaconio
and Lee Shepherd experienced.
Watching Billy Glidden work tirelessly and race his way to the winner’s
circle time and time again on a modest (and we’re being generous here)
budget essentially brands him a chip off the old block.
“I learned my effort and work ethic from Dad,” Glidden confirmed. “I’d
like to believe that I’m not as impatient as he is, or was anyway. I’m
a whole lot more patient than he is, he paces and everything. It’s
funny now because I’m grown up and all but he’s still got that kick and
he still wants to do good at everything he does. He gets frustrated
when he plays bad at golf; he gets frustrated when something isn’t
going right at home. I would believe that I certainly had that seed
planted in me because of my dad.”
The Second-Generation Drag Racer is a Chip Off The Old Block …
If you saw the father race back in the day, then you have an idea of why the son is regarded in such high esteem.
Billy Glidden and wife Shannon have continued the Glidden spirit of hard work and successful competition.
If you saw the look of frustration on the opponent’s faces of those who raced and lost to the second-generation racer, then you’d get a pretty good idea of what legends Ronnie Sox, Dyno Don Nicholson, Frank Iaconio and Lee Shepherd experienced.
Watching Billy Glidden work tirelessly and race his way to the winner’s circle time and time again on a modest (and we’re being generous here) budget essentially brands him a chip off the old block.
“I learned my effort and work ethic from Dad,” Glidden confirmed. “I’d like to believe that I’m not as impatient as he is, or was anyway. I’m a whole lot more patient than he is, he paces and everything. It’s funny now because I’m grown up and all but he’s still got that kick and he still wants to do good at everything he does. He gets frustrated when he plays bad at golf; he gets frustrated when something isn’t going right at home. I would believe that I certainly had that seed planted in me because of my dad.”
That’s a tough point to argue considering Glidden won four of the six 2008 ADRL Extreme 10.5 events he entered as well as Battle for the Belts crown at the season-ending ADRL Len-Mar Motorsports World Finals in Dallas, Tex. He carried an 18 – 2 win-loss record for the season. One of those losses was when he withrew from an arm-drop event.
Ironically, Glidden’s incredible season comes three decades after his father won seven of nine NHRA national events to claim the 1978 NHRA Pro Stock title.
I wasn’t quite nine-years old or so, my father said for you to be a
good basketball player you need to be able to use that left hand,
because I was right hand dominant. He taped my hand
with duct tape from the middle of my thigh all the way up my shoulder.
He told me to go out in the driveway with a ball and said if he heard
it stop bouncing that he would kick my ass, and I was afraid of my Dad.
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Ironically, Billy Glidden won his 15th world championship thirty years after his father Bob dominated NHRA Pro Stock, winning seven of nine national events.
The big difference between father and son was the manpower, or maybe the better term would be family-power.
Back in the day, Bob and Etta Glidden along with eager sons Billy and Rusty made the no-holds-barred effort.
For the second-generation Glidden, it’s only himself and wife Shannon.
“How Dad made everything work was the fact that the whole family was involved,” Glidden admitted. “There were two more mouths back then than I have now. I don’t want people to be upset with me but we just work harder at it than everyone else does.”
While dad made a living at mastering the Pro Stock class, in a different time and era the son could have too. However, today’s Pro Stock is a more complex affair with million dollar marketing partners and gaggles of personnel.
Glidden made a good run at Pro Stock last season but by mid-season he returned to his niche of Outlaw 10.5 racing, a class derived from its major rule mandating tire tread of 10.5 inches wide.
For all intent and purposes, Glidden is through with Pro Stock although he doesn’t rule out of a possible return if the opportunity is just right.
“That’s not a fun world for me,” Glidden admitted. “It was satisfying back when we were running Pro Stock for the family because we won everything all the time. I can’t imagine that we would have stuck with it if we had only won one race a year or only won a couple of times.”
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Quite simply, winning is something bred into the Glidden psyche from a young age. That commitment to excellence still
“A lot of people have a parent die and they say I wish I would’ve done
this and I wish I would’ve done that and you know you don’t prepare for
anyone around you dying ever. I’ve had the opportunity to see that
happen and think wow you just can’t prepare for that. I know Dad wanted
to race a car and I was able to give him an opportunity to do that. If
I could do it again, then I would do it.” – Glidden, on racing with his dad ten-timechampion Bob Glidden.
exists all these years later.
“I don’t play checkers to lose,” Glidden explained. “When I go play golf with Dad and the guys, I go to shoot good golf. Everything I do, I give it my all. I played basketball and I was really good at that. But I don’t think that was because I had any real God given talents, I worked at it.”
Glidden needs to look no further than his youth as a promising basketball player who later gave up a potential career in that sport to go drag racing. It all started with the determination of his father to make his son better at what he did.
“I wasn’t quite nine-years old or so, my father said for you to be a good basketball player you need to be able to use that left hand, because I was right hand dominant,” Glidden recalled. “He taped my hand with duct tape from the middle of my thigh all the way up my shoulder. He told me to go out in the driveway with a ball and said if he heard it stop bouncing that he would kick my ass, and I was afraid of my Dad.”
Bob forgot about the challenge but his son didn’t.
“Ten hours later I’m still out there beating that ball up and down,” Glidden reminisced. “When I went out for basketball as a 7th grader here in Whiteland [Ind], they were actually going to cut me because I was confused because I could dribble and shoot with either hand.”
Good thing they didn’t cut him because in his first game he scored 72 points. Just like his dad, they made rules to limit his dominance.
Glidden played NBA amateur basket and starred in Pro-Am Leagues generating double-digit numbers in multiple stat categories as late as 1986. He averaged an impressive 42 points a game when one incident changed his course in life abruptly.
Enter the 1986 NHRA Southern Nationals and the crash Bob suffered in Commerce, Ga.
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Billy Glidden in the 1980s as a crewman on his dad’s Pro Stocker.
“I actually had opportunities to play pro ball and I didn’t because when you’re standing on the starting line and you’re seeing your dad flipping upside down your world changes and I gave up that thought,” Glidden confided. “I don’t make it secret that we’ve had rough times the difference is I’d say between Dad and myself, everybody has dysfunctional families and I don’t give a damn who you are, there’s no such thing as a perfect family. The good thing about ours is that if we have something to say we’ll say it.
“Dad’s still my hero, he’s a pain in the ass sometimes and I’m a pain in his ass sometimes, that’s just the way it is. We love each other and we just keep going on. If we ever get a chance to race together again, by God we’ll do it.”
The father and son raced most recently at the PSCA Streetcar Supernationals, with Glidden behind the wheel of his event winning Pontiac GTO and Bob wheeling Kenny Perry’s like-bodied entry.
Glidden feels the experience of racing with his dad again was a gift.
“I’m blessed to have that opportunity,” Glidden said. “A lot of people have a parent die and they say I wish I would’ve done this and I wish I would’ve done that and you know you don’t prepare for anyone around you dying ever. I’ve had the opportunity to see that happen and think wow you just can’t prepare for that. I know Dad wanted to race a car and I was able to give him an opportunity to do that. If I could do it again, then I would do it.”
The elder Glidden suffered a heart attack back in 1994 and most recently underwent a successful pacemaker replacement. Knowing Bob’s medical history, his son didn’t have any reservations about putting his father back in a car.
Dad wanted to race again and son was all the willing to oblige the request.
“I never had any apprehensions when they told him he could croak at any moment because that’s what he loves to do,” Glidden said. “That’s what he does, out of everything that’s probably the most fun he gets out of anything.”
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“I don’t play checkers to lose. When I go play
golf with Dad and the guys, I go to shoot good golf. Everything I do, I
give it my all. I played basketball and I was really good at that. But
I don’t think that was because I had any real God given talents, I
worked at it.”
Just like his father, the gratification for Glidden comes in winning and officially securing a sanctioned Extreme 10.5 championship. He had become a cult hero in winning on the outlaw scene.
Glidden believes the ADRL’s adoption of Outlaw 10.5 inch racing brings a large measure of legitimacy to this style of racing. Racing and winning on this level brings a challenge that Glidden enjoys.
“There were the outlaw drivers with 10.5 tires on their Pro Mod cars were blowing their gums and calling me out saying ‘Come get you some of this’ and they did that for a year,” Glidden admitted. “I was apprehensive about that I can tell you. I figured heck I’ve taken all the humiliation I could take from trying to race Pro Stock and looking like a freaking idiot, it can’t get any worse. So I put an engine in that car and got that car all switched around and as I was going I was making changes to that car and in fact I got that car as close to my black Mustang as I could without it being the old Mustang.”
Those who raced against Glidden’s black Mustang will testify that car has been one bad hombre.
It’s a lot like those red, white and blue Fords his dad used to race in the seventies and eighties.
Just like the 1990s were for his dad, Glidden envisions a day coming when hard work is going to be less of a challenge than boatloads of cash.
“This class evolved a quarter of a second from the first race I went to until the end,” Glidden admitted. “I don’t know how much more it will and I don’t know how I’m going to get better. I don’t even know what we’re going to do yet. We’re talking to people. If I can come up with the funding to keep racing then I will do it. We’ll just keep working at it and hope we can pick at it and pick at it and get better performance. It’s going to be pretty tough.”
That’s where his resiliency takes over — the Glidden resiliency of making the most of the least.
