Don Bowles, 70, sat in his custom bus Friday afternoon watching a video.
The former class racing standout wasn’t watching one of his old videos of winning NHRA national events from back in the day.
Instead, the former U.S. Nationals runner-up, now out of retirement,
studied the video, fast forwarding and rewinding of the qualifying run
he had made earlier in the day at Zmax Dragway. He and his associates
were trying to figure out what was going wrong with the car as it
hurtled down the quarter mile.
Bowles has found a new lease on his racing life as a racer on the
National Mustang Racing Association’s Hot Street division. He’s also
got a second car, a NASCAR engine powered 2008 Mustang, but that’s a
story for another day.
Don Bowles, 70, sat in his custom bus Friday afternoon watching a video.
Former Modified standout Don Bowles has a new lease on life racing with the NMRA.
The former class racing standout wasn’t watching one of his old videos of winning NHRA national events from back in the day.
Instead, the former U.S. Nationals runner-up, now out of retirement,
studied the video, fast forwarding and rewinding of the qualifying run
he had made earlier in the day at Zmax Dragway. He and his associates
were trying to figure out what was going wrong with the car as it
hurtled down the quarter mile.
Bowles has found a new lease on his racing life as a racer on the
National Mustang Racing Association’s Hot Street division. He’s also
got a second car, a NASCAR engine powered 2008 Mustang, but that’s a
story for another day.
Bowles is just as intense now as he was back in the 1981 when he drove
a Ford Fairmont Futura to the NHRA Springnationals Modified eliminator
crown.
On this day, it was all about his 8-second Maverick.
“I was trying to figure out why my car wasn’t hooking the way it
normally does,” Bowles said. “We were looking to see what the chassis
was doing, how well it’s hooking. It never got the front wheels up to
the center of gravity. It just hooked and let go.
“It’s got 54 percent of the weight on the front,” said Bowles as he
proudly described the car’s combination. “It’s not real heavy, so it
needs instant traction to get the wheels up for a ways. It needs to
carry them for 40 or 50 foot to stay hooked up.”
Bowles, largely known for his friendship with NASCAR team owner Jack
Roush, has made a mark in the Hot Street division, a class where he can
race his 360-inch Ford-powered machine on 10.5-inch tires, the great
equalizer.
That’s a far cry from the old Ford’s he drove, yanking the wheels in
the air with each gear shift. Beyond the car he drives, there’s very
little that resembles his old race operation. He remembers the days
when he towed his race team in a 39-foot Chapparal trailer towed by a
CAT-powered dually truck.
“Now we have a semi trailer plus this one with all the equipment so we
have no excuses not to run good,” Bowles said. “We don’t always run
good, but we try hard.”
Bowles admits he’s having the time of his life which was a far cry from
the early days when he left in protest of the NHRA’s decision to
disband Modified eliminator at the end of the 1981 season.
So what lured the once-diehard drag racer back?
The chance to race with a factory blessed car with a NASCAR-style
engine in today’s modern showroom was the lure that brought Bowles out
of retirement.
“They [Ford] talked to us about the new engine they wanted to bring
out,” Bowles explained. “The idea was to bring the muscle car back like
the ’60’s. That was fun racing.”
And it’s not much different than the fun he’s having with the Maverick.
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