Tommy Mauney came home in Rockingham, NC.

Home for Mauney, who resides in Shelby, NC, is behind the wheel of a nitrous-injected doorslammer.

Mauney was competing in the Pro Nitrous category for the first time; after many years as a Pro Extreme driver. He was driving Andy Merrell’s nitrous-injected Camaro.

“I never really left … I was just doing what others wanted me to do,” said Mauney, who won the 1995 IHRA Pro Modified title with a nitrous car. “None of the equipment belongs to me anymore; you just find a place to race and run like they want you to.”

Tommy Mauney came home in Rockingham, NC.

Home for Mauney, who resides in Shelby, NC, is behind the wheel of a nitrous-injected doorslammer.

Mauney was competing in the Pro Nitrous category for the first time; after many years as a Pro Extreme driver. He was driving Andy Merrell’s nitrous-injected Camaro.

“I never really left … I was just doing what others wanted me to do,” said Mauney, who won the 1995 IHRA Pro Modified title with a nitrous car. “None of the equipment belongs to me anymore; you just find a place to race and run like they want you to.”

Mauney points out he willingly walked away from the nitrous car, admitting racing a supercharged car was on his drag racing bucket list.

‘I just wanted to do the blower deal and try it,” Mauney admitted. “I just wanted to find out what the mystique was in racing a blower car. That’s some bad stuff over there. The nitrous deal is where I started and what I’ve always considered to be home.”

And returning to Rockingham in a nitrous car brings back nitrous doorslammer memories galore. Twenty-three years ago, on the same weekend as the recent ADRL Dragstock VII event, Mauney became the first driver to win a Top Sportsman national event utilizing nitrous oxide on a full-bodied car.

“We all absolutely knew nothing about what we were doing,” said Mauney of those early days in nitrous. “Truly for us, ignorance was bliss. If it hadn’t have been for Tom Pistone and his pistons lining the wall at his shop, we never would have made it. I was buying them from him, $100 a set, just to get them off of the wall. That would keep us going another weekend.”

Mauney’s historic car was nothing more than a Modified eliminator entry, an A/Gasser, with nitrous plumbed into the small block.

“I built it along the lines of the old Wayne County Opel,” Mauney said. “The engine was just an old 358, cast iron NASCAR engine. The heads were nothing special. I ended up selling the engine to Deat Buckner for $3500. It was a good combination.”

Mauney then became involved with Mike Thermos and his staff at Nitrous Oxide Systems, Inc. [NOS].

“They helped me through all of those years of doing that stuff,” Mauney said. “I remember calling Mike after I won Rockingham and telling him about my win. He asked how big of a system I was running, and I responded, ‘How big can I run?

“Thermos told me I could run a 36 jet in there and I told him I was running way bigger than that already. He tried to tell me I couldn’t. But, we did for a long time.”

Mauney qualified 13th for the quickest ever nitrous field with a 3.933 elapsed time in a field led by his former crew chief and longtime friend Shannon Jenkins. Together they won the 1995 IHRA Pro Modified title.

Rolling into the waterbox for a run on Friday, Mauney waved in jest to his longtime friend Jenkins with his middle finger predominant.

Of course, for Mauney, it was all in jest and supposed to be secret between the two.

"Nobody was supposed to see that," Mauney said with a laugh.

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