The persistent nitro-class driver will admit that he has had races, even seasons, when he probably should not have pushed his aging equipment past its limits. Haunting videos of his race cars burning to the ground confirm that.

 

"I was in a car I shouldn't have been in. It wasn't safe, but you think. 'It'll never happen to me.' I wanted to drive so bad that I'd drive anything. At the time, I thought people would see me, see how hard I was working to make it," Haddock said. "I didn't realize that Corporate America doesn't work that way. Being in any old car makes you look bad."

Terry Haddock has learned the hard way that being prepared for National Hot Rod Association pro competition trumps running on a shoestring but showing lots of passion.

 

The persistent nitro-class driver will admit that he has had races, even seasons, when he probably should not have pushed his aging equipment past its limits. Haunting videos of his race cars burning to the ground confirm that.

 

"I was in a car I shouldn't have been in. It wasn't safe, but you think. 'It'll never happen to me.' I wanted to drive so bad that I'd drive anything. At the time, I thought people would see me, see how hard I was working to make it," Haddock said. "I didn't realize that Corporate America doesn't work that way. Being in any old car makes you look bad."

 

He's not in "any old car" this year. He has a Toyota Solara body from the Kalitta Motorsports stock. And this weekend at the NHRA SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, the Hackettstown, N.J.-raised Haddock has primary sponsorship from DiPinto International Logistics, a Monroe Township-based transportation and warehousing corporation housed just five miles from the racetrack.

 

All that -- along with funding from Chicago businessman Brett Baron and his family-owned scrap-metal company in Chicago, Acme Refining -- Haddock for the first time in his career has a full-time crew. In the past, Haddock has raced with a different volunteer team at every event.

 

He once remarked that "Money kind of screws things up, but you have to have it to race. Money lets these other guys make lots of runs down the track. If you cross the finish line only four or five times in a whole season, you don't know how that feels. And it's not just the driver who needs the training. The crew needs it, too.

 

"Money is the root of it all," Haddock said, "but money doesn't do you any good unless you have good people around you, people you trust, and good chemistry. With the right car, the right parts, and the right people, you increase your odds by a bunch."

 

With skilled administrative help from girlfriend Jenna Reich, who has helped him organize his business affairs, that's exactly what he's trying to do.

 

"Jenna and I are so excited that this is happening," Haddock said. "We are completely blown away by the support we are receiving. While we'd like to run more races, we are going to be smart and only do what the budget allows. With Acme Refining and DiPinto’s support the best thing is that we now have the means to be fully prepared like everyone else."

 

The only two Full Throttle Drag Racing Series events Haddock has entered this season are the ones at Las Vegas and Houston. He didn't make the cut at either. But he knows that everything takes time.

 

He has taken time to settle into a groove-- and a route that snaked to the West Coast and now to Texas -- racing out of a gas station in New Jersey, then a machine shop in Santa Barbara, Calif., then the suburbs of Seattle, and now Temple, Texas.

 

There he owns and operates Lone Star Aluminum Block Repair. In their rare spare time, he his and Reich hare working toward her acquiring her Top Fuel license -- "nice and slow, doing it the right way," he said, adding that "if it's not safe, I don’t want to put her in it."

 

No, he certainly doesn't want her to spend three months in the hospital -- St. Barnabas, in Livingston, N.J. -- with severe burns to his face and hands. (Despite his pain, he decided, "I ain't got it bad at all. I saw all these little kids in the hospital who had been burned.")  He doesn’t want her to be like he was, like the tumbling skier who for years represented "the agony of defeat" on ABC's Wide World of Sports program.
 
The positive news from having his Memphis 2000 qualifying fire aired again and again on a Discovery Channel program -- and perpetuated on You Tube -- was that his estranged family happened to tune into the television broadcast of that race. They saw the accident and fire and made peace with him and his racing decision once they learned that he was in desperate shape.

 

(He was stuck inside his car, struggling to free himself from his safety belts before he could climb through the escape hatch. He had to remove his driving gloves to yank off the harness because its Velcro release had melted. The sweat on his face had boiled inside his helmet.)

 

So when racers talk about sacrifice and pain, Haddock knows what he's talking about. He might struggle to make a field or advance  past the first round. But he has the 2008 International Hot Rod Association Nitro Funny Car championship to his credit.

 

"The more people told us we couldn’t do this, the harder we tried," Haddock said. "Inside that Funny Car is the most peaceful place in the world. I know its where I was meant to be."

 

(The middle of three children whose father was a maintenance electrician and mother a nurse, Haddock said he fell in love with Funny Cars as a kid, watching them on TV. "You only need to see Funny Cars once to get excited about them," he said.)

 

Inspired by John Force, the rags-to-riches 15-time Funny Car champion, Haddock took some advice from him. 

 

Said Haddock, "He told me, '"You see all this stuff? Someday you'll have all of it, because you have the heart to work hard for it.' He knows how stupid I am. I'm not smart enough to quit.

 

"He told me his stories, and I realized I'm not the only one who did dumb things just to race -- you know, things like not paying my rent one month because I needed the money for the car. I thought I was the only one who did stupid stuff like that," he said.

 

"I'm a guy who started out with nothing. I didn't come from a privileged background," Haddock said, asking for neither pity nor praise, but simply a fair shot. He has it this year more than ever before.

 

For the past five years, DiPinto has been one of many associate sponsors on Force's Mustang. Said DiPinto, "We made the jump to primary sponsor, and we’re thrilled to be onboard with Haddock Racing."

 

Said Haddock, "Rob and I have been working together and have built a great relationship and friendship. With New Jersey being my home state, it's special that we will be able to go to Englishtown and represent DiPinto International this year with a real chance to qualify and go rounds, thanks to Rob."

 

DiPinto said he's hoping to leverage the exposure from this weekend's race to increase B2B opportunities. "This race has New Jersey written all over it," he said, "and we are proud to be a part of it.”

 

Haddock is proud to have this chance, to have survived burns and bitter setbacks, to be home in New Jersey.

 

"As a kid I used to watch drag racing on TV and decided that someday I wanted to drive a nitro car. Of course, when you're 10 you have a lot of dreams that never amount to much. But I held on to that dream," he said.

 

Haddock's 2011 schedule calls for him to race next at Joliet, Norwalk, Seattle, Indianapolis, Reading, and Dallas. If his performances are promising, the team might opt to race the final three events, at Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Pomona.