CORY MAC FINDING PEACE IN RETIREMENT DECISION

By Susan Wade    Tue, 2019-11-05 11:17

 

Cory McClenathan, the 34-time winner who’s No. 9 all-time in the class, said he isn’t sad to be retiring from his successful Top Fuel career.

“No. I mean this has been coming for a while. I’ve been out here, doing this for a long time,” he said. “It is. I don’t think about it until I get to the track and I’m talking to people.

We would talk about old times and they’re like, ‘Why are you leaving? We don’t want you to.’ Well, I don’t want to leave. It’s just, I think at my age, at 56, that it’s time to say, ‘OK - kind of s--- or get off the pot.’ Everybody says, ‘Oh, you’re still young, to keep doing this,’ and I don’t feel like I can’t handle the car anymore. It’s just like man, I want to do something different. What am I going to do? And trying to find a full-time deal, you know as well as I do, nowadays . . . It’s hard.

“I’d really like a full-time ride, and when you have just part-time rides, there’s very few you end up being really happy with. I mean, I love driving for Dexter [team owner Tuttle] doing part-time stuff,” McClenathan said. “We never say never, but it’s time for the next chapter.

“I don’t know what that’s going to be,” he said. “I’ve had a couple of possibilities. It’d still kind of keep me out here. So you know, you might still see me. I’ll still be wearing a helmet. But I’m stepping out of a Top Fuel car for good. You just might find me in a different class, that’s all. We never know. I always leave everything open, but it’s time to step out of this. I’m very blessed.

The 24-race grind, he said, “just never seems to be a solid foundation, and that’s what I’m all about. I like the family thing.

“I look back, and it’s like – You know what? I’ve been very lucky, had a great career. Still got a lot of great fans. I’m really happy. You know, I miss all my friends, because they’re all out here all the time. That’s the hardest thing. I’ve got a mom to take care of, and my daughter [Courtney] is in vet school right now. She’s going to be a veterinarian. She’s going to be what I wanted to be until I got one of these,” McClenathan said with a nod to the dragster. “So I’ll still be able to hang out with her and deal with dogs and animals, which I love. You guys all know that. I mean, I made that very clear to everybody. But it’s time for something to change. I need to change things. It’s time for that second chapter. I’m 56 years old. I finally moved into a house where I could unload all my trophies and everything, I look around and I’m like, ‘You know, it’s been pretty good to me.’'
 

 

He has been busy since he raced in the Top Fuel class fulltime.

“I’ve been doing the off-road deal with the Lucas series. I really enjoy that. We had our own series with Nitro Outlaws with Dexter Tuttle. That was fun. We enjoyed that. Not doing that anymore. I think he’d like to do it again, just got to get enough people interested and make bigger fields. There’s things we could do, like get with NHRA and maybe run the Nitro Outlaw deal at division races, because then division races don’t have just [have] alcohol cars. They can have some nitro cars to watch, as well, like an 80-percent type of deal. The 80-percent deal, you can run 3.90s with it and it doesn’t hurt anything. So the typical guy that comes out that’s a one-car team, he can go out and have fun. You keep the same motor in the frame rails all year. We’re putting 28-30 runs on a crank. It’s a way different deal. But to come out and swing with the big boys, that’s tough.”

He said he has a plan for his near future.

“When my daughter gets done with vet school, she’ll come back, and she’ll do something in California. Meanwhile, I’ll take care of my mom. I’m back in Corona, so I’m close enough to her where I can see her a few days a week and do some work. And I’ve got a ‘real job’ already set up, so I’m going to do that,” he said. “I bought a company called Race Glass, and we make off road bodies for all the stuff that I’ve been doing. I figured if you’re going to be in it, why not be selling something to make some money? It’s just, it’s business. There’s good B2B [opportunities], and you know people go through those bodies, so you’re always doing something. I’m going to start doing a dragster body and like VW front ends and race cars and stuff like that. So we’re going to try to take it to a different level and start making more carbon fiber stuff. There’s a long way to go with that and of course with RevChem and all their composites, they make everything for all the fiberglass, for all the carbon fiber, so it’s kind of a win-win for me.”

McClenathan laughed when reminded that if Doug Kalitta wins the Top Fuel championship, the Mac Tools Dragster driver will pass along to him the dubious distinction of being the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series competitor with the most victories and no championship. Like 46-time winner Kalitta, McClenathan has been series runner-up four times.

“Oh, you’re going to make me feel bad,” he said with a wag of his head. “I know, it used to be me and Capps, and then Capps won. And then I’m like, ‘OK, now it’s me and Doug’. So if Doug wins, which you know . . .I wish them all good luck . . . Steve [Torrence] and those guys, they come swinging a big bat. Kalitta’s, they can do the same thing. So if things go the right way, he could win a championship, I know he’s been working hard at that – we all have through the years. We’ve been close what, four times? I’m tired of being a bridesmaid and never get to do the deal, but at the same time, I’ve been very lucky. Met a lot of good people out here, had a great career, so I’m here to have some fun for the last couple races – and to see the fans, tell them thank you and go my way.”

 

 
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