WHILE THE DRIVER’S AWAY  . . . Dad Gary Densham will play. The 75-year-old drag-racing veteran erased any speculation about who’s the driver of their family-owned Ford Mustang Funny Car. It’s his son.
 
“Steven’s the driver. I’ll be driving here and I’ll be driving at Pomona – only because the Super Bowl screwed us up,” Gary Densham said. 
 
He was referring to the NFL’s decision to add an extra week of regular-season play, therefore sliding the playoffs and Super Bowl further into the new year. The NHRA schedule-makers traditionally try to dance around the NFL’s Super Bowl and NASCAR’s Daytona 500. And sometimes, no matter how hard they try to give the season-opening Winternationals the most favorable slot on the calendar, it’s not possible. And that’s what has the Denshams adjusting their plans. 
 
Patriarch Gary said, “Steven’s got a group of friends. They’ve been friends since high school. They went to college together. All got married about the same time, and all started having babies at about the same time. It’s hard for me to believe they all used to be running around my house. They’re all going to turn 40 this year. So they decided before they really get old, they ought to have one more party. 
 
“Years ago they started planning a trip. They rented a villa in Costa Rica and are going to go down there for a week and go hiking and scuba diving and all that, having a good time, leaving the kids with the grandparents, all that kind of crap,” he said. “So he came to me and he said, ‘Make sure I get the right date.’” 
 
But, of course, even the most well-thought-out plans can get messed up – and they did in this case.
 
“Bottom line,” Densham said, “is he is our driver. I’m not saying I won’t ever drive it again after Pomona, but as much as you hate to admit it, you’re getting older. Before everybody started this crap of deep-staging and all this other junk and they kept track of all those statistics, all though the ’90s and early 2000s, I was the best [on the starting line]. I’m not bragging. It’s just a fact. Now I’m just average. Well, Steven’s really, really, really good. And with cars running as close together as they are today, a hundredth or two on the starting line is huge. And I can’t give that to the team like I used to be able to do. He can. So that helps us all do better.
 
“And I’ve enjoyed stepping back from it a little bit,” he said. “I still love driving the car; don’t get me wrong. Unless something changes, he’ll drive the rest of the year.”
 
The plan, Densham said, is to open at Pomona, then compete at Las Vegas, at one of the Western Swing races (at Denver, Sonoma, or Seattle), probably Brainerd, and Las Vegas and Pomona to close the season. “So it’ll be six of them total,” he said.