Today's drag racing world offers a calculated path to racing nitro. Starting at five years old, a kid can climb behind the wheel of a Junior Dragster, and when they are older, they can visit a drag racing school or even rent an instructional ride in an A/Fuel Dragster through Anthony DiCero's Nitro University.

Or, they can just take the Del Worsham route of hopping off of a BMX bicycle and jumping right behind a fire-belching, nitro-burning engine.

The one aspect Worsham learned quicker than how to drive a fuel Funny Car is when opportunity knocks, you had better open the door.

"When the opportunity is there, you have to take it," said Worsham. "I look back, and I always said when I was a kid, I wanted to be a Funny Car racer. I never knew how or if that was even possible or how I was going to get there or what age I would be, but when the whole opportunity came about in the summer of 1990, and that’s what was presented, there was no chance I was going to say no. I was going to take that opportunity and go with it.”

Worsham was only 20 years old when he piloted his first Funny Car. The initial ride was not fueled by gasoline, as he, a former crewman, believed that gasoline was for washing parts. Nor did it burn alcohol, as he believed alcohol was for drinking, although he was not of legal drinking age at the time.

Worsham had only been on the road with his father Chuck Worsham for three years in partnership with former racer Art Hendy on a Top Alcohol Funny Car. Hendy had visions of grandeur and introduced the father and son to life on the road. He also introduced them to nitro.

With the extreme cost of nitro racing, Worsham and Hendy added a third partner in Ron Todoran. However, the partnership was short-lived as Hendy's business grew to the point he could no longer take time off work to go racing.

Chuck and Todoran approached the kid and asked if he wanted to give driving a try.

"I had always talked about it and wanted to do this, so when they asked, ‘Hey, are you sure? Do you really want to give this a shot?'

"I was very mechanical, and I spent all my waking hours working on Funny Cars, that’s all I did. They were gracious enough to give me the opportunity, and there were never any goals set. Basically, it was let’s just go to Texas [the next NHRA race]."

Before the event, in an impromptu test session, Worsham performed his first burnout without one single bit of drag racing experience to draw from. No experience meant no experience. The kid hadn’t even done a burnout in his life; on the street or the strip. A power slide on his bicycle was as close as he'd ever come to the drag racing ritual.   

"We went to the Motorplex with no goals whatsoever other than see if you can do a burnout," Worsham recalled. "Amazingly, the burnout came pretty easy, and the back-up came pretty easy. I had seen it with a couple of different drivers, including Art Hendy, but I spent a lot of time watching how this process went about. When it came time for me to do it it turned out to not be a big deal.

"I had never even done a burnout in a car. To tell you the honest to God truth, I don’t even know if I had even been 100 mph. in a car. Maybe in my ’78 El Camino with a V-6 I got up to 100 mph someplace."

Worsham remembers the day as if it were yesterday.

"I remember rolling up to the water box, and we didn’t have a throttle stop at that time, and I just started pushing on the throttle, and I remember it started vibrating, and there were rocks and stuff flying," Worsham explained. "I could feel it didn’t have traction, and I kept pushing on the throttle until the motor was down to the RPMs and I was able to do a nice burnout, get it stopped and backed up. I remember at first I asked, ‘Should I do a burnout?’ And my dad was like, ‘Well, if you think you can get it back from a burnout, might as well see if you can stage it.’"

Chuck made a mistake in preparing the car for his novice driver. He detuned the car, which proved to be the wrong move.

"I remember hitting the throttle the first time, and the car just didn’t go straight, it did a wheelie, and I thought, well maybe I just didn’t drive it right," Worsham said. "So we did it a second time and the same problem. Did it a third time and finally I told my dad, ‘Look, I don’t think anybody can drive this car. I’m doing everything I think I should do, and this car won’t go straight."

Chuck loaded up the Funny Car with an abundance of horsepower, and it became obvious the kid was a driver.

"We put the car all back to what would be a race setup and I ran 5.74 at like 215 mph, straight down the track," Worsham said with a smile. "It just needed power. It had to drive itself out there, and I remember a 5.74 at a quarter-mile, which really could have been my first run because I just couldn’t drive it. Once I could drive it, we had it.”

Now that Worsham is an older, more seasoned driver with two NHRA championships, he often waxes nostalgic of those early days.

"It seems like this year I’ve been quite nostalgic," Worsham admitted. "Maybe because it’s my 25th year and we won the title, I’ve kind of been remembering some of the memories I have at each one of the tracks.  I can’t say I set out in 1990 to win a Funny Car championship because I didn’t. I set out in 1990 to just try and get down the racetrack and not crash into Mike Dunn, who was in the opposite lane on my first run.

"You want to know the truth? I ran against him side by side, and I was thinking, ‘man, I just do not want to run into this guy.”

“I had no racing experience. As time went on, and your goals get higher, your expectations get higher, the possibility of winning a Funny Car championship seemed more and more realistic to me; the expectations became higher, and to finally pull it off was definitely something I will always remember.”

And for Worsham it was also a reminder he'll pass on to his children, when opportunity knocks, always answer.

Bobby Bennett is the Publisher/Editor of CompetitionPlus.com, a leading independent online drag racing magazine, since 1999. For the latest in dragster news worldwide, visit www.competitionplus.com or follow on Twitter @competitionplus