Little did Gary Turner realize, crafting a custom bicycle for his five-year-old son would lead to one of the more iconic brands in BMX racing. 

Turner, the owner of The Pedaler AA/FC, created the GT brand and for years integrated the worlds of bicycles with drag racing. 

"For my five-year-old son, I was always digging around for something for him to play with," Turner recalled. "So I cut up a bicycle, and I found out about these kids that were riding in this parking lot, not a parking lot, but in a little dirt field a few miles from where we lived, so I had taken and cut up a bicycle, and I rearranged it a little bit. I had taken him down there and let him play around with these other kids, and that’s how it started."

Turner smiles when he recollects of being involved in both the golden eras of drag racing and the bicycle motocross movement. He was in the dead-front center in the middle of two extreme sports. 

Walk the floor of the SEMA Show with Roger Richards as he brings you the highlights of the longest running automotive aftermarket trade show. You'll see the cars, parts and knowing Roger, the girls on display in Las Vegas.

At the SEMA Show one year ago, Ford Motor Company announced a return to the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) to regain a foothold in the Funny Car classification.

In 2019, Ford has plans to dive deeper into the class with a pair of brand-new developments.

The first development is an all-new 2019 Mustang Funny Car body, to replace the body currently in use that was developed for the 2009 season. The drivers currently running Fords in the class in 2018 have done well with the old design, which has generated excitement for upcoming car.

When talking to nitro Funny Car driver Bob Tasca III is not hard to hear the excitement in his voice.

And for good reason.

Tasca after having a solid 2018 campaign in NHRA’s Mello Yello Series, he can’t wait to compete in 2019 with his team’s newly-designed 2019 Ford Mustang body.

The NHRA continues to insist it indeed is attracting younger racers and fans, yet it’s making a concentrated effort to target both. So maybe 23-year-old Jordan Vandergriff has come along at the perfect time. Team owner Bob Vandergriff Jr. announced Oct. 19 that his nephew will drive a second Top Fuel dragster, with D-A Lubricants and its PennGrade Motor Oil brand as primary sponsor, as a partner to Blake Alexander.

Jordan Vandergriff is licensed in Super Comp and this year has been racing Anthony Dicero’s A/Fuel Dragster this year as part of a driver-development association between the two operations that Bob Vandergriff called exciting. The program isn’t for the benefit of only Jordan Vandergriff. “Our plan is to create opportunities for other young drivers to compete and help them with the progression of their careers, as well,” Bob Vandergriff Jr. said.

Although he barely missed the Countdown to the Championship at the last minute, Funny Car owner-driver Bob Tasca has a lot to be excited about these days. That was evident when he participated in a in a recent Autoweek magazine-sponsored podcast. A Ford evangelist, Tasca preached the product innovation coming from the automaker’s Dearborn, Mich., headquarters. While he had an eye on future automotive developments, the Rhode Island Ford dealer gave a brief sermon about the status of NHRA drag racing.

“The sport, no matter how you look at it, is growing. And that is almost unheard of with motorsports today. The NHRA in today’s world is as relevant as it’s ever been,” Tasca said.

Dennis Taylor, a successful safety equipment manufacturer and former Alcohol Funny Car standout, is okay with the role he accepted two years ago. He's content with being a spectator, racing dad and team owner.

Taylor made the conversion over to Nostalgia Funny Car about a decade ago and has since handed over the driver chores of his Evil, Wicked, Mean and Nasty entry to his son Justin, who has embraced the challenge.

"It’s the people that keep me coming back," Taylor said, as he watched Justin preparing the Mustang Funny Car for a qualifying lap. "I deal with all these people day in and day out anyway because of our company. I never really had any problem when I quit driving alcohol cars to go to a race and do business and see the people. I may not go sit in the grandstands and watch all the runs. I kind of don’t need to. But if I had a different job, if I was a landscape guy or something like that, yeah it would be tough to come to the races."

Aspiring NHRA Top Fuel competitor Ashley Sandford will race for Rapisarda Autosport International at the opening round of the 400 Thunder Championship at Sydney Dragway, November 2-3.

Sanford will be joined by RAI teammates, NHRA regular Wayne Newby and Western Australian star Damien Harris.

The most recent Mid West Pro Mod Series release suggested Radial vs. the World and X275 classes would race within the MWPMS World Finals this weekend (Nov. 1-3), at the Texas Motorplex. However, when the original MWPMS World Finals were postponed from Tulsa early this month, both classes were deemed to have completed their seasons and Daniel Pharris was named 2018 RvW champion, while Kenny Hubbard secured his second consecutive MWPMS X275 championship.

All eyes in the fast doorslammer world will focus on the Texas Motorplex Nov. 1-3, when the trendsetting all-concrete drag strip hosts not one, but two epic events with more than $125,000 in total prize money on the line.

Headlining the all-eighth-mile weekend will be the inaugural Elite 16 $50,000-to-win event presented by Elite Motorsports and the Mid-West Pro Mod Series (MWPMS). Featuring teams and drivers from the NHRA, PDRA, NMCA, TOPMA and MWPMS going head to head for the first time on the same track, the Elite 16 promises to be a spectacle in itself. But additionally, after heavy rain threatened the season-ending Frankenstein Engine Dynamics Mid-West Pro Mod Series World Finals earlier this month at Tulsa, Ok., the decision was quickly reached to move that race also to the same weekend at the Motorplex, just south of Dallas.