Rick Stivers has been racing in one form or fashion since he was a
child. If you ask him, he'll laugh and say, "I got 18 stitches in my
eye when I was six because I fell off my bike doing a burnout in the
gravel - so I guess racing is just in my blood." For the past 20 years,
the 50-year-old Lexington, Ky. resident has been mesmerized by the
thrills of drag racing, working his way through a variety of classes
owning several cars, settling on a 2,500-horse power Pro Modified
door-slammer that runs the quarter-mile at more than 240 mph in six
seconds.
 
Last year was a season of change for Stivers, joining forces halfway
through the NHRA Pro Mod Challenge season with then series-presenting
sponsor Tim Tindle. With the addition of a teammate and under direction
of world championship-tuner Chuck Ford, Stivers won his first NHRA
event ever in Richmond, Va. Calling that win "the hardest one to get,"
Stivers said it was something he would never forget.
 
"I remember being just flooded with emotions when we won that first
race in Richmond," he said. "It took us so long to get to that point,
and with my wife Jill and son Rick Jr. by my side, it was an amazing
moment."

Old Spice, the No. 1 anti-perspirant/deodorant stick and body wash choice for
guys in the United States, is joining forces with drag racing’s most successful
Funny Car Team – John Force Racing (JFR), with rookie Funny Car driver Mike Neff
behind the wheel of the new Old Spice Ford Mustang in the 2008 NHRA POWERade
Drag Racing Series.

The 320-mile-an-hour Old Spice Ford
Mustang – identified by the iconic buoy bottle that adorns its sides – made its
debut in Pomona during the
48th annual CARQUEST Auto Parts Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway
this February.  In addition to Neff’s
car, Old Spice branding also will appear on the Ford Mustangs of John Force,
Ashley Force and Robert Hight. 

Led by John Force, the only drag
racing driver to have won more than 100 NHRA tour events (125), JFR has
dominated Funny Car racing since 1989.  Over the last 19 seasons, the team has
won 15 championships and five drivers have contributed to the team’s record 175
tour victories.  Neff, who joins JFR this season, has a long history of racing,
starting off in motorcross and off-road trucks, transitioning to drag racing in
the early 1990s as a mechanic.  In 2002, he was promoted to crew chief at Don
Schumacher Racing, where he won the 2005 NHRA POWERade championship with driver
Gary Scelzi.

Today's classic You Tube video moment features fast doorslammer racing
from Atlanta Speedshop Dragway in Georgia. A few race cars have crashed
along the storied eighth mile over the years. Those who were around in
the formative years will recognize the Mustang in the opposite lane as
the former Rickie Smith entry driven by Thomas Jackson.

Television producer and videographer Timothy Scott “Bubba” Barnes,
whose career in motorsports spanned thirty years, passed away on
Friday, March 21, 2008, after battling cancer since 2007. He was
forty-eight years old.

A longtime racing enthusiast, Barnes began his television career as a
news cameraman with WCYB-TV in his hometown of Bristol, TN, and became
a cameraman for ESPN’s drag racing coverage in 1985. He became one of
the original employees of Masters Entertainment Group in Bristol and
went on to produce and direct MEG television shows for a variety of
networks including ESPN, ESPN2 and SPEED Channel.

Dave
Wallace turned a lifetime of getting the numbers right into Hall of Fame status
…

Mike Bumbeck Photo

Dave
Wallace began his drag racing career as an 11-year old ET slip
distributor before developing into one of drag racing's more prominent
journalists.

As a starry-eyed 11 year old kid, Dave Wallace never envisioned he’d
one day end up on the stage as an inductee into the International Drag
Racing Hall of Fame. He never envisioned what would happen as he began
his acceptance speech, either.

Some experiences just don’t fade away. Such is the case with Kenny Bernstein when he rolls through the

Kenny
Bernstein feels a special bond with Gainesville Raceway. On March 20,
1992, he became the first driver to run 300-mph in a Top Fuel dragster.

gates of Gainesville Raceway.

On March 20, 1992, Bernstein became the first drag racer to drive a piston-driven car to a 300-mile per hour run.

“For many years it was a little emotional when we got back in there but
now it's just kind of a sense of pride in the fact that we got it done
and it was here,” Bernstein said. “It was a great accomplishment by a
team that worked extremely hard to get it done. Dale Armstrong and the
boys wanted to be the first to do this. I just got to go along for the
ride, it was fun.”

Richard Hogan had a lot on his mind Thursday evening when he was
contacted by Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com to discuss his dismissal from
Morgan Lucas Racing. His concerns weren’t centered on himself and his
future. They were about his crew members, who he said, moved to work
with him.

Hogan said they are now left without their crew chief.

“They decided to fire me and that’s always an owner’s decision,” Hogan
said. “What I really had a problem with is the crew guys that I had are
still there that have been with me for two to three years. They
relocated from different areas of the country to come race on the team
with me. They moved their families and left Schumacher’s with me also.

“We moved under the faith that we’d have a good program with Lucas. They fired me and never thought anything about them.”

One of
the more intriguing story lines arising from the Pro Stock pit area following
the first three races of the 2008 POWERade Drag Racing season concerns the
return to prominence of two of the category’s perennial contenders, the father
and son duo of Warren and Kurt Johnson.  After combining to post a total of five
Top Four starts in all of 2007, the talented tandem have already scored six such
qualifying positions in 2008, highlighted by their charge to the first and
second starting spots at the recently completed ACDelco Gatornationals in
Gainesville, FL. 

Although there is certainly reason
for cautious optimism at the ACDelco Cobalt and GM Performance Parts GXP teams’
Sugar Hill, GA
headquarters as they prepare for next weekend’s O’Reilly Spring Nationals in
Houston, TX, both drivers admitted they would only
consider their efforts successful once they translate this improvement into
return trips to the winner’s circle.

“It’s all coming together nicely,”
said Kurt.  “I believe both Dad and I are in a better position at this point in
the season than we have been for several years, and that’s the result of a lot
of hard work by everyone at the shop.  There’s been a lot of trial and error and
experimenting with different combinations. We’ve had good and bad days and we’ve
burnt our share of midnight oil, but the results are starting to
show.

The annual ACDelco NHRA Gatornationals holds special significance for the entire
JEGS Racing team, and not just because this is one of the biggest races in the
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series. Five years ago, the entire Coughlin family
used this high-profile race to launch the JEGS Foundation "Racing for Cancer
Research" program, which has since raised millions of dollars for the Arthur G. James
Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research
Institute at The Ohio State University.

It was at Gainesville Raceway
that JEGS first rolled out a mobile cancer screening center that tested fans,
racers, and crew personnel free-of-charge with an emphasis on the fact that
early detection of all forms of cancer is the best pathway to surviving the
disease.