NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year contender Matt
Hagan will be sporting a new look headed into Gainesville. Gone is the
Brakesafe livery and replaced with his family's Shelor.com colors.

Hagan confirmed the change in sponsors but declined to provide any details.

"In these tough economic times, I think it's a good thing to support our family business," he added.

Shelor.com is a 24/7 web site, representing eight new-car franchises
and a used-car super store in Southwest Virginia. As one of the largest
automotive groups in the nation, it provides a huge selection with
big-volume discounts.

The switching of sponsorships is expected to make barely a ripple in the waters for the up-and-coming rookie driver.

Hagan's rookie season is already off to a good start with the
Virginia native has qualifying for each of the first two races and
winning his first round of pro Funny Car competition at the last event
in Phoenix. Standing No. 10 in the rankings, he's aiming to win even
more rounds this weekend, driving the Shelor.com Dodge Funny Car.

For Rodger Brogdon and the Steve Kent racing Pro Stock team, this
weekend’s NHRA AC Delco GatorNationals can’t come soon enough. After
the race in Phoenix, the team left with a checklist of items that
needed attention, but also with renewed enthusiasm knowing that they
were now headed down the right path.

With a considerable amount of on track testing being done in the last
two weeks, the team has been able to address the areas that needed
attention and were ready to head for Gainesville, when a Cagnazzi
Racing engine became available for both Gainesville and Houston.

Phoenix Drag Tires, the flagship brand of Coker Tire’s Performance
Division, will support the Outlaw Racing Street Car Association by
offering contingency prize money to those participants who win or
runner up using it’s highly successful drag tires in competition.

Performance division employee and fellow outlaw competitor, Eric
Gullett feels like this partnership is a natural fit for the growing
Phoenix product line.

The more things are different for Mike Bell and Roy Hill, the more they
are the same. 

The duo has returned to Pro Mod racing after taking a few seasons off.
They still bicker. They still fuss and they don’t always see eye to eye,
but they still have fun. 
 
“Some things never change,” Bell admitted. 
 
Bell and Hill, after taking a couple years off, will be making a run at
the 2009 National Guard ADRL Pro Extreme title with a combination
foreign to both of them. They have a new clutch program, new engine and
a new screw-type blower.

Not many girls growing up in the Winston-Salem, N.C., area were
attracted to fast motorcycles like Angie McBride.  She not only turned that fascination into reality more than a decade ago, she took her quickest two-wheel quarter-mile ride Monday.

It came during a test session in Cecil, Ga., but the 6.950-second
effort aboard the Nitro Fish Buell brought a satisfied smile and a big
boost of confidence as she prepared for the season’s first NHRA Pro
Stock Motorcycle race – the ACDelco Gatornationals at Gainesville
Raceway, Friday through Sunday.

“We had an awesome test session,” McBride said.  “We were the quickest
bike of the day.  We also had runs of 6.99 and 7.02 so I was very
pleased with what we did.”

Promoters George Howard and Steve Earwood weren’t ready to declare
North Carolina drag racing recession-proof Monday, but in the wake of
the success of their TCI Twin Tens event last weekend at Rockingham
Dragway they certainly were more optimistic about the 2009 season.

Clarkton’s Allen Britt and Lumberton’s Jerry Brewer walked away with
the biggest individual purses of the weekend as each claimed a $10,000
prize, Britt for winning the Pro race on Saturday and Brewer for doing
the same on Sunday.

What was most impressive to the promoters, though, was the field of 491 race cars representing eight states.

“We felt like our racers would support us, but we were still surprised
by the turnout,” Earwood said.  “Those are pre-recession numbers which
we think shows that even in hard times, people need entertainment and
they need diversions.”

Jim Deist, who created some of the first commercially available
parachutes for use in drag racing and founded Deist Safety in 1958 to
continue that work in other lines of driver safety, died March 9. He
was 80.

Deist learned the parachute-manufacturing business while working at
Irving Air Chute in the late 1940s, and his passion for drag racing led
him to combine the two. With the encouragement of early parachute
customer Mickey Thompson, he founded Deist Safety and soon added custom
seat belts and, in 1961, his first firesuit. Deist also expanded beyond
the dragstrip to include land-speed-record cars.

Aeromotive has announced their partnership with the Pacific Street Car
Association (PSCA) and its family of racers as an Official PSCA Associate
Sponsor. In addition to being a PSCA sponsor, Aeromotive will be
posting contingency on any of their fuel pumps in all classes for every
2009 event.

Aeromotive’s announcement of their partnership with the PSCA comes on
the coat tails of an extremely successful 2008 season. Their reputation
at the track was more than confirmed with back-to-back NHRA Pro Stock
champion, Jeg Coughlin and 2006/2008 IHRA Pro Stock Champion Pete
Berner, both waiving the Aeromotive flag, not to mention the recent
success of Aeromotive’s own innovative twin turbo Mustang. Aeromotive
fuel systems have become the most dominating and successful fuel
systems in the drag racing world.

Doug Foley's Drag Racing School has added multi-time world champion sportsman racer Lee Zane to its staff. With more than 130
victories to his credit, Zane brings an impressive resume to his new
job, including two NHRA championships, two divisional titles, and three
Driver of the Year awards.

"In my estimation Lee Zane is one of the top sportsman racers competing
on the circuit," Foley said. "The majority of our students are
interested in racing at the same levels where Lee has excelled --
weekend bracket races, outlaw events, and the sportsman level of NHRA
and IHRA competition. Why not learn from the best?"

A New Jersey native, Zane began his driving career in 1995 at the
longtime home base of Doug Foley's Drag Racing School, Atco Dragway
near Philadelphia. It didn't take long for the chassis builder to find
success and he collected more than 100 bracket race titles of the first
six years of his career.

In one fell swoop. the United Association of Journeymen and
Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United
States and Canada (UA) has put their stamp on drag racing through a
major associate sponsorship of Don Prudhomme Racing's Top Fuel team
driven by Spencer Massey and title rights sponsorship of NHRA Full
Throttle Drag Racing Series events in Chicago and Englishtown. Both
programs were announced today.

As the Major Associate Sponsor, U.A. and its International Training
Fund (ITF), will enjoy significant identification on the Top Fuel
dragster, driver and team uniforms; enjoy pit-side hospitality during
the 2009 NHRA Full Throttle Series national events, personal
appearances by Massey and Team Owner Don Prudhomme, and other key value
elements.

“We are very pleased to welcome U.A. as a valued partner at Snake
Racing,” said Team Owner, Don Prudhomme.  “The U.A. is such a strong
organization and we are proud to have the opportunity to help in their
efforts to increase awareness of the great programs that U.A. offers,
not only to its existing members, but for new members as well.  Their
job training programs and facilities are very impressive, as well as
their Veterans In Pipe (VIP) effort, which assists returning U.S.
Military servicemen and servicewomen with job placement.  I am very
proud of our new relationship with U.A. and look forward to many years
of mutual success both on and off the race track.”