For years, Johnny Pilcher and his midnight-black ’63 Corvette were staples of the ADRL Pro Nitrous class, but after a 14-hour drive from Chancellor, Alabama, he showed up at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis this weekend with the car painted in traditional Pilcher family colors.

“For years and years back to the early ‘70s, even the ‘60s, all of our race cars have been silver and white in some orientation,” the three-time ADRL event winner said. “This car, it was a partnership with Red Williams, who was a friend of my dad’s, and when he passed away we just left it black, which was his color, and raced it in his honor like that. On the dash there’s still a little buzzard there because all of Red’s race cars were named ‘The Buzzard,’ so he still rides with me every pass.

“Red was a great person and a good friend, but we decided this year it was time to go back to our own family colors. Another reason was because we did a lot of body work on the car and it’s kind of hard to hide body work with black paint, so the car’s now white. But we like it just because it’s kind of a family tradition.”

For the past couple of years Pilcher has been competing in the ADRL on only a part-time basis for car owner Drexel Stewart in his ’68 Camaro. Most recently, Pilcher qualified that car eighth at Rockingham (NC) Dragway, but was unable to answer the call for eliminations.

For years, Johnny Pilcher and his midnight-black ’63 Corvette were staples of the ADRL Pro Nitrous class, but after a 14-hour drive from Chancellor, Alabama, he showed up at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis this weekend with the car painted in traditional Pilcher family colors.

“For years and years back to the early ‘70s, even the ‘60s, all of our race cars have been silver and white in some orientation,” the three-time ADRL event winner said. “This car, it was a partnership with Red Williams, who was a friend of my dad’s, and when he passed away we just left it black, which was his color, and raced it in his honor like that. On the dash there’s still a little buzzard there because all of Red’s race cars were named ‘The Buzzard,’ so he still rides with me every pass.

“Red was a great person and a good friend, but we decided this year it was time to go back to our own family colors. Another reason was because we did a lot of body work on the car and it’s kind of hard to hide body work with black paint, so the car’s now white. But we like it just because it’s kind of a family tradition.”

For the past couple of years Pilcher has been competing in the ADRL on only a part-time basis for car owner Drexel Stewart in his ’68 Camaro. Most recently, Pilcher qualified that car eighth at Rockingham (NC) Dragway, but was unable to answer the call for eliminations.

“We had some tune-up issues and pinched a piston, but we didn’t have time to change it between rounds,” Pilcher explained. “But we’ve got that fixed now, we’ve made a couple of hits on it since then and it looks good.”

That same Sonny’s motor is now residing between the frame rails of the Tommy Mauney-built Vette, which Pilcher said is about 150 pounds lighter than the Camaro.  But he insists he doesn’t even know the engine’s size. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not going to lie; this is actually a motor that Sonny is doing some R&D on,” he said, suggesting it may be one of Sonny Leonard’s latest 900-plus-cubic-inch monsters.  

Regardless, after running the Corvette in five previous races this year and winning three with a runner-up finish at another, Pilcher said he’s looking forward to his first ADRL experience with it this year. After one round of qualifying he sat seventh with a 3.885-seconds effort at 193.35 mph.   

“There’s not a whole lot of races going on around home right now that we can participate in, so we just decided to come out here, be around some good friends and see what we can do,” he said.

He also revealed a hopeful plan for returning to a full-time ADRL effort in 2012.

“Yes, we’re trying to work a deal out where we’ll have a new car for that,” Pilcher confirmed. “We’ll probably do a new Mauney car and it’ll be a late-model Camaro. Tommy says he can make us a real light car and I believe him, so we might try that. We just have to see how everything plays out. I mean, it’s on paper; it’s just not quite done yet. Contracts have been drawn; how about I say that?”