When John Montecalvo saw his race car roll out of sight of his Long Island, New York, shop February 6, he thought his days as a professional drag racer had ended.

That absence lasted a little more than a week.

Turns out he wasn’t really ready to hang up his firesuit.

“I think a lot of people thought I was getting out. I think I thought I was getting out,” Montecalvo said prior to eliminations at the PDRA’s season-opening East Coast Nationals at GALOT Motorsports Park.

“When that Camaro left, it was a sad day for me. For one, it had Sonny’s on the hood scoop, and we all know my situation with” Sonny Leonard, the famed engine builder who died 15 months ago. “I miss him every day. He was a dear friend; more than my engine builder, that’s for sure. I was very loyal to Sonny, he was very loyal to me. We won a lot of races together.

“The other thing was just the car leaving. In some ways it was sad, in other ways it was like, ‘Wow, I got a cement block lifted off my chest. I don’t have to go Pro Stock racing anymore, I could use the boat a little bit more.’ ”

Within a week or so, Montecalvo had the bug to return to competition. And a couple of weeks after that, he’d bought another car – the same Roy Hill-owned Ford Mustang that Mike Bell drove to an ADRL victory last summer near St. Louis.

Montecalvo, a champion in the mountain motor Pro Stock ranks with PDRA, ADRL and IHRA, barely had time to get used to the empty space in his shop before being besieged by messages that Hill had a like-new car available. And in Hill, Montecalvo was negotiating with a long-time friend. Montecalvo, you see, is a graduate of the Roy Hill’s Drag Racing School. 

“I haven’t owned a used car in I don’t know how long, so being in a used car is something different,” Montecalvo said. “Everybody was telling me Roy had a (Jerry) Haas car, which I was familiar with, and they all said it had big, big power. So I started talking to Roy about it and we came to a deal.”

Between the time Montecalvo took possession of the fire-engine-red 2020 Mustang and showed up for testing at GALOT on Wednesday, April 7, a small bit of customization was necessary.

“The cockpit is identical to my Camaro, so I couldn’t tell the difference,” he said. “We changed the seat location around, and we put a hand brake in because I’m used to having a hand brake” rather than the foot brake used by the majority of Extreme Pro Stock racers.

“It’s got a digital dash, which I’ve never had. I guess I’m old school. I’m used to having gauges – I don’t like to see lights flashing – so I had to get used to that. It doesn’t have a tachometer, so I had to put a line on the dash of where I want to be” in the waterbox for the burnout.

Montecalvo and his team made three test runs Wednesday and another three the next day, and stopped the timers at 4.06 seconds on their final pre-race pass. On Friday, in qualifying, Montecalvo said they dealt with “gremlins,” yet still ran 4.044 to qualify sixth, which was less than 3/100ths of a second behind the 4.017 of No. 1 qualifier J.R. Carr.

Montecalvo’s race debut in a Ford on Saturday didn’t last long. He unleashed his best run of the event, 4.040 seconds, but a quicker launch allowed Tony Gillig to win the duel.

“It’s a used car, but it’s new to us, so we’re gradually working our way up,” Montecalvo said.

“I feel very good going into this season. I don’t know how many races I’m going to run, but the ones I run at, I want them to know that I’m there. The past couple of years, we struggled a lot. I just wanted to start out fresh: new car, new engine, new everything. Now it’s just a matter of making it our car and tuning it the way we like to tune it.

There’s another facet of the race that made defeat a tad easier to swallow, Montecalvo said. Hill, the former IHRA Pro Stock champion who was seriously injured in the staging lanes at Charlotte last May, was on hand to see the car run during qualifying. 

“He’s giving me some sponsorship with the school, and he’s helping me out parts-wise,” Montecalvo said. “When he was here with us, they said it was the first time he was smiling in a long time. He hung out with us ‘til about 11 o’clock or so. It was good to see Roy here, good to see him smiling. He’s had his share of bad luck, so to see him smiling made me feel good.”

Those smiles were a different look than Montecalvo got when he was Hill’s student decades ago. Hill is renowned as a harsh taskmaster, as Montecalvo can attest.

“I passed, but he yelled quite a bit,” Montecalvo laughed. “Roy is hard on his students, but I’m glad that he is. There’s so much that he taught me years ago that I still use today, like putting your right belt on first, then your left. I thought I knew everything when I went there, but I didn’t know everything. Roy was very successful running Pro Stock back in the day. I’ve always considered him a good friend, and I know if I ever needed anything, all I had to do was ask him.”

Montecalvo also anticipates the day when he will see his 2017 Camaro back at the track. Its new owner, Pennsylvania’s Randy Peters, is planning to compete in PDRA Extreme Pro Stock later this season.  

“It’s got great power – a good Sonny’s motor in it – that we ran well with. Good car, good piece. I think he’ll do pretty well over here.”