Funny Car owner-driver Chris King made his professional debut at Bandimere Speedway in 2021. And as he returned in his second appearance of this season and his second at Denver, he’s gung-ho to rush into a daunting situation – just like he does in his primary job as a Chicago firefighter.
 
“I raced the G.O.A.T.s [Greatest of All-Time] of drag racing, but you know what? I wouldn't want it any other way,” he said. “How many people get to drive these things in the whole world? Not very many. And I'm one of 'em. I just gave myself goosebumps even thinking about that.” Perhaps more striking is the resistance he had to ignore in order to have the opportunity.
 
King said, “Everybody told me when I wanted to drive, ‘It's never going to happen.’ ‘You're never going to do it.’ ‘It's impossible.’ ‘You're an idiot.’ ‘Don't even think about it. You're wasting your time.’ That motivated me more. And some of them were really close friends of mine telling me, ‘Never going to happen, dude. You're never going to have whatever. You're wasting your time.’ But here I am.
 
“Every hurdle or every roadblock people can throw at you, they do. And then you actually find out who your real friends are because there's those who support you no matter what, then you got the ones that'll back-stab you and [criticize] you while you're doing things because they never had the ambition or the goals or the drive to make it happen,” he said. “I tell everybody there's not one thing in this world you cannot do if you put your mind to it.” He said people say enviously, “You got cool jobs.” You’re a fireman and you race cars.” His answer? “You know what? You could be a fireman and race cars if you wanted it bad enough. Just put the effort in and make it happen.”
 
And he’ll be the first to say that even with a lot of grit, achieving dreams to the fullest isn’t easy.
 
Oh, when he was a youngster growing up in Racine, Wis., drag racing sounded more like fun than fundraising headaches and more like being cool than being forced to cool your heels. When he would make the 20-minute trips to Great Lakes Dragaway at Union Grove, to see “Broadway Bob” Metzler’s spectacles – Labor Day and Memorial Day shows, car-crushers, Monster Trucks, nitro cars – “it was like everybody did that on those big holiday weekends, because it was such a big draw. And it was like, ‘Wow, these are so cool!’” King said fondly.
 
He grew up riding dirt bikes and at age 16, “after breaking lots of bones and deciding motocross was just too painful and stupid to do,” he realized, “I liked fast cars. So we started hot-rodding in high school. And in shop class, my teacher, Dave Dixon, was a drag racer and he had a Vega. Then he bought an old Pro Stock car, and they were in the shop at school. So we all got to work on it with him. And of course, me and my buddy Andy Bohl, who races Top Alcohol Funny Car, we were in class together and we were just naturally drawn to the racing aspect. So we joined the extracurricular auto-shop clubs and stuff so we could play around with these race cars. And we just learned about it. And then when it came time for us to drive, we started hot-rodding our cars and then we'd go to the dragstrip on the weekends and run 14 or 13 seconds and thought we were cool s---. And then we said we wanted to go faster and go faster.

 
“So then Andy picked up an altered, and I just started crewing helping him. And then from the altered we moved to alcohol and then we started racing more competitively,” King said. “And I was a crew guy, clutch guy, car assistant for dang near 15 years. And then I'm like, ‘Why am I doing this? I like it, but I would rather drive one.’”
 
King contacted Frank Hawley and told him he’d like to come to his Gainesville, Fla., school, earn a Super Comp license, “then jump in the Funny Car.” Hawley agreed to put him through the Super Comp paces to assess his readiness for a Funny Car. King passed muster and ended up licensing in Hawley’s Funny Car and started competing in the Top Alcohol ranks. But he said, “My eyes were always on Nitro, ’cause I've loved it since forever.”
 
He teamed with Paul Richards Racing and added his nitro Funny Car license in the Richards car at Charlotte with the finishing touches at Florida’s Palm Beach International Raceway. As soon as he acquired his nitro license, he became laser-focused.

“It took a few years after getting my license,” King said, “but with a lot of hard work and perseverance, I never gave up. I got an opportunity to drive a nitro car in a big show, and now I own one and drive one. And we're making progress.”

He has mastered the demands of a fireman, but he’s learning that an owner-driver of a race team gets pulled in different directions like a piece of taffy. In his first appearance of this year, at his home track at Joliet, Ill., King captured fans’ fancy by instructing several drag racers in the daily life and drills of a firefighter – and for having his Howards Cams / Competition Products Dodge Charger wrapped with a graphic designed by fan favorite Jack Beckman’s teenage son Jason. Now he wants to concentrate on making his Funny Car competitive.
 
“It does get to be distracting,” he said of the creative promotional/marketing programs that are aimed at adding value to potential sponsors. “I get pulled in a million different directions: ‘This part's broken. We got to go get one.’ OK - now I got to source parts. OK - you got to be here to do a warm-up. OK – I got to do this. I got to work on the car. OK - I have to be here for a PR meeting at this time . . . ‘Sorry guys. I can't work on the car right now. You guys got to do it.’ So there's a lot pulling me a bunch of different directions, but I actually kind of like that, because I'm up for the challenge and I'm a busy-body and adrenaline junkie and love the thrill of everything. So I'm welcome to the challenge. I just wish it was a little easier for the small guys to land the sponsors that the big guys always seem to get every other week. Finding good guys to work on the cars is definitely hard. And then you basically end up having to teach 'em every week because it's different guys. It costs a lot of money, because you're traveling and paying for people to fly all over the country. It never ends.
 
“It's a lot to take on,” King said, “because I'm the owner and the driver and the face of the team. So I'm the one out there hustling, trying to find any and all kinds of support. We do have sponsors on the car, but there's nothing heavily financial. A lot of the money comes out of my pocket. We get parts deals and help and have associate sponsors. But without those who help, we wouldn't be able to do it at all.

  
He is receiving practical and educational help from a variety of special sources. The main guide is Terry Totten, who facilitated King’s purchase of the Funny Car from friend Mark Howard. The car stays at Totten’s shop in Nebraska, and King helps Totten operate the team across the miles.
 
King said of Totten, “I would be lost without him, because he's done so much work on the car when I'm not available to be out there in Omaha. I live in Chicago. So he works on the cars in between the races. And he did a lot of changes to this car for this [Denver] race to get me comfortable in the cockpit. We changed the steering, raised it up, made some new tin work for it, and then obviously we had to put a new motor in it because we kicked the rods out at Joliet in the third qualifier. So we blew a motor up there, which is why we didn't qualify. And then he did a lot of work over the last few weeks to get this car ready for Denver. And I'm forever grateful to him. But he loves it. He loves thrashing and the challenges, and he's a pretty smart guy.”
  
Dean “Guido” Antonelli, Ron Capps Racing’s crew chief, has shared his deep knowledge, as well.
  
“Guido's always been really cool for me to talk to and just ask opinions. After we kicked the rods out [at Joliet], he looked at it and he [volunteered to come and help]. He came over and looked at some stuff and started talking to Terry, and we found out what the problem was and we changed our setup based off of what Dean recommended. We changed all the rods out and switched over, and he looked at a couple other things in our clutch department. We were having a hard time getting the car not to shake or spin the tires. And he offered some suggestions on how to calm that down. So basically, he came over and helped us straighten out the Funny Car. Terry's a dragster guy, and Funny Cars are drastically different. It helped us to get in the ballpark to make this car a lot more predictable and get down the track. He offered up a bunch of advice and assistance and guidance to point us in the right direction. And it is great,” King said.

  
King needs no help in interacting with fans.
 
“I'm out there meeting people, talking to people. I'm trying to get known to the fans of NHRA,” he said. “I love being out there, talking to the fans and walking around and seeing people and answering questions. And I let people sit in my car. I love interacting with the fans and the people and then just the friendships you have, too. Dickie Venables [Matt Hagan’s crew chief] has always been really cool, too. And most of the drivers come up and say, ‘Hey man, it's cool you're out here.’’
  
À la John Force at Seattle in 2019 or IndyCar’s Josef Newgarden at the Indianapolis 500, King said he’d share his first victory with the fans: “Tell you, if I won, I would be so ecstatic and excited. I think I would jump up in the crowd and just go up there and hang out with the crowd and slap hands and celebrate – because basically I'm one of the crowd. I'm a little guy out here doing it. But that's where I came from. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be racing. So you got to treat them with the utmost respect and include them in everything. And the more you can do for them, the more they can do for you. And I tell everybody this, too. I talk to everybody and anybody, because you never know who you're talking to. I could be talking to the CEO of a billion-dollar company. Just because he's wearing dirty shorts and a ripped T-shirt doesn't mean nothing.”
  
For right now, King said, “I don't really have any expectations. I'm just happy to be out here, being able to be part of nitro, ultimately what I love to race.” Winning and being a perennial contender, he said would “be a dream come true. Is it obtainable? It's almost impossible for most people. So I mean, I would love to find some sponsorship help to make this less of a financial burden on me personally so I can still come out here and do what I'd like to do. But I am a racer at heart. I love racing, and it's what I want to do. I like being at the racetrack. So whatever I can do to make that happen is pretty much my goal.”

King will return to competition at the NHRA Heartland Nationals in Topeka, Kan.,next month.