Justin Ashley can laugh about it now. Ten years ago at Rockingham Dragway, one of the best leavers in Top Fuel apparently had trouble finding the starting line.
Ashley was 21, and the last race car he’d ever driven down the dragstrip was a Junior Dragster. and making his Top Dragster debut in conditions hardly suited for easing a rookie into the deep end. The wind was howling across the racetrack, the temperature was cold, and Ashley had enough going on inside the cockpit without worrying about Mother Nature trying to introduce herself.
He remembers rolling through the staging beams on one of his first attempts.
A decade later, Ashley returned to Rockingham as a 19-time Top Fuel winner with a 193-111 round-win record and victories in 19 of his 36 final-round appearances. The kid trying to remember forward from reverse eventually graduated to Top Alcohol Dragster in 2017 and Top Fuel in 2019.
The road between those two versions of Ashley seems almost absurdly short to him now.
“I could have never imagined. It’s funny, when I was on my way to the track Friday morning, I was talking to my dad in the car and we were kind of laughing about how quick time goes and the fact that it was 10 years ago,” Ashley said. “And at that time, I think the first time I was racing Top Dragster was eighth-mile. The first time I tried stage, I’m pretty sure I rolled right through the beams.”
There were no guarantees attached to that weekend. Ashley got his license, enjoyed himself and failed to qualify.
“It took us a little while. We got the license. We had a great weekend. We didn’t qualify, but I just had such a good experience racing with Barry Brown and his family at Top Dragster,” Ashley said.
Ashley wasn’t fearless that weekend. He was just too busy being a rookie to fully appreciate everything that probably should have scared him.
“Here’s the interesting thing about that. It was not good conditions, especially for somebody who’s driving for essentially the first time,” Ashley said. “But when you’re driving for the first time, you’re also kind of naive in that way, right? You don’t know any different, so you kind of just get in the car and drive.”
Every action required thought because none of it had become automatic.
“I was nervous like I was nervous for any other race, but I wasn’t thinking about the conditions primarily because it was all new to me,” Ashley said. “And also because I had so many different things that I was focused on in the race car and the way that you drive those race cars because I had no muscle memory yet.”
Ashley was at the onset of a trait that has made him one of the best drivers in drag racing, an attention to detail like few other.
“I was indeed focused on every little thing, from the way you do the burnouts, the way you back up, to holding the trans brake, and everything in between, making sure that I’m putting it in forward, putting it in reverse, so there wasn’t even time to really focus on that other stuff,” Ashley said.
“But it was difficult conditions. It was.”
Even Ashley’s reaction times from that first weekend have survived as part of the story.
“I don’t think they were terrible, Bobby. Come on. They weren’t so bad,” Ashley said. “I think they were okay. It’s a little different. I think they were probably in the .020s and .030s, but it’s different because you’re Top Dragster racing, right? You want to be in the .00s or closer to it.”
Ashley had a delay box available, but experience hadn’t yet caught up with the equipment.
“You also have a delay box to play around with things. I just wasn’t ready for it yet at the time,” Ashley said. “But it was honestly, I think about my racing career and I think about the video that you made of that weekend, and it was really special to me. I think about racing with Barry Brown and what him and his family still mean to me. They had a really, really big impact and they still do on my life.”
Ashley couldn’t have known where any of it was headed.
“I had a lot of fun that day, a lot of fun that weekend,” Ashley said. “I like to think it started something pretty surreal.”
Top Fuel wasn’t part of Ashley’s plan. At that point, getting comfortable in the Barry Brown-owned Top Dragster was enough.
“My thought process was, ‘Okay, Top Dragster. Let’s see how this goes and then we’ll go from there,’” Ashley said. “And one thing led to another and it led it to Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Fuel and, obviously, now being able to live my dream with Randy Gloede and Maria and racing for what I think is the best organization in all of motorsports in SCAG Racing.”
The progression looks orderly when reduced to a résumé. Living it wasn’t.
“I think at the time it really wasn’t even a consideration, but maybe it was deep down there subconsciously in the back of my head, and I learned a lot then about how to drive cars and I still think a lot of it applies now,” Ashley said.
Rockingham also gave Ashley something considerably heavier than a competitors license or another entry in his racing résumé.
Top Sportsman champion Ronnie Davis died following a crash that weekend. Photographer Ian Tocher was seriously injured in the incident.
“That was really scary having to experience that. It was really heartbreaking for him and his family and the loved ones, and you could see the outpouring of support from the drag racing community,” Ashley said. “But just to be there when that happened and be part of that experience was scary.”
Ashley was barely beginning his big-car career and suddenly saw the side of drag racing nobody wants to confront.
“What it did was it put things in perspective very quickly about what’s important in life, about always putting safety first, and about, you know, I learned a lot about Ronnie and the kind of person that he was and what kind of driver that he was,” Ashley said. “But ultimately, no matter what happened with us that weekend, that was a sad weekend and just absolutely devastating and heartbreaking for him and his family and all of us in the community.”
Tocher survived but lost a leg. Ashley remembers the drag racing community rallying around him during a difficult recovery.
“That was a big deal at the time, as it should have been. And Ian, after that whole thing happened, I remember the community rallying around to support him any way that he could, and he went through a very difficult recovery, and my heart was with him and still is with him and his family,” Ashley said. “Thank God he’s doing better now, but had some injuries along the way. But it’s scary, your first race and then you see things like that happen and put things in perspective very quickly. So hate, hate, hate to see something like that ever happen.”
There was another lesson from that weekend Ashley didn’t completely appreciate until later.
Barry Brown, the veteran racer whose Top Dragster Ashley was driving, wasn’t interested in discovering how much the rookie could handle. When Brown believed conditions had crossed the line, the experiment was over.
Ashley remembers Brown going down the track first, reaching the shutdown area and essentially holding his ground until somebody delivered a message back to Mike Ashley.
“He went down the track first because it was really bad, bad conditions,” Ashley said. “He went down the track first and he got out of the top end and he said, ‘I am not moving my car until somebody sends a PA back to Mike Ashley to tell Justin Ashley to turn around. Do not go down this racetrack. It’s not safe for him.’”
Brown was making the decision experience told him needed to be made.
“I had so much respect for him at the time, but my respect for him changed so much more since then,” Ashley said. “He didn’t feel like it was safe and it wasn’t safe for me, so for him to take a stand and do that was really neat. But yeah, the conditions were not good. That was a really difficult weekend.”
Ashley came to Rockingham trying to learn how to race a Top Dragster and ten years later, he returned with Top Alcohol Dragster behind him, a Top Fuel career established and enough experience to understand just how much he didn’t know when he first rolled through those gates.
“And to think about 10 years ago being here, and aside from Junior Dragsters, that was really the kickstart to my NHRA career, to where I am today and all the people that have helped along the way, it really is, it gives me a lot of gratitude,” Ashley said. “So nice to return to the place where it all started.”
