Days later, lifelong nitro racer, tuner, and team owner Del Worsham is laughing at the notion. The former BMX rider-turned-nitro drag racer is still having a hard time grasping the idea that he’s considered a legend in some circles of the sport.
Worsham, 55, became the youngest drag racing entity inducted into Bristol Dragway’s exclusive Legends of Thunder Valley Club. The second-generation drag racer joins such notable drag racing figures as Don Garlits, Rickie Smith, track founder Larry Carrier, and Dale Pulde, among others.
“I feel like I’m just too young still for that to come up, but I’m not as young as I think I am,” the personable Worsham said with a smile. “So, it was definitely an honor to get that call from the people of Bristol.”
To be inducted into the Bristol Dragway Legends of Thunder Valley, one must have contributed immensely to the success of the picturesque facility carved out of the eastern Tennessee mountains or produced an impressive track record.
Worsham did both but had no idea how much until it was noted in the phone call.
As a sophomore Funny Car racer, Worsham drove to the 1992 IHRA Spring Nationals title, a race that would be instrumental in his clinching the series championship. He won his first NHRA Bristol title in 2003 when he beat Whit Bazemore. Worsham won again in Bristol during the 2009 season while driving for Kalitta Motorsports.
When Worsham began transitioning over to a crew chief, his Bristol success continued. In 2012, he tuned Alexis DeJoria to her first-ever final round, where she came up short against Ron Capps. Three times, Worsham tuned DeJoria to No. 1 qualifiers in Bristol.
Going back to those early days in his career, Worsham found himself checking off a bucket list of places to race, and while Bristol’s Thunder Valley didn’t impress him on paper like others, it only took one trip to make a facility he fell in love with.
“I never thought Bristol was that big of a deal because it was IHRA, it was East Coast or a site on a southern track,” Worsham admitted. “And I just didn’t hear much about it, being an Orange County kind of kid.
“So, when I got back here, and I saw the track, and I saw the city, and I saw the fans, and what this race meant to these people, and how big of a racing city it was, I understood then that this place is a big deal. Once that happened, winning this race was a big deal.”
Bristol turned out to be a big deal for Worsham in his 1992 debut, as it was a staple victory in his championship run, but it was a bit of a comeback race as a month earlier in Darlington, he’d burned his Funny Car to the ground in a rain-delayed final round. It was his first major fire.
Worsham admits the IHRA tour gave him a chance to work on his basics, learning how to race and win, much like Warren Johnson admitted to doing in the early 1980s on the tour.
When Worsham first climbed behind the wheel of a Funny car in 1990, he had no drag racing experience whatsoever. The only car he’d ever driven down the track was the team’s minivan to retrieve the race car, then driven by Art Hendy.
“I never personally made a solo run down the drag strip,” Worsham revealed. “We didn’t have Junior Dragsters. We had a Funny Car, an alcohol Funny Car. There was just no time for it. I’d never staged a car before I staged a Nitro Funny Car. Yeah, I know. It’s crazy.”
Just like the fictional stock car racer in the movies, Worsham became the drag racing equivalent of the Cole Trickle. He was a kid with a propensity to absorb knowledge when it came time to learn about fuel racing.
“I had licensed a lot of people, and I’d seen the process, and I’d watched it a million times, gone over it in my head, but I had not personally ever experienced it,” Worsham said. “I was asked if I wanted to drive because I had kind of mouthed off that I wanted to do it, but I never thought in reality it would really happen. When it all came together, and the opportunity was going to be presented for real, and I’d ordered a firesuit to make this happen, I started getting a little bit of cold feet.
“I’m not going to lie, the shiver was coming up in the neck a little bit. It was wild. I remember coming back; we were at the U.S. Nationals, and all this had taken place between Norwalk and the U.S. Nationals in 1990. So, the U.S. Nationals was going to be Art’s last race. And then I was going to go to the, when everyone else was in Redding, I was going to go to the Motorplex and start making runs and see if we could make a race this year.”
If Worsham had a shiver, it was because at Indianapolis that year, Worsham watched then-defending NHRA Funny Car champion Bruce Larson with a handful of steering wheel while in the team van riding down. the return road.
“I saw Bruce Larson coming at me, and his car was just all over the track and moving back and forth, and he drives in the chutes,” Worsham said. “And I thought, “Man, I don’t know if I can do that. How can a guy even do that that had never raced?” But it happened. We did it.”
Worsham remembers his first run, where he estimates he foot kept the throttle down about 60 feet. His first four runs were quite the adventure.
It wasn’t that Worsham couldn’t handle the car. He couldn’t handle it detuned.
“We thought detuning it would be the answer,” Worsham said. “Slow it down. You just couldn’t drive it. It was doing wheelies, and it wasn’t going straight. After about the third time, I told my dad, ‘I don’t think anybody can drive this car. I’m trying, but I’m turning, and it’s just not doing anything.”
“We put it back to how we had it tuned at the U.S. Nationals. Put a real tune back in. The next run, I drove it, it went 5.70 at 168. It made a run. Came back the next week, and I went 5.45, 5.50, and 5.45, three in a row, right down on the track. So, it fixed it. So, it was just an undrivable car. And that’s where I learned that when I license people.”
Worsham isn’t likely to return to competition as a driver but doesn’t rule out the possibility. Ironically, while Worsham isn’t too young for the Bristol Legends, he is too young for an induction into the Don Garlits International Drag Racing Hall of Fame [IDRHOF].
Worsham likely could have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer if not for his decision to race in Pomona 2023, and even though he didn’t qualify, it counted as a start. IDRHOF eligibility rules require that a driver be out of the seat for at least five years to be considered. He will be eligible in 2028.
Just to be considered is an honor, Worsham says, but until then, if it comes, he’s just going to enjoy a sport that has given him a lifetime of memories.
“Drag racing has been everything to me,” he said. “It’s been my family, with my dad. It’s been just my wife and me, my kids. It’s all I’ve ever done. Maybe I was pretty close to, and Mike Dunn’s a little bit older than me, of being the first generation where we were born into the sport, and that’s all we did.
“It’s been everything to me. I get up every day, and I still think about it. And when I go to bed, it’s one of the things that I think about during the day. It’s allowed me, and it’s meant for me to have a great life, a wife, great kids, and my family business. It’s been gratifying.
“I’ve thought about people that don’t drag race, that don’t race. When I see people get really excited for holidays, and to me, I’m like, “Oh, s***. Who wants to do that? I just want to work on my car.” Well, that’s their drag racing. They’re looking forward to that. That’s what they do.
“We do it every Sunday. Every Sunday, we look forward to that day. And to them, it’s Christmas, it’s Easter. It could be birthday parties, could be any of this stuff that isn’t a big deal to me. It’s a huge deal to them. And it’s because they don’t have drag racing.”
And, they’re not a legend either, like Worsham.
