Dirt
it’s six months away from completion. “Birdman
Racing [James Finney and Gary Weatherly] sold
me their old car for $5000. Never driven a turbo
car so I gotta figure out how.”
Jones says he was depressed over losing his
car at first, “but everybody helped me out. I got
a buddy that’s been trying to give me money to
buy a motor. It’s overwhelming everybody trying
to help me out, giving up what they’ve got for
me. The first five days I was getting twenty to
a hundred texts every morning I woke up with
hints and leads. It had like 50,000 shares within
24 hours on Facebook. It’s crazy how it spread.
I’ve had people I’ve raced with and known a long
time donating a thousand here and then one guy
added five thousand to the reward. I only put up
five thousand. Other people have put up fifteen
thousand to help me out.
“My plan was to put all my nitrous and my big
motor over into [the new Pro Mod]. But I don’t
have my motor anymore so I don’t know where
I’m going to go. I’ve been talking about doing a
ProCharger now that my nitrous setup is gone. We
might go ProCharger with a little bit of nitrous,
something different that nobody has done. The
deal with the ProCharger is I can use a bunch
of the bracket motors we’ve got. I can put the
ProCharger on one of them and make the same
horsepower everybody else has got without spending forty grand to do it.”
Bird has built a large network through his days
as a bracket racer, and it’s those friends and partnerships that have continued the most support
into his street racing. “Businesses like Nitrous
Outlet and Triple G Driveway that I’ve been connected with through bracket racing for a while
are continuing to help. From the bracket racers
the support has been awesome. The grudge racers don’t really like bracket racers all that much.
I guess because we can tree ‘em. They’re always
talking shit about bracket racing. I laugh.”
Jones still plans to bracket race as much as
possible, hitting the big money races across the
country, but his main focus will be the street car,
because, he says, “it’s fun going fast. Just hauling
ass is the fun part. I’ve always been the gambling
type, so I enjoy the bettin’. It gets your heart racing a whole lot more. Whereas bracket racing you
can get your ass beat three different ways at a ten
grander and get put in your place real quick. You
can’t get a big head at a bracket race.
“I grew up at the race track,” Jones continued.
“That’s where all my best friends were from and
that’s where they still are. That’s all I’ve ever
wanted to do. I’ve been pretty fortunate the last
six or seven years [to race for a living]. My dad
busts his ass through the week just to race on the
weekend. All this started because of him really.”
Jackie Jones has been competing for 37 years
and continues to race today. His biggest victory
was winning the 2005 NHRA ET Series Super
Pro Championship. It’s just Bird and his dad in
the shop, partnering in both their efforts in racing and Bird’s Texas Trucking hot shot transport
business. Although it was the family patriarch
who initiated Bird’s passion for racing, it was
technically his
brother that first
introduced him to
street racing.
“My brother has
always been the
street racing type,”
Jones explained.
“He got me to go to a
race at an airport a
few years ago. I lost at six cars at that race. The
guy that won it beat me. So the next year we were
on the street and I called that guy out for $1000
first round. Then I beat Doc from Street Outlaws
in the finals for ten grand. That night Kye Kelley
called me out. I beat Kye Kelley and it just kinda
blew up from there.
“It kinda got me scared [when I got called out],
because I knew I didn’t have the cubic inches.
That was my car and I’ve always been on a budget with it. So we had to start shedding weight
and turn it into a grudge car because it was a
true bracket car. It had steel doors and electric
windows, a radio, mufflers. It was as close to an
actual street car as you can get. I put fiberglass
doors on it, a fiberglass deck lid and then got a
bigger motor. I was more scared than anything
‘cause I don’t like losing. From there it progressed.”
At 6’8” Bird stands out in a crowd. His height
earned him the nickname “Big Bird”
early on, but it was “Bird” that stuck.
The majority of the high profile
street racers have larger-than-life
personas and Bird fits right in, nickname and all. He’s not the type to
hold back in conversation or on the
track, and with his immediate success in street racing it’s no surprise
he’s earned guest appearances on Street Outlaws.
“The fans wanna see big burnouts, heads up
racing, where cars break loose, where there’s a
possibility for a wreck or explosion, where it’s
good tight racing. It’s ridiculous how many people were at American Outlaws Live. The stands
were full and the pits were full. I felt like I was
John Force or something there for a little bit. I’ve
only been on the show three times. You can only
imagine how Chief and Shawn and Kye Kelley
and all them felt.”
Despite his rise to fame, street racing success,
and on-camera opportunities Bird still recounts
a memory from when he was just 16 as a favorite
of his career. It was his second final round appearance in a $10,000 to win bracket race at
the Texas Motorplex. His opponent? Good ‘ol
dad. Bird beat his father fair and square. “He
wasn’t happy about it either,” Bird said with a
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hint of a smile.
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48 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
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Issue 110
PHOTOS: RANDY HALL, DRAG ILLUSTRATED ARCHIVES
DAVID ‘BIRD’ JONES