Scott
Palmer
UP TO HIS ELBOWS
Between driving, tuning and maintaining his own Top Fuel dragster
and making the occasional test
lap in his Nitro Pro Mod, Palmer
also turns wrenches and calls the
shots on one of legendary boat
drag racing team owner
Tommy Thompson’s
Lucas Oil Drag Boat
Series Top Fuel
Hydros.
has a 60-gallon pump and we’re going to have
it rigged up to where we think we can make two
runs without pulling the clutch pack or the heads.
Maybe it’s going to be a little bit softer. Then we’ll
take both of them out four- or five-times a year
to do some match races. But ours will be the one
that you come back to the pits and take the heads
off – just like a usual Top Fuel car service – and
I think that’s going to be a badass show at little
race tracks across the country.
Do you think we’ll ever see it on the national-event level?
We were going to take it to
the Street Car Super Nationals,
but NHRA doesn’t really want
it running on NHRA tracks. I’ve
been trying to get them to let
us make an exhibition run with
it on Friday night at a national
event because I think that would
be crazy awesome at a national
event, but you know…they’re not into it because
they think it’s dangerous. I even asked Graham
Light about it during the ‘Western Swing’ and
he said ‘No, Scott, that’s not going to happen.’
Seriously, though, I think it would be a great deal
for a NHRA race.
Of course, it’s still early in the process, but
what are your goals for the car?
Once it makes a few eighth-mile runs and it
does okay, the ultimate goal is try to make it run
300 miles an hour in a quarter-mile. Whether
that’s unrealistic or not, I don’t know for sure, but
I don’t think it is. Between us and Bobby and Dom
Lagana, we’ve made so many runs down the race
track and especially those guys who have match
raced on all sorts of marginal tracks. They’ve had
to run them super soft and they can still go 300.
I know that’s in a dragster, but if this thing gets
to half-track and it runs 240…it should run 300
in the quarter. If it makes it that far and it’s still
on the ground, it should do it. We’ve got a big
feel every one. It felt like a freight train coming
on. I know it would have made an eighth-mile
run. Now, we got back from the run and it had
less than a gallon of fuel in it, so I’m glad I let off
the gas when I did.
Now that you have the first test hit out of the
way, what’s it going to take to reach 300 miles
per hour with the car?
After Indy we’re going to take it out again and
make some more test runs. The 300 mile an hour
goal, yeah, that might be a pipe dream, but not
really. It won’t do it this year.
Maybe if we have some time
next year, we’ll make more
runs. We’re going to try to take
it to a few national events and
run it on Monday and test it on
Monday where it’s a nice track.
NHRA doesn’t really like the
idea of us doing anything with
it, but we’re going to. It doesn’t
matter. We’re going to do it. I just don’t see how
that’s not possible. Tommy [Delago] from Alexis DeJoria’s deal, he says he wants to be part of
it. I’ve got lots of people behind it that would
help us if we needed it. Jeff Diehl, he runs his
Funny Car at 300 mph. All these cars run 300
in a thousand-foot. I’m talking about 320 more
feet to gain a little speed because we’ll do it in a
quarter mile. I just think it’ll do it and that would
be awesome.
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PHOTO: TERA WENDLAND GRAVES
“I think that [Top Fuel Pro Mod]
is the coolest thing I’ve ever
driven in my life, and I’ve been
lucky to drive some cool shit.”
ass wing on the back, and we won’t run laid-back
headers until we know it’ll keep the front end
on the ground. So, that’s the goal, and it’s crazy
to try and do it, but I don’t really care. I don’t
think it’s going to ET real quick to the eighthmile – maybe it’ll go 3.35 or 3.40s. Once it’s out
there rolling, though, I think it’s going to do it.
At 200-feet the clutch flows were opening up. I
opened one at .8-seconds, one at 1.1-seconds and
at 1.3-seconds, and I’m telling you – you could
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August 2016
DragIllustrated.com
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