Dirt
Quain Stott faces obstacles in
preserving drag racing history
By Ian Tocher
Q
uain Stott is dressed head-
to-toe in white, true to the style of
many drag racers of the late-‘60s,
as he stands between two period-
correct gassers completing their
burnouts at Montgomery Raceway
Park. As the cars roll to a stop, a pair of pretty,
back-up girls step in front of them, one wears
a miniskirt, the other a bell-bottomed pantsuit.
Following a couple of old-school dry hops, the
cars stage and leap off the line in a heads-up run
to finish line, an eighth of a mile away. No ETs
or speeds flash across the scoreboards, though,
not even in qualifying, just a simple win light to
indicate the quicker run.
It’s all part of the grand illusion Stott is at-
tempting to create with his South East Gassers
Association (SEGA), formally established in 2012
after a successful one-off affair the previous fall.
“When people come to a South East Gassers
event I want them to feel like they’re almost step-
ping back in time, getting to see what drag racing
26 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
was all about back then. And as far as gassers go,
real gassers, there are two things that have to
happen,” Stott insists. “They have to burn gasoline
and they have to run heads up—no exceptions.
“They truth is, if we hadn’t have come along
five or six years
ago, the fans
would be done
thinking that
gassers bracket
raced in the
1960s because
that’s all they
ever see. And
that’s just not
true,” he contin-
ues. “It just kills
me. And I don’t
hate bracket rac-
ing, not by a long
shot. I have relatives and friends that bracket race,
I help them with their cars, but I hate a gasser that
bracket races because they never done it. You can’t
claim you’re having a 1960s gasser race if there’s
any kind of disqualification for going too fast.”
After starting out a bracket racer himself in
1975, Stott eventually made his name in the rough-
and-tumble Pro Mod ranks of the 1990s and
2000s, racking up 14 consecutive top-10 IHRA
point finishes and reaching the pinnacle of the
class in 2006 with the IHRA Pro Modified world
championship. Stott drifted over to the ADRL
after that, where
he notched four
national-event
wins in the
p r e m i e r Pr o
Extreme class
before gradu-
ally becoming
disillusioned
with increased
automation in
the cockpit; so
much so that in
a not-so-subtle
protest he actu-
ally changed the word preceding his name over
the doors of his ’63 Corvette from “Driver” to
“Rider.”
Always known as a tough competitor and will-
ing to speak his mind, Stott also was considered
one of the “good guys,” popular with drag rac-
ing fans and foes alike. That’s what makes it so
Issue 120
Gasser Wars