Dirt
hard for him now, dealing with all the complaints
and controversy that seem to dog SEGA on a
regular basis.
“I tell you, I raced for nearly 40 years with some
of the toughest racers you could ever meet, and
I had my ups and downs with some of them, I’ll
admit, but at the end of the day we could sit down
and talk and laugh,” Stott says. “But now with
the South East Gassers it seems like I’m always
at odds with someone, but it all goes back to me
just wanting to stand my ground and make sure
we put on a good show.”
Among the accusations Stott has faced is the
creation of SEGA primarily as a means to drum
up business for his race car chassis shop in Co-
lumbus, North Carolina. He’s also under constant
pressure from certain tracks and competitors to
loosen SEGA’s rules and allow more entries, or
racers intent on exploiting any potential gaps
in the rules.
“Seriously, I don’t need SEGA to keep my shop
busy. I was doing just fine working on Pro Mods
and bracket cars and class cars for ADRL, NHRA,
PDRA, all those kinds of racers, and I still do a
lot of that stuff,” Stott says. “Yes, I do work on a
lot of gassers now, but I was actually doing that
even before starting up the South East Gassers.
In fact, that’s kind of what got me thinking of a
period-correct gassers series in the first place,
because as soon as I would build one it would
sell right away. I knew there was a demand for
those kind of cars out there.”
Regarding the rules, Stott says he keeps a tight
rein because it’s so easy to stray off the historic
path he wants SEGA to follow.
“We have 22 pages of rules right now and our
rule book is just for one class; NHRA don’t have
that many rules in Pro Stock. Now, I’ve looked
at the rules for gassers all over the world; I’m
not talking only about the United States, I mean
overseas and in Canada and I’ve looked at every
rule that I can find posted for any other gasser
organization in the world and theirs is usually less
than a page because they’re pretty much letting
everything run,” Stott says.
“Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m not
knocking them, but that’s not how the South
East Gassers are going to run. Too many of these
nostalgia gasser series, what passes for nostal-
gia at least, is they’re just using nostalgia bodies.
They’ve got too big of tires on the back, beadlocks,
four-link suspensions, automatics; there’s really
nothing nostalgia about them but the bodies.”
Plus, the SEGA formula is working and racers
are buying in to the concept with no slowdown
in sight. Stott says he knows of 148 SEGA-legal
cars “on the books” and claims 86 currently active
cars. “That means they can crank up and come to
a race track with us at any time,” he says.
“Keep in mind, in 2011 we had two. And you got
to remember, these cars are no good for nothing
else. This is worse than the Pro Stock truck deal,
because think about it; you can’t even bracket
race these ill-handling, four-speed race cars,” Stott
says. “So these people have enough confidence in
me or in the organization or in the fan support
we’re getting, whatever it is that’s bringing them
in, to build these special cars that are no good for
nothing else. And remember another thing, too,
we’re building them ‘wrong’ on purpose. Every
one of us knows how to build a better race car
than what we’re racing out here. But the fans
get sick of the cookie cutters, and that’s what we
would have if we opened up the rules, just another
cookie-cutter race.”
Still, beyond the internal challenges SEGA
faces in order to remain true to Stott’s vision,
perhaps most frustrating for him are rival or-
ganizations and events popping up to dilute the
overall “gasser” pool.
“One thing we do know that made SEGA a suc-
cess is having sense enough to not flood the mar-
ket in one area. Sure, it would have been easier for
us to just race within a 100-mile radius of home,
but we had better judgment than that. Even the
races we run in other states we pick tracks that
don’t have any other type of old-school races—or
if they do, we get involved with them. Never have
we gone into an area that already had our type
racing and flooded their market,” Stott says.
“And now all we ask is for the other old-school
shows to give us the same respect and find their
own market, or build cars to fit our rules and join
us. I have been told there is room for everybody—
and I agree—but not in our back door. I under-
stand it’s a lot easier to come in and take over an
already strong market that was built by someone
else, but this one won’t be took over without a
fight from the loyal SEGA fans and racers.
“Seriously, all I’m really trying to do here is
educate the fans, because if we don’t preserve this
history, it’s going to be gone forever.”
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Issue 120
QUAIN STOTT