Drag Illustrated Issue 122, June 2017 | Page 10

LETTER from the EDITOR W e’re a l i t t l e under a month a w a y from our first-ever Drag Il- lustrated-produced event, and I don’t think I could be any more excited. The inau- gural World Series of Pro Mod – set for August 4-5, 2017, at legendary Bandimere Speed- way outside Denver, Colorado – is the culmination of some five years of plotting and plan- ning, daydreaming and lying awake at night. I’ll never forget how the no- tion first popped into my head. It’d been a terribly long day. I’d taken the earliest possible flight out of St. Louis, Missouri, which is about a three-hour drive from my home and amongst the two closest major airports, and headed out to Charlotte, North Carolina, for a weekend at the drag races. I arrived in Charlotte late morning that Friday, and made like a bandit to the rental car place and headed to zMAX Dragway for what was to be the second incarnation of the American Drag Racing League’s biggest event of the season. Despite a good turnout of cars, I was disappoint- ed with the fanfare. I’m looking around at these titans of fast doorslammer racing – Jason Scruggs, Shannon Jenkins, Mike Castellana, Frankie Taylor, to name a few – and I couldn’t help but feel like they deserved more. The event went off without much of a hitch and I believe that most everyone was satisfied, but I couldn’t shake it – these are the stars of outlaw drag racing, many of which are boisterous, larger-than-life characters with incred- ible personalities. What’s wrong here? Relatively early in the evening on Saturday night after the race had ended, I went back to my hotel room at a place near the track. Honestly, I hardly knew what to do with myself as I’d rarely been at a race that had concluded on – or even ahead of – schedule. I think it was about 8 o’clock by the time I’d cleaned up and sat down in my room. I flipped on the television, and scoured the channel guide for ESPN. Not surprisingly, it was the World Series of Poker on, and it was coming to me live from the luxurious Bellagio Resort and Casino in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. I’ve never been much of a gambler, nor do I know a lot about poker, but I felt inclined – for whatever reason – to watch. As the show continued, I was blown away by the pomp and circumstance of it all. I couldn’t believe how big of a deal the announcers and tableside re- porters were making out of this glorified card came. It was as if they were witnessing a Moon landing. Completely across the country, with little-to-no interest in Texas Hold ‘Em, here I was – sitting on the edge of my bed, worried to death what the flop might hold for the seemingly genuine “good Wesley R. Buck Editor-in-Chief 10 | D r a g I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com guy” at the table that I’d come to find was a lifelong poker player from Texas (complete with a 10-gallon hat). I’m not sure exactly the or- der it played out in my head, but I started making connec- tions and realizing some of the storytelling wizardry that was on display here. Basically, the ESPN and World Series of Poker production team had been telling me a story since the moment the broadcast started. They set the stage, created, maintained and at different times demonstrated the drama and competitive nature of the event – zoom- ing in as a player squirmed at the table after going “all in”. More importantly than that, they’d spend the entire broadcast introducing me to the colorful cast of characters at the table. There was a college-age kid at the table, who was born into money and spent his entire life playing poker online and in casinos, decked out in a flat-bill hat, massive head- phones, and a puffy designer jacket. There was a middle-aged businessman in a fancy suit and dark sunglasses; there was a guy from Boston wearing a Celtics jersey, shorts and flip-flops; there was an awkwardly quiet, mathematician-type and, of course, the veteran cowboy that I’d taken a liking to right off the start. I couldn’t believe that ESPN, by introducing me to this group of lovable, hatable and all-round po- larizing characters, had made me interested in a poker game that I wasn’t playing in, nor had any money invested in. It was masterful, and it remains a masterful production to this day over six years later. I realized that, if properly promoted and with the necessary amount of effort invested into sto- rytelling, the stage for something like this didn’t have to be poker – it could be anything, and wh y not drag racing? Ideas started pouring into my head, and on the pages of a notepad taken from the desk of the Homewood Suites in Concord, North Carolina, the World Series of Pro Mod was born. I started jotting down ideas about the format – no scoreboards, invite-only, ultra-exclusive with a slew of colorful, outspoken characters, $100,000-to-win, random hat-drawn pairings done well in advance of the race to provide an opportunity to create and build rivalries. Now, here we are – making this dream a reality and, again, I couldn’t be more excited. The stage is set. The players have been determined. The venue is set. And the stakes have never been higher. My question, since that September night in 2012: If they can do it with poker, why can’t we do it with drag racing? I invite you to email me at wes@dragillustrated.com and follow me at facebook.com/wbuck and wesbuckinc on Instagram. Wesley R. Buck Editor-in-Chief wes@dragillustrated.com Scott Dorman Publisher 615.478.5275 scott@dragillustrated.com Will Mandell Senior Sales Executive 615.426.0465 will@dragillustrated.com JT Hudson Sales Representative 660.341.0063 jt@dragillustrated.com Mike Carpenter Design & Production Director 704.737.2299 mike@dragillustrated.com Ian Tocher Senior Editor 404.375.4895 ian@dragillustrated.com Nate Van Wagnen Managing Editor 440.986.1480 nate@dragillustrated.com Van Abernethy Senior Staff Writer & Field Subscription Sales 828.302.0356 van@dragillustrated.com Andrea Wilson Controller 660.349.0847 andrea@dragillustrated.com Caroline Sterling Customer Service / Office Manager 660.988.2313 caroline@dragillustrated.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Bobby Bennett, Lisa Collier, Tommy D’Aprile, Josh Hachat, Ainsley Jacobs, Brandon W. Mudd PHOTO DEPARTMENT: John Fore III (Senior Photographer), Van Abernethy, Rick Belden, Jason Dunn, Paul Grant, Chris Graves, Ron Lewis, Joe McHugh, Gary Nastase, Mark J. Rebilas, Roger Richards, Chris Sears, Jason Sharp, James Sisk, Ian Tocher ADVERTISING SALES: 615.478.5275 SUBSCRIPTIONS & CUSTOMER SERVICE: 660.988.2313 customerservice@dragillustrated.com DRAG ILLUSTRATED MEDIA, LLC 902 Kings Road, Kirksville, MO 63501 P: 660.988.2313 F: 660.665.1636 www.dragillustrated.com Copyright © 2017 by Drag Illustrated Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Drag Illustrated is a registered trademark of Drag Illustrated Media, LLC. Printed and mailed by Publication Printers in Denver, CO. All statements, including product claims, are those of the person or organization making the statement or claim. The publisher does not adopt any such statement or claims as its own, and any such statement or claim does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher. Issue 122