LUKE BOGACKI
JACK OF ALL TRADES
While some racers find success
in only one of sportsman
racing’s disciplines, Bogacki
has proven time and time again
he can reach the winner’s circle
at the local Saturday-night
points race, the NHRA national-
event stage and at the richest
bracket races in the world.
as at three divisional races. Bogacki also claimed
NHRA’s Division 3 Super Gas championship in
2014, marking the fifth division title of his career.
Remarkably, 2015 turned out even better, at
least as far as reaching milestones was concerned.
Though a slow start in NHRA action kept him
from championship contention, Bogacki claimed
huge wins in Super Gas at the JEGS Allstars event
in Chicago, followed by a Super Comp victory at
the prestigious NHRA U.S. Nationals in India-
napolis. The Indy title also came in the midst of an
incredibly impressive 29-round class win streak
from August to October, during which Bogacki
also notched national event victories at Brainerd
and St. Louis, along with a divisional win at Bowl-
ing Green, Kentucky. Additionally, he returned
to a limited big-money bracket-racing schedule
and secured several wins and runner-up finishes.
Last year represented another uncharacteristi-
cally fruitless NHRA tour for Bogacki, but he re-
mained encouraged by his ongoing bracket racing
success, including the 2016 DragRaceResults.com
Ultimate Series championship. He also accepted
the advice of chassis builder Charlie Stewart to
bracket race his Super Gas Corvette for the first
time. After four years of 9.90 quarter-mile class
racing, Bogacki finally agreed to run his roadster
wide open and dial it in that summer over the
eighth mile at Bowling Green.
“I tested on Thursday at I-57, basically just
to make sure I didn’t make an idiot of myself. I
wasn’t sure what to expect out of the ‘Vette, but
I knew if I could make it to 100 feet, I’d be fine;
it always drove great. I just had no idea what it
would do leaving the starting line wide open,” he
says. “I went 4.89 on the first hit … and I came
back to the trailer grinning from ear to ear. It’s
a damn Cadillac! And it’s the most fun I’ve ever
had in a race car. I should’ve listened to Charlie
years ago!”
Bogacki entered the car in the Bowling Green
Tenn-Tuck event, but lost in the opening round of
a $10K-to-win race on Friday night. Undaunted,
he re-entered that night’s $5k “Little Bucks” race
and rode four straight 4.92s to victory lane. The
winning wasn’t over, though, as Bogacki again
drove the roadster to victory in Saturday’s “Little
Bucks” race; then on Sunday, he once more en-
tered the $10k main event and advanced all the
way to the final round for a runner-up finish. “For
those keeping score; I lost the first time I staged
in the ‘Vette on Friday. And I lost the last time I
staged on Sunday,” he says, laughing at the mem-
ory. “But boy it was hell on ‘em in between—22
straight round wins!”
Comparing index racing on the NHRA nation-
al-event stage to big-buck bracket bashes, Bogacki
says there are a couple of major things to consider.
“First off, I think it’s a little bit different skill set
to win, say, Super Comp at a national event than
it is to win an eighth-mile bracket race because
bracket racing technology has come so far that
you could almost just set a practice tree in the
staging lanes and determine it like that because
everybody can go dead-on. There’s not as much
emphasis on finish line driving and things like
that. It’s all just about making a really good pack-
age, having a really good run, and most of the
83
variable is really on the starting line,” Bogacki
explains. “On the other side, in a quarter-mile
NHRA race, you bring the throttle stops into it
where everybody has got to have the same thing;
plus it’s one race spread out over three days, so
you’re subject to run in real different weather
conditions. There’s just a lot more variables, so
it puts more emphasis on finish-line driving. It’s
just a little bit different skill set.
“From a mentality standpoint, I don’t know that
the pressure is more one way or the other, it’s just
different because bracket racing typically now-
adays there’s more money involved, but there’s
not 20,000 people watching you like there could
be at NHRA. So it’s a different type of feel and a
different type of pressure.”
Tuning wise, Bogacki also considers bracket
racing to be a little more forgiving since it typi-