Drag Illustrated Issue 125, September 2017 | Page 30
Dirt
How a junkyard find helped
take Bill Haskins to the top
of the NHRA world
By Dan Hodgdon
B
ill Haskins’ life has been defined
by the Dodge Charger. Today he works
for Don Schumacher Racing, serving
as the cylinder head specialist on the
Mopar Express Lane Dodge Charger R/T Funny
Car driven by Matt Hagan on the NHRA Mello
Yello Drag Racing Series. Haskins’ story is one of
inspiration and proof that hard work can achieve
dreams. Yet his love affair with cars began long
before he was ever able to drive, starting with a ’68
Dodge Charger that was rescued from the woods.
Haskins grew up in upstate New York, in the
town of Elmira. When he was 13 years old, his
dad, Bill Sr., (a longtime car buff who has reg-
istered over 400 cars) bought that ’68 Charger
from a salvage yard and told his young son it
should be ready by the time prom rolled around
in high school.
Today Haskins, 28, laughs at the thought that
30 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
the car still isn’t finished, but it’s put him on a
career trajectory which has taken him to the very
top of the drag racing world, working on cars
which he says feature a “vulgar display of power.”
Haskins took auto body in high school to learn
how to paint cars, and then attended the Univer-
sity of Northwestern Ohio (UNOH) in Lima to
further study auto repair in general, all with the
Charger in the back of his mind. He’s owned a
variety of vehicles in his life, many of them parts
cars which he used as a resource to work on his
pride and joy.
“I had to wheel and deal. I didn’t have enough
money to go out and buy a finished product, so
I had to scour through the junkyards and pull
pieces off old wrecked cars sitting in the weeds
and rip the parts off that I needed, sell the shell
and put the parts on my car,” he says.
He admits he knew little about drag racing
upon enrolling in UNOH, with the Watkins Glen
road course being the closest track to his New
York hometown. But one fateful Labor Day Week-
end, Haskins was bitten by the drag racing bug.
“My roommate and I heard an ad on the ra-
dio for the U.S. Nationals and we were bored,”
Haskins remembers. “We looked at each other
and said, ‘Hey, let’s go to that.’ I saw these cars
make a pass and right then and there I figured
out what I wanted to do with my life.”
Upon his return to school, he got in touch with
the right instructors who knew drag racing, and
became president of the drag club, trying to make
the proper connections to get a foothold inside
the NHRA world. However, it was a fateful trip
to zMAX Dragway in Charlotte for the Four-
Wide Nationals in the spring of 2011 which gave
him the break he needed to achieve his dream.
Haskins had just graduated from college without
a job lined up and was trying to put off going to
work on the fracking rigs popular in upstate New
York. Always resourceful, he sold an old pickup
for $1,500 for the money to drive to North Caro-
lina, where he planned to sleep in his truck while
handing out resumes. He ultimately came away
from the weekend with a job on Dexter Tuttle’s
Top Fuel team.
“I got hired off the ropes and was told to pick
up a rag and start cleaning parts,” Haskins re-
members. “I’ve worked my way up to doing cyl-
inder heads.”
Issue 125
Living Nitro Dreams