Drag Illustrated Issue 129, January / February 2018 | Page 8
LETTER from the EDITOR
I
t would have been
2001 or ’02, I believe,
that I won my first
round of drag racing.
I was racing my 1987
Chevrolet S10 in the high
school drags that were contest-
ed almost every Friday night
of the summer at Eddyville
Raceway Park in Southeast
Iowa – about 90 miles north
of my hometown.
Admittedly, the quasi-local
bracket scene was never where
I shined; I was 100-percent a
fish out of water in this envi-
ronment – the land of dial-ins
and “double-oh” reaction times.
While I’ve never written much
about it – for a multitude of
reasons – at this point in my life almost all the
drag racing I had done, personally, was on aban-
doned stretches of road around Missouri, Illinois
and Kansas. My little pickup truck, you see, was
perfectly suited for this type of unceremonious
competition – bench seat, column shifter, no cage,
lap belts, full exhaust and street tires. A far cry
from a “sleeper” with a 4-inch cowl hood and bright
red paint, but docile enough that its 10-second
quarter-mile performance capabilities were rarely
anticipated.
Over the course of many years through my high
school days, late teens and early 20s, I used my
inherited gift of gab to score races against cars
and drivers I was completely confident I could
outrun. That was always my favorite part about
the street racing scene – that verbal gamesmanship
was every bit as important as the performance of
your car or truck, if not more so. I remember rou-
tinely being able to talk myself into races against
guys with a car that I knew – without a shadow of
a doubt – I could easily blow the doors off of with
my truck, and make some money in the process.
If you found yourself in a situation where I knew
I was outgunned, you could either raise the stakes
to a point where you knew the guy would back out
of the race, or convince them to let you dictate the
stipulations of the race – I get the hit, a couple car
lengths, or whatever else you could pressure them
into. You know how it goes, “I’ve got a street car!
I drove this thing here on street tires! It’s got full
exhaust! A column shifter! You’ve got slicks and a
roll cage! That thing is a race car!”
So, being in the staging lanes at Eddyville Race-
way Park (ERP), headed into the first round of elim-
inations after a couple time trials, it was amazing
how different the situation felt. There was nothing
I could do to change the situation – I was fixing to
race a local kid with what amounted to a purpose-
built bracket car. I couldn’t roll the window down
and convince him to let me leave first, or let me
stage with the rear wheels or anything else. I was
going to have to cut a better light and run closer to
Wesley R. Buck
Editor-in-Chief
8 | Drag
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
my dial, which, without nitrous,
was something like a 7.95, while
his was like a 9.35. Now, mind
you, this is footbrake racing
with high-school-age kids and
relatively slow vehicles. Despite
having spent all this time feel-
ing like an outlaw bad ass that
had never lost a street race, I
was instantaneously reminded
that this – the drag strip – is
where the real bad asses go to
race. And, if I wanted to win, I
was going to have to go directly
through all of them. No talking
my way out of it.
I don’t remember every
single detail of the race, but
I do remember him leaving,
then me, and relatively quickly
catching and driving around him. I remember going
through the traps, thinking to myself, “Oh, crap, I’ve
got him covered, stand on the brakes, don’t break
out!” Apparently, spacing the fact that the race
was already over, and not fully grasping that the
massive arrow on the scoreboards at ERP, which
are kind of cool and unique, was illuminating in my
lane. I remember this rush of excitement and pride
that I’d won this race, and I remember this all-at-
once newfound appreciation for what it meant to
win – not an entire drag race – but a single round
of competition. Seemingly in an instant, my mind
reviewed and established a new frame of reference
for every single win and loss that I’d been a part of
throughout a lifetime of racing with my dad and
uncles. In that moment, I felt a sense of accom-
plishment that didn’t necessarily nullify any that
I’d had before on the streets, but certainly felt like
a different level of achievement.
This story is important for a couple of reasons,
but one in particular, even though it’s focused
around an 18-year-old winning one measly elimi-
nation round of drag racing against high-school-
level competition. Trust me, I didn’t write it to
earn myself “street cred” - not that it’d produce
much if I did.
First off, winning a round of drag racing is mas-
sively difficult, and the people that are able to do
it consistently, and so fre