Drag Illustrated Issue 129, January / February 2018 | Page 80
THE
CHAMPIONS
ISSUE
A sphAlt W Ars D oor C Ar
W
hen Matt Hutter was
crowned the 2017 Asphalt
Wars Door Car champion, it
came as a surprise to no one.
After what seemed to be an
auspicious inaugural season
with twin turbos in 2016, the Hutter Performance
team took on the new season with a personal
vendetta: Go faster, run quicker, win races. The
former NASCAR wheelman turned Pro Mod pilot,
along with his devoted crew, did just that.
Hutter’s Comp Turbo-backed Dodge Stratus
could be found atop the qualifying sheet at five
of the six Asphalt Wars races contested in the
2017 season, and cruised into the winner’s circle
at three of those. Not only did the gang reset their
own series et record, they shattered the long-
standing speed record held by Randy Jewell since
September 2011.
“I guess we just don’t do complacency well,”
Hutter posits. “We’ve been running good the last
couple years, but we’re not satisfied with it. We
enjoy it, but to stay there you need to remember
what it took to get there and keep digging.”
With the 2018 season rapidly approaching and
much of the competition taking the necessary mea-
sures to run at the front of the pack, the back-to-
back door car phenomenon will have his hands full.
“We’re just taking a look at our program, and
we’re making an effort to improve upon the weak
points. A lot of the rounds we lost weren’t because
the car wasn’t fast enough. So we work on the
consistency, try to minimize parts failure, that
kind of thing.”
Though it would seem that the pressure is
on with the entire field gunning for him, Hut-
ter remains collected and focused on the mis-
sion at hand. He often reverts back to his cir-
cle-track days.
“I was pretty much living my dream,” Hutter
fondly remembers. “Millions of dollars of sponsor-
ship backing the car. When I wasn’t running well,
it was simple. I knew if things didn’t get better I
was going to lose my job. You pretty much get one
shot at that level of NASCAR. So that’s pressure.
Once you’ve raced for a living and been fired from
it, you don’t really feel pressure. But don’t take
that as not wanting to win, because that’s all I
want. I promised myself after that, that I would
never strap into a race car again if it wasn’t fun.”
Hutter always pays credit to his team led by
his father and engine guru, Ron Hutter. “The car
was fast all year. The crew always puts a fast car
out there for me.”
The Hutter trio of Ron and sons Matt and
Trevor, with the addition of Rich Bertleff and
Richard “Doc” Holliday, are optimistic about the
upcoming season. They aim to improve their per-
formance marks of 3.807 seconds at 195.32 mph
with the help of Hutter Performance, Comp Turbo
Technology, R.L. Holliday Company, and a newly
inked partner, Schaeffer’s Specialized Lubricants.
– COLE ROKOSKY
DI DI DI
DI DI DI DI
DI DI DI
NHRA TOP FUEL HARLEY JAY TURNER
80 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
Issue 129
Matt Hutter