MIKE TERRY
Terry, who’s been Stocklin’s right-
hand man on numerous racing
projects over the years.
“I’ll say this and I’ll carry it to
my grave: There is not a person
– and I don’t care if you want to
race wheelbarrows, sand trucks
or drag racing – there’s not a
better person to conceptually
set up a race car than Billy
Stocklin,” Terry contends. “Over
the winter, Billy, Randy and
I sat down, looked at the car
from the front bumper to the
parachute. Billy basically said,
‘Guys, if we’re going to cam-
paign this thing, we’re going to
campaign it my way and this is
what we need to change.’
“We put it all together, drug it
out to HMP two weeks before
we went to Lights Out. Had
a couple issues, just new-car
blues. Did make one pass where
it didn’t shift, but we all looked
at the data and went ‘Holy cow.
Whenever we can make all this
work, we’re going to have a
hot rod.’”
Sure enough, Stocklin
figured it out and Terry had
himself a hot rod. By the time
Lights Out 9 qualifying was
over, Terry led the 25-car
order with a 4.658 at 152.04.
Aside from an overaggressive
approach on an earned first-
round single, Terry went down
the track every pass in elimina-
tions, turning out consecutively
quicker elapsed times until the
grand finale, a 4.631 at 151.66
against Charlie “Ducky” John-
son’s aborted 10-second time in
the final round.
“Billy did an awesome job tun-
ing the car,” Terry proudly offers.
“Gave me the car to win every
round – it was mine to lose.
Ran into a fellow Texan and
Nitrous Outlet racer, James Kay,
in the semifinals. That was the
best drag race I’ve had in a long
time. I think it was .007 at the
finish line. For the finals, Ducky
Johnson, man, he’s a career X
racer. Those dudes have been
doing this a long time, went
a .70 flat in qualifying. He was
very capable of jumping up and
running the number. Billy just
gave me that extra little cushion
in the finals and off it went.”
– NATE VAN WAGNEN
DI DI
April 2018
John Keesey:
Persistence Pays Off
R
acing out of
the No. 2 spot,
Pennsylvania’s
John Keesey took
his turbocharged ’89
Mustang all the way
to the winner’s circle,
defeating No. 9 qualifier
Shane Heckel in the
final round with a come-
from-behind charge to
win “the Super Bowl of
small-tire racing” in a
4.402-to-4.437 decision.
DI
“It almost feels like it’s not real,”
Keesey says after having a few
days to reflect on the accomplish-
ment. “I’ve had so many struggles
over the past two years and I was
so close to just giving up and
quitting. We had hired up one of
our local engine guys over here in
Pennsylvania and he was just in
over his head. He just didn’t have
the skill level that he needed and
he ended up costing me about
$40,000 worth of engines. After
that we went through a spell
where we were thinking maybe
this just isn’t for us. Maybe we
just need to step out and go buy
another house or something. But
we stuck with it, we stuck to our
guns and we stuck to the exact
same combination that we went
into this thinking we could com-
pete with.”
The combination Keesey
speaks of is an all-aluminum,
9.5 deck cast inline SVA small-
block Ford prepared by KBX and
Bennett Racing. A single 85mm
turbo from Forced Inductions
Turbochargers provides the boost.
“Best phone call I ever made
was to John Kolivas to get him
involved,” Keesey says. “My
engine guy was blaming my
tuner and my tuner was blaming
my engine guy. I was stuck in
the middle paying the bills. Now,
John pulls it all together. We’ve
got Bennett Racing behind me.
It’s nothing spectacular, it’s just
extremely efficient – the engine
combination, the tuning, the
chassis. The car is just on point,
working efficiently.”
As for the inspiration to forge
ahead through the trying times
he experienced in past years,
Keesey credits not only his wife
and other supporters, but also
the titans of X275.
“Up here at Cecil we see the big
guys all the time: the Bruders,
Ron Rhodes, Marinis, Jamie
Stanton,