D.I. COLUMNIST
On the Road
with Van Abernethy
I
visited my local Farmington
Dragway recently and I couldn’t
help but recall the decades of
entertainment I’ve enjoyed at this
scenic eighth-miler tucked away
in rural Davie County near Mocks-
ville, North Carolina. I can leave
my house in Granite Falls, hit In-
terstate 40E and be pulling through
the gates of Farmington in about
55 minutes.
To put in perspective just how
long I’ve been coming to this track,
consider these stats: As of this writ-
ing, I have visited 142 drag strips
over the years, and if
I complied a chrono-
logical order of that list,
Farmington would be
the third track I ever
visited. Only Hudson
Drag Strip (which
was number 1) and
Mooresville Dragway
predate my first visit
to Farmington back in
1990. It’s hard to be-
lieve this was on the
cusp of 30 years ago,
and I can honestly say
that it was an amazing
time to be alive and in-
volved with drag rac-
ing. It’s also difficult
to imagine going back
three decades and be-
ing without internet,
GPS, cellphones and
all the other wonderful
conveniences of today, but in 1990
we had none of that...yet it still rep-
resents the best of times for many
people.
What we did have in 1990 was
a brand-new professional class in
drag racing called Pro Modified,
and this was actually what first
lured me to Farmington Dragway.
Shortly after the class was launched,
a local racer from Clemmons, North
Carolina, named Don Plemmons
launched a spectacular heads-up
series called the Quick-8 Racers As-
sociation, and Farmington played an
integral role in some of the earliest
events for this explosive new series.
Back in the early 1990s, my
brother, Mike, and I would take off
to “The Farm” on a regular basis to
watch some of the best heads-up
doorslammer racing that was going
on in the entire country.
Oftentimes, somewhere
in the neighborhood of
24 cars would show up
trying to squeeze into an
eight-car field! And talk
about a who’s who list of
talent; the Quick-8 Rac-
ers Association produced
some bona fide stars.
To be clear, Ronnie Sox was a
legend long before 1990. However,
it was the Pro Modified class that
lured this drag racing superstar
from Burlington, North Carolina, on Stevie “Fast” Jackson
in the recent and epic
NHRA Gatornationals
final round, Tutterow
was a local star right
here at Farmington in
the Quick-8 Racers club.
On one particular
night, though, it was Tut-
terow who was on the wrong end of
a well-timed holeshot against none
other than Rickie Smith, who was
yet another Pro Mod regular here!
Smith and Tutterow went head-
to-head in a starting-line standoff
out of retirement when Sox com-
missioned Tommy Mauney to build
a gorgeous 1964 Pro Modified Mer-
cury Comet, which was an instant
fan favorite. Sox competed the car in
IHRA national events and entered
select Quick-8 Racers Association
events along with some memorable
match races at Farmington.
Mauney was also a Farmington
regular and many-time event win-
ner and season points champion
of the Quick-8 Racers Association.
Heck, most of the Pro Mod cars in
the Southeast in the early ‘90s came
out of Mauney’s Spartanburg, South
Carolina, chassis shop.
Another Farmington regular was
Todd Tutterow, whose race shop is
still located just down the road from
the drag strip. Long before “King
Tut” was slapping a wicked holeshot before a packed house one Saturday
night, and the staging duel tarried
on so long that Tutterow famously
began to fan the door of his 1940
Willys while the crowd roared with
laughter and approval of the high-
drama burndown. Smith finally
revved the engine, gave the nitrous
one last purge into the night sky
and bumped into the beams, so
Tutterow decided to shut the door
and do likewise.
Todd actually had the more
powerful car on this outing, but
“Tricky” Rickie was first out of the
gate and managed to hold off the
charging Willys. Through the mar-
vel of the internet you can actually
go back in time and replay the run
anytime, as it is a YouTube sensa-
tion! A number of years later, I was
fortunate enough to be present the
day Todd ran his first-ever 200 mph
pass, which happened right here at
Farmington.
Some of the many other early
Pro Mod stars who were Farming-
ton regulars include Ronnie Hood,
who went on to win the NHRA U.S.
Nationals! How about Scotty Can-
non? Yep, long before he was win-
ning an obscene amount of IHRA
Pro Mod championships, and later
burning down the quarter-mile in
a NHRA Funny Car, Cannon could
be seen at Farmington occasion-
ally mixing it up with the Quick-8
regulars. Through the
years, fans cheered for
people like Ed Hoover,
Michael Martin, Blake
Wiggins, Dale Brins-
field, James “Smitty”
Smith, Wally Stroupe
and Kenneth Tripp, to
name a very few.
By the time the
2000s rolled around,
Farmington’s Quick-8
program was still go-
ing strong and produc-
ing a completely new
crop of stars. Ken Re-
genthal, however, was
there from start to
finish, joining in 1990
and then racing with
the club until it finally
disbanded probably
20 years later. Regent-
hal’s beautiful 1963
Corvette known as the “Carolina
Hooker” is pictured in this month’s
column in what is without a doubt
one of my favorite Farmington pho-
tos. Regenthal won three champi-
onships and no less than 50 events
(including 12 in a row!) within the
Quick-8 Racers Association and
amazingly, the man even poured
the concrete starting line at Farm-
ington through his local business,
Clemmons Concrete.
This entire era represents a sim-
pler time in drag racing, back before
big money came in and changed the
game. Oh sure, there’s plenty of seg-
ments in modern drag racing that
I’m completely stoked about, but I
must say the 1990s Pro Mod scene
at my local Farmington Dragway
has a place in my memory bank filed
under “the best of times.”
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56 | D r a g
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Issue 144