Drag Illustrated Issue 148, September 2019 | Page 82
Billy Stocklin
They did that – in part by taking 134 pounds
out of the car by the time they made the first
pass – won a race overseas and then returned
with a championship on their mind. They dom-
inated that first season together, with Jackson’s
aggressiveness feeding perfectly with Stocklin’s
calculated assault on the track. The deadly tan-
dem was formed during the championship year
and Jackson knew immediately it was going to
be special.
“The absolute hardest thing to overcome in this
sport is ego,” Jackson says. “Me and Billy have
a dynamic I have never seen before that allows
us to tune these race cars and tune them with
no ego. There are times I am lost and I need his
help. He knows when I’m in the car and when
he needs to leave me alone and he knows when
to poke me.”
Stocklin’s talents had taken him all over the
world, including Qatar and Australia, but he
said that felt like a turning point in his career.
From there, he was more selective in the jobs he
took, focusing on teams like Jackson and Aus-
tralian Paul Mouhayet – groups that were driven
to win and could utilize a talent like Stocklin to
Both have different paths to the end goal, but
they’ve made it work perfectly.
“Me and Billy Stocklin could have been one
of the greatest rivalries in drag racing,” Jackson
says. “Instead it’s turned into one of greatest
friendships. We’re family. We do this for a job,
but we’re family.”
J
take the final step.
“It was a good group of guys to get hooked up
with. They’ve got good dudes, they’ve got the right
ingredients, they just needed direction,” Stocklin
believes. “And then it keeps me from having to
worry about things like, ‘Is the car going to start?
Is the engine assembled correctly?’ and other
stuff like that. If you only race with the Stevies
and the dudes like that, you have a much better
opportunity to win. It makes me look smarter,
makes me look smarter than I am.”
Jackson sometimes wonders what the Pro
Mod landscape would look like if he and Stock-
lin remained rivals. It draws a chuckle, if only
because that is a distant memory between the
two close friends.
They ride to the track as a team, eat dinner as a
team, eat breakfast as a team and it’s all centered
on drag racing and being successful in the sport.
ackson and Stocklin have reached
a new level in 2019, determined to
make an opening statement from
the outset of the NHRA Pro Mod
season. They had won five races to-
gether the past two years, including
a memorable triumph at the U.S. Nationals last
year, but both wanted more.
Jackson devised a plan, and Stocklin has be-
come a little more aggressive in his tuning ways
while still focusing on the data. The result is their
new blown Bahrain 1 Racing Camaro reaching
new heights this year.
They made the quickest run in NHRA Pro
Mod history with a blast of 5.643-seconds at the
season-opener in Gainesville, winning two races
and advancing to five final rounds thus far.
But nothing was as meaningful as the weekend
in Topeka. Stocklin’s father passed away a short
time prior to the stop at Heartland Motorsports
Park. Stocklin made the trip to Topeka, deliv-
ering a brilliant tuning weekend while Jackson
qualified No. 1 and drove to a dominant, one-sid-
ed victory.
Jackson was emotional in his post-race inter-
view, dedicating the win to his good friend. “Rare-
ly in life do we get an opportunity to positively
and truly affect someone close to us. Billy was
extremely close to his father and watching him
go through the emotional rollercoaster over the
last week, I knew this would be important to him
coming off such a tragedy in his life,” Jackson said.
“I hope that’s something he’s going to remember.”
The moment wasn’t lost on Stocklin, even if
the story isn’t over yet. Jackson holds a 133-point
lead with four races left in the season. The goal
remains a world championship, and Jackson
and Stocklin want to end the season in impres-
sion fashion.
If it does happen, and a NHRA Pro Mod cham-
pionship comes their way, Stocklin will always
think back to Topeka and how much that week-
end meant to him. Stocklin and his father didn’t
always see eye to eye when he was younger, but
their relationship was strong as each got older.
His father recognized Stocklin’s brilliance with
numbers and data, using his talents to become a
star in his profession. Without question, he had
made his father proud.
“My dad and I, when I was a kid, we didn’t
always get along because of the fact that I al-
ways wanted to go do motorsports stuff,” Stocklin
remembers. “He was born in 1930, and in an
impoverished area, so, he was very much a keep
your head down and work, work, work guy.
“Because of that, it kind of made a rift in our re-
lationship when I was young. But as I grew older
and he grew older, I think we both mellowed out,
and we got along better and better. Even though
he never really went to the races, he was super
curious of what we had going on. He was all super
excited about the prospects of how this year was
going for us. He knew that we were leading the
points, and he would always talk about (winning
a championship). So yeah, when we lost my dad
that was a really rough deal. To go to Topeka, it
was tough to walk away from home. But to win
that race that was a really big deal for me. It was
pretty emotional.”
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Issue 148