Drag Illustrated Issue 150, November 2019 | Page 8

FOUNDER’S LETTER 8 | Drag I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com awesome door cars on the property, but as I perused the lanes I noticed that there was no sign of Shannon Jenkins’ freshly painted white-and- blue ’68 Chevy Camaro. At the back of the lanes, though, was his teammate Mike Castellana’s Western Beef-backed Chevy Cava- lier. Having spoken to Jenkins on the phone several times, but never in person, it took me about four wide laps around the car and golf cart (where he sat) before I mus- tered up the courage to introduce myself. The man I’d idolized since I first saw him race in the mid-1990s at Eddyville Raceway Park was every bit the ultra- cool, bad ass that I expected him to be. The title of my cover story about Shannon for that first issue was, “The James Dean of Drag Racing”, and I have to admit he lived up to the billing (and still does). But there was a problem. “Where’s your hot rod, ‘Iceman’?” I asked. “We’re in the show, Mike’s not,” he replied. “We’ll get him in here and then we’ll get after it with my car tonight.” Not good, I thought to myself. That’s one less op- portunity to get a decent photo of this car, and at this point I’d hardly ever taken a photo – at least not outside the grandstands of a NHRA national event. So, I figured, better get some practice. I marched up the lanes and out toward a small crop of pho- tographers camped out along the guardwall. Hav- ing no real idea what the hell I was doing, I was genuinely hoping these other photographers would just ignore me. The last thing I needed was to start getting grilled about my shutter speed of choice or something else I knew nothing about. The first few pairs of cars I shot, I remember looking down at the LCD screen on my Canon to review my work and thinking, “Oh, my God. This camera is amazing.” I’d held the shutter down for four or five frames during Burton Auxier’s burn- out, and snagged a few more while he purged the bottles and launched off the starting line. “Holy crap!” I said to myself. “I think I’ve got a gift! This is going to be easy.” Then the sun started to set on SGMP. My photos started to get streaky and blurry, and when I tried to turn on the flash it just made things worse. Through the course of 37 (literally) Pro Extreme cars making runs in that second session under the evening sky, I had zero usable photos – unless we planned on doing some sort of modern art deco special issue. I went back to the pits to check in on the “Iceman” and try to get a few pictures of him working on his car. If I came home with one photo of him standing behind a sheet metal intake plumbed with all the nitrous and topped with a pair of split Dominators, in my mind, I would have achieved victory. When Pro Nitrous was called to the lanes, I’ll never forget, Jenkins told me to jump on the golf cart and ride with them. “And bring that camera,” he said. All anyone could talk about was whether or not a nitrous car would break into the 3-second zone, and with the reminder to grab my camera, I felt Wes Buck Founder & Editorial Director 660.988.2313 wes@dragillustrated.com Scott Dorman Publisher 615.478.5275 scott@dragillustrated.com Mike Carpenter Design & Production Director 704.737.2299 mike@dragillustrated.com Nate Van Wagnen Editor-in-Chief 440.986.1480 nate@dragillustrated.com Nancy Koeppen Chief Operating Officer 573.552.5551 nancy@dragillustrated.com Will Mandell Senior Sales Executive 615.426.0465 will@dragillustrated.com JT Hudson Sales Executive 660.341.0063 jt@dragillustrated.com Van Abernethy Senior Staff Writer & Field Subscription Sales 828.302.0356 van@dragillustrated.com Josh Hachat Editor-at-Large 660.988.2313 josh@dragillustrated.com Caroline Fox Customer Service / Office Manager 660.988.2313 caroline@dragillustrated.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Ian Tocher, Ainsley Jacobs, Kelly Wade, Bobby Bennett, Brandon W. Mudd, Tommy D’Aprile, Will Hanna, Sadie Glenn PHOTO DEPARTMENT: John Fore III, Van Abernethy, Rick Belden, Tara Bowker, Shawn Crose, Jason Dunn, Paul Grant, Chris Graves, Ron Lewis, Will McDougle, Joe McHugh, Gary Nastase, Mark J. Rebilas, Roger Richards, Cole Rokosky, Chris Sears, Jason Sharp, James Sisk, Ian Tocher ADVERTISING SALES: 615.478.5275 SUBSCRIPTIONS & CUSTOMER SERVICE: 660.988.2313 customerservice@dragillustrated.com DRAG ILLUSTRATED MEDIA, LLC 902 Kings Road, Kirksville, MO 63501 P: 660.988.2313 F: 660.665.1636 www.dragillustrated.com Copyright © 2019 by Drag Illustrated Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Drag Illustrated is a registered trademark of Drag Illustrated Media, LLC. Printed and mailed by Royle Printing in Sun Prairie, WI. All statements, including product claims, are those of the person or organization making the statement or claim. The publisher does not adopt any such statement or claims as its own, and any such statement or claim does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher. Issue 150 I t’d be easy to wax po- etic about the overall jour- ney that has been getting this magazine from its first issue to this 150 th edition that you hold in your hands, but being that this landmark issue also serves as our 2019 Photo Annual, I thought it only right that my focus be the incredible photography that has graced these pages since the first issue rolled off the presses at the Iowa City Press Citizen back in the spring of 2006. Admittedly, that recycled newsprint stock didn’t do the images printed in our little rag much justice, but even then we were dedicated to quality (as much quality as we could afford) and printed one of drag racing’s only full-color maga- zines. One of the first major issues we faced with DRAG ILLUSTRATED was procuring high-level photog- raphy. At the time, I was proud to have developed a solid network in racing that included racers, crew chiefs, engine builders, a variety of motorsports manufacturers and event promoters, but not a single photographer. “No problem,” I remember thinking. “I’ll just do it myself.” Boy, oh, boy, am I glad I outgrew that notion. Burning down I-75 from Atlanta, Georgia, en route to Valdosta in February of 2006, I knew the next few days were going to be important, but I don’t know that I realized just how much of an impact they would have on this operation. About halfway to South Georgia Motorsports Park for the American Drag Racing League Winter Drags, I saw a billboard for Best Buy on Eisenhower Parkway in Macon. Surely, I remember thinking, I can buy enough of a camera and whatever else I might need to get some pictures at this race that we could use in the first issue of the magazine, which was my entire reason for traveling the 1,000 miles from my home in Missouri to this event in the first place. I’d already done an extensive interview with my all- time drag racing hero, Shannon “Iceman” Jenkins, for the cover story of our first issue, but we didn’t have a single photo of the guy or his car and – at the time – we really didn’t know how to go about acquiring any other than doing exactly what I was doing – going to get some. Browsing through a fairly impressive (read: freaking overwhelming) selection of cameras- chained-to-countertops, a blue-shirt-clad member of Best Buy’s sales staff directed me to a “perfect entry-level” digital camera that at $799 was – at the time – the most money I’d spent on anything that wasn’t a car part. He picked me out a memory card and a carrying case, rang me up and sent me on my way. “Just put it on automatic, buddy,” he said. “It’s 2006 – let the camera do the work for you.” By the time I arrived at the track a couple hours later that Friday afternoon, I’d missed the first round of Pro Extreme and Pro Nitrous qualify- ing. Sitting in my rental car, I fumbled through the instruction manual of my Canon 30D and headed for the staging lanes. This being my first- ever ADRL race, I couldn’t get over the number of