SPORTSMAN ISSUE /// STEVE SISKO
I just do?’ kind of thing.
“Every decision I made that day was the right
one,” he continues. “But I was driving more by
feeling than I was by just trusting the car like
a lot of people would do in those situations. I
was dialing soft and just driving the car and
making decisions by how it felt as I was going
down the track.”
After seeing that final win light glowing in his
lane, Sisko wanted to get back to his wife, Lindsay,
and his friends as soon as possible. Rather
than driving back through the pits to get back
to the winner’s circle in the staging lanes, Sisko
brought the Nova to a stop in the shutdown
area, pulled a K-turn and headed back up the
track. The track lights had been turned off and
fireworks were going off in the background.
“I could see the fireworks, I could hear people
yelling,” Sisko remembers. “The car has headlights,
so it was kind of neat driving back up.
It was like driving through a black hole back
to everybody.”
Just as he had imagined, a mass of friends,
family and supporters were waiting for Sisko to
help him celebrate on the starting line.
“Getting there, I knew my wife would be the
first one I’d see, so I just jumped out of the car
and grabbed her and gave her some hugs and
kisses,” Sisko says. “After that, it was just celebrating
with everybody.”
The problem Sisko originally thought was a
traction issue made itself known right after the
final. The rear end locked up when the group
tried to push the car out of the winner’s circle.
When Bertozzi cracked it open back at the shop
later that week, he found the ring gear was missing
six teeth.
“But I guess the pinion still had teeth on it,
so my vibration I felt was the ring and pinion
or the ring gear rolling over the pinion,” Sisko
surmises. “I guess I got lucky and staged on
the other end of the ring gear every round. If I
staged on those six teeth, I’m sure it would’ve
just broken them off the rest of the way and I
would’ve been screwed.
“That [final round] was my last run,” he adds.
“It lasted nine runs with however many broken
teeth throughout the day. It’s crazy to think
about it.”
The celebration continued until around 3 a.m.,
at which point Sisko returned to his motorhome.
He spent the next couple hours replying to hundreds
of congratulatory messages. He only got a
few hours of sleep before he woke up to the sound
of race cars warming up for the final $100K race
Sunday morning. Sisko got out of bed, showered,
went outside and got back to work, this time
returning to Maclosky’s Camaro.
Sisko won 10 rounds on his way to the $100K
final round, where he met Brandon Taylor. With
“Every decision I made that day was the
right one, but I was driving more by feeling
than I was by just trusting the car like a lot
of people would do in those situations.”
the opportunity to stack his cash a little higher,
Sisko laid down a tighter package than the one
he used to win the night before, leaving with a
.006 reaction time and crossing the eighth-mile
stripe with a 6.492 on his 6.49 dial-in. Taylor
broke out by four thousandths.
“The whole day was a blur,” Sisko says. “Everything
was just going easy. Bobby’s car is the
one I won with that day, and that car is just ridiculous
how consistent it was. It made it easy
on that aspect.”
The extra money – practically pocket change,
comparatively speaking – meant Sisko was able
to send something back to both car owners.
“I’m just glad I won good money with the second
car,” Sisko says. “This way, both car owners
are happy. It made me feel good that I didn’t
come home with nothing with one car and a ton
of money with the other.
“Other than that, it’s just a race,” Sisko says
about the high-dollar nature of the events he
won. “No matter what we race for, it’s the same
people and you have to do the same thing. It’s
just that that day was more money to enter so
it was more money to win.”
Sisko will be forever remembered as the winner
of the first SFG $1.1 Million because of the
dollar amount attached to the accomplishment.
The fact that he won a $100K race the next day
in a different car only adds to his legend. It’s that
70 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated.com
Issue 159