JOHN DEFLORIAN
wasn’ t the point. They made progress at each event they entered. His world changed again. In just over ten years, John went from a kid in his street machine to an adult who was building … and now driving … professional drag race cars.
Although he was competing in a Professional category, there was no extra pay involved and, therefore, John didn’ t meet the definition of“ professional driver”. He did, however, meet the criteria for a young man who exceeded his greatest expectations of what his life could become. He was building and racing the most complicated and powerful passenger cars in the sport and he was making a living solid enough to support a family. Once again, John had redefined his“ real life”.
The greater St. Louis area soon became the center of the Pro Stock chassis-building universe; every manufacturer from Jerry Haas to Jerry Bickel to Tim McAmis to Gene Lynch to Larry Jeffers to Andy McCoy operated in a forty-mile circle and, among them, nearly every Pro Stock, Top Sportsman and, later, Pro Modified machine in the country was constructed by one of those masters. Most were National Event champion drivers, as well, and both Jerry Haas,( 1980 AHRA Pro Stock World Champion), and Tim McAmis,( 1990 IHRA Pro Modified World Champion), reached the pinnacle of the sport as drivers.
DeFlorian soon developed a reputation within the sport as one of the best chassis men in the business. He worked with the winningest drivers and most renowned engine builders on and off the track and used their insight to employ new designs and configurations. He stayed active bracket racing the old Lynch Pro Stock Probe which he purchased when it became uncompetitive and also drove in“ Quick 8” programs throughout the Midwest at the helm of the
WITH BACKING FROM KEVIN BEALKO( LEFT), POWER FROM SONNY LEONARD( MIDDLE LEFT), AND A RACE CAR BUILT AT THE SHOP BELONGING TO JERRY HAAS( RIGHT), DEFLORIAN WENT MMPS RACING IN THE EARLY 2010S.
DRAG RACING IS HOW DEFLORIAN MET HIS WIFE, LIANN, WHO WAS THE TIMING COMPUTER OPERATOR AT ST. LOUIS WHEN THE COUPLE FIRST MET.
Hodges Camaro.
At the same time, John’ s career took another twist. Through longtime friend and DeFlorian crewman Dave Koch,( the greatest“ procurement specialist” in the Midwest), John was in-troduced to a car owner known only as“ Glen from down south”. Glen was looking for a wheelman for his match race machine which was active at tracks on the Gulf Coast. Now with driving experience in multiple cars and circumstances, DeFlorian took the seat in Glen’ s black Lynchbuilt’ 97 Firebird and rose to impressive regional fame. The car became well-known using a Sonny
Leonard-built 755-inch Pontiac with a single four-barrel carbure-tor which, using nitrous, few people knew could run in the six-second zone in the late 1990s.
Because of that success and again through Koch, DeFlorian was tabbed by one of the biggest names in drag racing although his true name was known by very few. Richard Davis, a Chicago-based car owner who was renowned under the moniker“ Big Drag”, had built an amazing reputation in the world of extremely high-dollar match racing.“ Drag” would purchase each year’ s dominant Pro Stockers at the end of each season, contract the sport’ s best engine builders to create monstrous 812-inch match race powerplants and then tour the southern United States racing for bags of money at little-known facilities far off the National Event trail. The dragstrips were often considered“ the big four” of track quality: short, dark, slippery and narrow. Each of the cars John was expected to drive was immensely more powerful than their previous Pro Stock heritage and it was in these races DeFlorian earned exceptional notoriety for driving down the worst surfaces fast enough to win the vast major-ity of those matches. Each battle was usually a one-run affair with no clocks in front of massive crowds of wagering patrons in which owners took side bets as well as the major“ stake” determined by the teams of each vehicle after lengthy negotiations. Fans today know this aspect of the sport as“ grudge”;“ Drag” and his unnamed driver were bigger than Don Garlits at dozens of tracks from Georgia to Louisiana on any given Saturday after midnight.
Because of this clandestine and hushed schedule, DeFlorian almost disappeared from the local scene. His weekend touring with“ Big Drag”
154 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated. com Issue 197