WORKING FOR CHASSIS BUILDER GENE LYNCH LED TO DEFLORIAN’ S FIRST OPPORTUNITY TO GO PRO STOCK RACING.
While no racer has a gun pointed at their head to play this game, the addition of a towing rig puts the total investment at almost $ 750,000 to compete for a“ perfect season” payoff of $ 85,000. Even for a working guy like John DeFlorian who is trying to compete with a six year-old car, a fourteen year old engine, a smaller trailer and a high-mileage motor home, it’ s difficult to justify to any sane person the unquenchable desire to be a part of this madness of a“ hobby”.
The NHRA immediately announced an eightrace series for the JHG 2025 season but, for the second year in a row, DeFlorian knew he could never afford the now $ 21,400“ discounted” fee for entering all eight races in advance. It was Matt Hartford who, without prompting, saved DeFlorian again by calling to say,“ Let’ s do the same deal”.
The biggest problem for John and his fiveday, fifty-hour work week at JHRC, was the fact the 2025 schedule opened in April at Charlotte then included back-to-back races at Epping and Bristol followed by an insane three weekends in a row for the final trio of events at Reading, Pennsylvania, a second stop at the fall Charlotte race and the series finale at Madison in John’ s hometown. John decided he would cross all bridges as they came into view.
The team opened at Charlotte with a sluggish first qualifying run but returned to qualify third in the second session. The car slowed again in the final period. Something was wrong but there were no visible clues as to the cause. In the first round of eliminations, John’ s season started with the worst possible“ bang”. An engine explosion
January / February 2026 destroyed John’ s only functional powerplant.
In true John DeFlorian fashion, he returned to his pit area and delivered a cheerful and informative feature for the event’ s FOXTV crew on the expanded series and the differences between 500-inch and Mountain Motor Pro Stocks. The NHRA TV crew routinely go to John for explanatory pieces because he maintains his wonderful delivery and exuberant optimism any time the camera is aimed at him. This time, however, he was hiding the fear his racing dreams may be permanently dismantled.
Immediately, John began forming a plan to make everything work. Kaase had already stopped by the pits to find out what happened and John explained the 830-incher was a cinder and John had no money to pay to fix it. Kaase told John to worry about that later and just get it to Kaase’ s engine shop in Atlanta right away. Since John had to be back at work on Monday and was 730 miles from home, he enlisted Graber, who had driven his pickup truck to the race from Cincinnati, to haul the destroyed engine straight to Kaase’ s shop. The team pulled the engine, dropped it into Graber’ s truck and he headed 267 miles southwest down I-85. Meanwhile John and the crew tore the car down and loaded the rolling chassis into the 34-feet trailer and disassembled their pit area. With daughter Ashley now raising her own family, John is the sole driver for the motorhome and, with very little sleep and a day of thrashing, he jumped into the rig with navigator Liann and their ever-present four dogs to start the fourteen-hour drive for home in Arnold, Missouri, only a few miles from JHRC. Thus began 2025 for John DeFlorian’ s“ real life”.
Since Jerry Haas has always been John’ s biggest cheerleader, John arrived home midday on Monday and wasn’ t required to come into work until Tuesday. He was quickly informed the engine need pretty much everything replaced below the manifold. Kaase immediately expedited the repairs on DeFlorian’ s engine and, due to the heavy workload at his business, Jon Kaase did the repairs himself so he didn’ t need to take his employees off of customers’ projects. Twenty-three days later, Kaase called to tell John the engine was repaired. With Jerry’ s blessing, John took the next day off to use his own pickup truck to go pick up the rebuilt engine in at Atlanta. John left straight from work at JHRC after he finished his shift so he could be in the parking lot at Kaase’ s shop when his employees arrived in the morning. He had the engine loaded into his truck and DeFlorian turned right around and made the eight-hour drive back to St. Louis, arriving home at 8 PM.
The next day, John worked a full ten-hour shift at JHRC and then returned home for a quick dinner before beginning to put the repaired engine back in the car in his own shop at his house. It is standard procedure for DeFlorian to load and unload, repair, clean, rewire, install transmissions and do everything else … alone. Over the next two days during the weekend, John finished installing the engine, caught a quick nap, woke up and immediately began rebuilding the transmission,
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