JOHN DEFLORIAN | PART 2
clutch and rearend … alone. He finished all of it on Sunday night and went to bed. After spending Memorial Day at home with family, John and Liann jumped into the restocked motorhome at 8 AM the next morning for the 1,247-mile, eighteen-hour drive to the next MMPS event at Epping, New Hampshire. Only a few miles from home, the motorhome developed trouble and John limped to an RV repair shop to hopefully get it fixed. He was back on the road four hours later. After a thirty-five hour trip … driving alone … they pulled into the trailer stacking area at New England Dragway and got some sleep.
After the pit area was set up and the crew arrived, John’ s first qualifier was the quickest at every progressive point and his untested, resurrected Jon Kaase Chevy led the field. While cause for celebration, the car showed a problem on the computer’ s clutch graph. The Total Seal Camaro slowed drastically in the second session and John shut the car off. In the final session, the car slowed down again. The atmospheric conditions improved greatly for the first round of eliminations but the car was still not performing correctly; opponent Vince Nobile won on a holeshot when John followed Nobile’ s 0.013 RT by five hundredths of a second. While reinstalling the clutch after servicing, John heard a strange“ pop” and noticed the clutch“ hat”,( which holds the pressure plate), was cracked. Obviously, it had been weakened during the Charlotte engine explosion but chose its fourth run at Epping to fail.
With the NHRA Bristol race coming up the following weekend, John obviously chose to stay on the road between the two events. Heading back to St. Louis would only mean he would arrive home too late to turn around and drive nearly 600 miles to Bristol. Staying overnight in the Epping pits, DeFlorian called longtime friend and clutch wizard Pat Norcia at RAM Clutches who asked John to call him back in the morning. Twenty-four hours later, John and Liann were on the road for the 880-mile, traffic-filled drive to Bristol. He called Norcia who surprised John by telling him the new clutch was already being assembled. John was simultaneously relieved and troubled. He was already in debt to Kaase for a complete engine. How was he going to pay Norcia?
Crewman Jason Petzold was flying to Bristol from New York via Charlotte and offered to pick up the clutch at RAM’ s South Carolina factory and drive it to Bristol. When John arrived with the rig, the crew spent an entire day servicing the engine and then rebuilding the entire transmission,( checking for other fatigued pieces), before mating it with the new clutch. When qualifying finally began, DeFlorian was gratified when the car led the field. The second session was rained out,( almost expected at Bristol), and held the spot through Q3. In eliminations, John and his race car returned to their old form. He blasted through eliminations running Low E. T. and Top Speed of every round including while winning the final over Elijah Morton. After the race, De-
Florian found himself one round behind Johnny Pluchino in the point standings. However, the best part of winning was the $ 10,000 he was able to simply hand over to both Kaase and Norcia to begin paying them back for their services and devotion. After the winners’ circle photos, getting their first“ Wally” since Charlotte 2023 and receiving the congratulations of seemingly thousands of fans and racers, they loaded up and headed home with Liann answering the phone and responding to texts all the way.
No major repairs were needed at John’ s home shop and, two weeks and a brief ten-hour haul later, they found themselves at Summit Motorsports Park for the first NHRA MMPS race ever held at Norwalk, Ohio. Incredibly, the teams were met with nearly identical conditions to
Bristol weather. Self and John quickly agreed to run the same combination as the previous race. It worked; John took the pole in the first qualifying session. The next two sessions included“ minor irritations” when an air line blew off in fifth gear and the engine spit off a vacuum pulley. John slipped to second qualifier.
On Sunday, it was a perfect race day. For the second straight race, DeFlorian ran the quickest and fastest passes of every round and won the final over Pluchino. Although his reaction times were still slower than expected, John was once again in the winners’ circle and, once again, was just elated to be able to hand Kaase another $ 10,000 payment on his Hemi Chevy powerplant which was undefeated for almost a month. Equally important, however, was the fact John now found himself in the lead for the NHRA
THOUGH DEFLORIAN’ S PDRA EXTREME PRO STOCK APPEARANCES HAVE BEEN ON A PART-TIME BASIS, HE’ S ALWAYS A CONTENDER WHEN HE DOES ARRIVE ON THE EIGHTH-MILE SCENE.
JHG MMPS World Championship … albeit by a mere two points … over Pluchino.
As stated, John won the first two NHRA MMPS races ever held. Since that achievement, J. R. Carr, Bo Butner and Pluchino had all pulled off“ doubles”. It was not lost on John he had a chance to claim another“ first” at the next event but he knew not to spend any time thinking about it. He and“ Lump” were, after all, still in“ attack mode”.
The crew and the DeFlorian family were able to catch their breath in the six weeks before the next meet at one of the team’ s favorite facilities, Brainerd International Raceway in Minnesota, where the incredibly enthusiastic crowd seemed to love not only MMPS but John in particular. The Total Seal team had raced at all four editions of their series hosted since 2021 and had developed a following,( almost a“ fan club”), which had cheered them on each season. In the time off, John completely serviced the car from nose to tail and the car was fully prepared.
For the third straight race, DeFlorian qualified number one right out of the box. Weather forced the cancellation of one qualifying session; the“ supplemental program” categories are traditionally the first to be dropped in case of delays. However, in the final session, John improved but again was knocked to second by Kansan Brad Waddle. On race day, though, DeFlorian plowed to the final against Elite team driver Mike Coughlin, who redlighted by a solitary thousandth of a second to John’ s much quicker pass. Although his reaction times still weren’ t where he wanted them, nobody cared after the final round. After Coughlin shocked Pluchino
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