WES BUCK
Founder & Editorial Director
� How and when did you start DI?
Drag IllustrateD was conceptualized in the summer of 2005 over way too many pots of coffee at a Perkins in Des Moines, Iowa.
I was 21, about to turn 22, and I was the general manager of Eddyville Raceway Park – a small eighth-mile dragstrip just outside of Oskaloosa. I’ d grown up in this sport. My family poured every dollar, every weekend, every ounce of energy into drag racing for as long as I can remember. It wasn’ t a hobby. It was the center of our existence.
Running Eddyville gave me a perspective most 21-year-olds don’ t get. I was learning the business from every angle – promoting, prepping, paying bills, working with racers and sponsors – and I kept seeing the same problem. Most of the coolest stuff happening in drag racing was happening outside the major sanctions. NHRA had National Dragster. IHRA had Drag Review. There were a few independents, but they were all pigeonholed – Ford-only, street-legal-only, this category, that category. Pro Mod, Outlaw 10.5, drag radial – all of it was exploding across the country, and nobody was telling those stories.
Around that same time, I met a couple of guys with a print publishing background who’ d been showing up at my heads-up events with cameras, working on a documentary about eighth-mile drag racing. I figured if they had the publishing experience and I had the drag racing knowledge and relationships, maybe we could build something.
Their first idea was a Midwest drag racing newsletter – something direct-mailed to bracket racers. Every fiber of my being said no. I didn’ t want my racers relegated to newsletter status. I wanted them on the front page. I wanted them to be household names. So I said,“ Why don’ t we just start a drag racing magazine?” There was some pushback –“ Are we getting in over our heads?” – and I said,“ We don’ t have a choice but to swing for the fences.”
I wanted to build the Rolling Stone of drag racing. Treat racers like rock stars. Celebrate the men and women who make this sport what it is – not the cars, not the stat sheets.
We made the official announcement in October of 2005. We dropped Issue 1 in March of 2006 – Shannon“ the Iceman” Jenkins on the cover. I called him the James Dean of drag racing, and he is, to this day, my favorite drag racer of all time. We mailed 13,000 copies for free to a list
� BUCK
“ I WANTED TO BUILD THE ROLLING STONE OF DRAG RACING. TREAT RACERS LIKE ROCK STARS.”
we’ d pulled from racetracks across the Midwest. The thing was 100 % recycled newsprint, full color, saddle-stitched. We printed it during the Iowa City Press Citizen’ s downtime, in between newspaper runs. I charged the first print bill on my mom’ s credit card and scrambled to pay it off in time to print the next one.
That’ s how Drag IllustrateD started. A kid who didn’ t know any better, a couple of partners, a credit card that wasn’ t mine, and a belief that this sport deserved better.
� Do you have a favorite or most memorable issue? Two of them really hit different. The first was somewhere around DI 46 or 47 – the issue with the Titan Performance crew on the cover, Gary White and the guys. That was the first time we ran the magazine as a fullgloss, perfect-bound, world-class production. We’ d been on recycled newsprint up to that point. When that issue came back from the printer and I held it for the first time, it felt like Drag IllustrateD had finally arrived. On par with anything on the newsstand – Rolling Stone, GQ, Sports Illustrated. That was a moment I’ ll never forget.
The second was the fall of 2017 – Mike Bowman on the cover, the first winner of the World Series of Pro Mod. For the first 12 years, Drag
IllustrateD existed to tell everybody else’ s story. Their racers, their events, their sanctions. That issue was the first time we got to tell our own. We’ d built our own race. We’ d built our own platform. And we got to put our own winner on our own cover. That issue represented an evolution from outside-looking-in to inside-looking-around – and that’ s a perspective shift I’ m still proud of today.
� What’ s your favorite memory at DI? Holding the first issue. I was living in Kirksville, Missouri, at the time. I had to drive up to Des Moines to meet my partners at an Italian restaurant in Urbandale – a buddy of ours owned the place. They handed me the first copy of Drag IllustrateD and I just stood there flipping through it, ink all over my hands, having a hard time
134 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated. com Issue 200