believing it was real.
No wife. No kids. None of what my life looks like now. Just a 22-year-old with a magazine that didn’ t exist a year earlier, and now did. We hadn’ t made any money. We were grinding side jobs and side hustles – I was painting trailers, taking any work I could find to keep the lights on. But that night, with that magazine in my hands, I knew. We did this. We launched this thing. It’ s real.
Twenty years later, that moment still hits.
� What are you most proud of when you think about your own involvement with DI? That we never sold our soul to make a buck. When we launched, every drag racing magazine in the space had an unwritten rule: if you bought an ad, you got a glowing review.“ Buy a spread and we’ ll tell everybody your part is the best one ever made.” That was just how it worked. And early on, that’ s where the money was. We left a lot of money on the table refusing to play that game. Our competitors made way more than we did for the first few years because they were happy to write whatever an advertiser wanted to read.
I knew if we stayed the course – if we maintained the heart and the soul and the editorial integrity of what we were trying to build – it would pay off in the long run. And it did. Drag
IllustrateD became known as the independent voice of this sport because we earned it. We weren’ t bound by any sanction, any series, any manufacturer, any brand. If a story needed to be told, we told it. If a topic needed to be tackled, we tackled it.
The other thing – and I’ ll never get tired of saying this – is that out of nearly 200 issues, almost every single one has a human face on the cover. Not a car. A person. That was the original vision and we never let go of it. Rolling Stone doesn’ t put guitars on the cover. Sports Illustrated doesn’ t put basketballs on the cover. They put the people on the cover. That’ s what DI has done from Issue 1. We put faces to the names on the windows.
� What are you most proud of when it comes to DI’ s involvement in the sport?
That we’ ve made a whole lot of racers feel seen.
Drag racing will chew you up and spit you out. It’ s hero to zero. You’ re only as good as your last pass. Most of the people in this sport – and I mean most – are spending their hardearned money to go race, and they’ ll never make a dime back. They’ ll never have stacks of Happy Gilmore checks. They do it because they love it. And in a sport that demanding, a sport that expensive, a little bit of validation can mean everything.
Quick story. My dad used to keep every copy of National Dragster under the counter at his shop. Every time he’ d buy a classified ad – a few hundred bucks for a tiny photo of one of his cars in the back of the magazine – he’ d be so proud to show it to customers. And in the late‘ 90s, when National Dragster did an actual story on him and a buddy trying to run NHRA Pro Stock, he framed that article and hung it on the wall of the shop. It meant everything to him.
That’ s why DI exists. To give the racers who’ ll never make TV the same feeling my dad had when his car showed up in that magazine. To celebrate the Pro Mod guys, the no-prep guys, the small-tire guys, the bracket racers, the grassroots heroes – all the people whose stories were getting ignored. To put faces to the names on the windows. To treat the men and women of this sport like the rock stars they are.
Wally Parks built the NHRA on the slogan“ the cars are the stars.” With all due respect, I’ ve never agreed with that. The stars are the men and women behind the wheel. The crew chiefs in the pits. The car builders in the shop. The doit-yourselfers, the high-speed problem solvers, the people pouring their lives into this thing.
For 20 years, Drag IllustrateD has been built on that belief. Two hundred issues in, we’ re just getting started.
� CARPENTER
MIKE CARPENTER
Chief Operating Officer Design & Production Director
� How and when did you join DI?
I officially met Wes in San Antonio at the Amalie Oil Texas Nationals, the first IHRA national event of the 2007 season. My dad and I were there running Pro Mod, and Wes was a year or so into publishing the magazine. I had talked to him on the phone when he called my dad’ s auto repair shop to interview him for a story, and we were both active on the Pro Mod message boards back in the day. We ran into each other in the tower and he and I cruised around on his golf cart for most of the day, and he laid out his entire grand plan for the mag-
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