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It's Showtime!
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Nova aficionado William Brown is making his mark in Pro Street
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Story and photos by Brian Wood |
Over the course of the last 20 years or so, heads-up doorslammer competition has grown to become one of the most popular drag racing categories in the sport. From the IHRA's handicap-based Top Sportsman class of the 1980s sprang today's high-profile Pro Modified class, which features low six-second, 230-mph nitrous-injected and supercharged door cars dueling it out for drag strip dominance. The transition from the bracket-like Top Sportsman machines of the ‘80s to today's super quick Pro Mod hot rods certainly didn't happen overnight, however. There were lots of growing pains along the way, and lots of shooting in the dark to come up with a formula that worked. Those who follow Pro Mod today know that they still have never gotten it exactly right, but that's another story.
The subject of this particular tale was actually instrumental in getting a significant segment of Pro Modified off the ground long before he ever owned or raced a really fast car of his own. It was a way for him to be involved in the excitement generated by the first of the new generation of fast doorslammers, however, and it has lead to a number of bigger and better things ever since. William Brown was born the son of a Southern Baptist preacher, and when he was growing up he and his older brother spent most of their free time in church. Unfortunately, when William was 13 his dad suffered a heart attack and passed away at the age of 43. The two boys and their mother had lived in the parsonage of the rural Virginia church where his father preached, so after his death they had to start all over again from scratch, as he recalled: “Shortly after dad died we relocated to Danville, and pretty soon I was well on my way to becoming a real gearhead. There were several guys in my neighborhood who were really into cars and racing, and even though they were 10 or so years older than I was, they let me hang out with them. I mean, I was still riding a bicycle while these guys were driving hot rods on the street. In any case, my interest was definitely sparked, and I remember thinking that there couldn't be anything cooler than owning and driving a hot car.
“By the time I was 16 I had my first car, which was a 1969 Camaro,” Brown said. “I eventually cobbled together a big block engine for the car and started going to the local drag strip with it. To be honest, though, I really couldn't afford to race the thing, because I was just a kid, after all. I couldn't afford to buy the parts that I needed to be competitive, and had to depend on getting cast-off stuff from my friends.” “That's how I first got involved in the restoration parts business, actually,” Brown continued. “One of the guys that I hung around with at the time was James Scearce, and as a way to make a little cash to support our desire to race we started to buy used parts and sell them to local racers. We eventually accumulated a stockpile of junkers that we stripped for parts, and as the demand grew, we began to realize that we actually had the potential to make some money by selling parts on a larger scale. “We later started going to dealerships and buying outdated but new, unused parts that they were clearing out, which is called new old stock (NOS) in our business. Of course, there was a limited supply of this material, so eventually we took the money we made from selling this stuff at swap meets and so on and invested in the muscle car restoration business. We saw that we had to specialize in order to keep a handle on the inventory we would have to carry, so since James and I were both big Nova fans, we eventually sold off everything else and started J&W Nova Parts in 1984. At the time I was 19-years-old, and other than a two-week stint at McDonalds when I was in high school, this is the only job I've ever had.
“Anyway, we started going to the big swap meets around the country, as well as some of the Super Chevy events. We got to know a lot of the guys racing on the SC circuit, and eventually got involved with a group that laid some of the original groundwork for the Pro Modified class. Top Sportsman racers Charles carpenter, Jeff Littleton, Gordy Faust and Robbie Vandergriff, who all ran nitrous-injected combinations, put together a four-car match racing deal which turned out to be real popular in the late 1980s. Nitrous was a fairly new thing in drag racing then, and the fans really flocked to the track to see these guys run. “J&W Nova Parts sponsored Faust's Nova, and the other three guys got sponsors as well, and the four companies got together and funded the four drivers who ran as part of the Super Chevy racing program. Back then it was really a thrill for me to be around these cars, which ran in the 7.0s and were the hottest machines out there. I still wanted to race back then, of course, but I really didn't have the knowledge or resources to do it. I still wanted to be involved with it any way I could, so being a sponsor was the way to do it. As sponsors of Gordy's car as well as of the series, we got tons of press and television coverage, and made the four guys well-known drag racers, which also helped drive the popularity of Pro Mod a few years later.
We traveled all over the country with the four cars, and for two or three years we were the hottest ticket in town. The fans would go wild everywhere we went, and it was really something to see. Eventually, for various reasons, the deal slowly started to fade, and when Pro Modified became an IHRA class in 1990 it pretty well brought the program to an end. It was really something while it lasted, though, and I'm proud to say that we were in on the ground floor of pro Modified in our own way.” After that, William and James got into manufacturing some of their own restoration parts because a lot of the items they needed were getting impossible to find. “We saw the writing on the wall, and when we couldn't find anyone to make the parts for us we decided to do it ourselves,” said William. “With the help and advice of a few people we started making dies and acquiring some machinery to make rocker panel moldings and other trim pieces. “From 1991 to 1995 we concentrated on expanding our business, eventually relocated to larger facilities. During that time I built several high-profile street cars, but still was no closer to putting a race car of my own on the track. Finally, in 1996 the situation changed. I had a back-halved '67 Nova that I had been fooling around with – it had a small block and an automatic transmission, but I had already bought a Lenco and some other parts with a plan to someday make a Pro Street-style street car out of it. One day a customer of mine came in and told me he had a '67 of his own that he wanted to sell. It had a square-tube chassis, and he wanted something that was a little less of a race car and more of a Pro Street-style street car!
“To make a long story short, we ended up trading cars, and before long I had a tube-chassied car with a stock LS7 big block and a Lenco. I started racing locally with a bunch of old Super Stock guys who called themselves the Gear Jammers, and the car would usually run 6.0s in the eighth-mile. After a year or so I wanted to go faster, so I built a 572-inch motor and stepped up to running 5.40s.
“In 1998 they started running the Big Dog Shootout here in the South, and I saw that it got to be a pretty big deal in a short time, so I decided that that was the place to be. Of course, we needed to step up our program again in order to be competitive, so I bought a 698-inch motor, a new Lenco and a bunch of other stuff. I really wanted to put it all in a Nova with a Chrome Moly chassis, but when I couldn't find a roller for sale, I decided I'd have to put it in the car I had, although I knew it wouldn't be the best way to go. “I had even tried to buy the car that Jeff Littleton drove when we sponsored him, but the guy who owned it wasn't interested in selling. Unbelievably, just as I was ready to give up looking, I found out that a guy who lived a few doors down from Jeff in Alabama had just what I was looking for, and it was for sale. Before long, I had my own full-tube Nova, which had originally been built by Tommy Mauney as a Pro Mod car.
“I took the car to David Leavey at R&D Race Cars in Reidsville, North Carolina to have him help me get it ready to race. He had done a lot of work on my first car, and he had done such a good job that I knew he was the man for the project. Eventually, he started going to the track with us and helping out, and we've been working together ever since. He's an extremely talented and knowledgeable guy, and I have learned a ton of stuff from him over the years.”
The engine in William's beautiful Nova was originally built by Gene Fulton of Spartanburg, South Carolina. It's a 706-cubic-inch big block Chevy with a pair of split Dominator carbs and three stages of nitrous. According to Brown, it produces in the neighborhood of 2,000 horsepower. As noted, the chassis was originally built for Pro Mod by Tommy Mauney, who is also located in Spartanburg, by the way. The car is about 12 years old, and originally it was a real street-driven Nova. It still has the steel roof and quarter panels, with fiberglass nose, doors and deck lid. Brown has had the car for a little over six years, and it's been completely re-done and updated since he bought it. In fact, he says that there's nothing left from the way it was when he first acquired it except the paint job. Brown was anxious to get the car involved in a quicker class of racing, but he wisely took his time and made sure he was ready to make the move. “By 2000 I really had the urge to get into street legal racing, but I wasn't sure we were at the level we needed to be at to be competitive, so we continued to run closer to home while we honed our skills.
“In 2002 we went to our first NSCA event in Salem, Ohio, and believe it or not that was the first time I had ever raced in competition on a quarter-mile track,” he said. “Up until then, outside of a few exhibition passes, I had always raced eighth-mile. Since it was my first time out in the Pro Outlaw class, I had a lot to learn in a short time so we decided to go out on Friday night and make some test passes, something none of the other Pro Outlaw guys ever did, or so they said. Anyway, the first time out we ran something like 7.30, and really thought we sucked. A bunch of the other racers came over, though, and told us we did pretty well – that we could qualify with that and so on. “We made a few adjustments to the car and went back out, running in the 7.0s that time, and again the guys came around and told us how well we were doing. By the time qualifying was over, we were well into the field with a best pass of 6.89, and everybody had stopped talking to me! Lesson No. 1 learned. “The next race was in Stanton, Michigan, and since I had made quite a few changes on the car I decided to go out on Friday night again to do some testing. Imagine how surprised I was when I pulled into the staging lanes and saw all those guys who said they never ran on Friday night sitting there waiting to go. I really got a laugh out of that, believe me. Unfortunately we blew the motor up at that race, which was a bit of a setback, but we regrouped and came out and ran the majority of the 2003 season. “Last winter we re-thought our strategy and goals, and decided that we'd likely be better off in an all-nitrous class, so we decided to run in Pro Street in 2004,” said Brown. “Besides, the plain fact is that if you want to make a name for yourself in this type of racing, and attract the sponsorship money it takes to compete, you've got to beat the guys that everyone thinks are the top guns. There's not much doubt that Pat Musi and Marc Dantoni are the big names right now in the so-called street-legal ranks, so if you can take it to them out on the track you've accomplished something. As they say, to be the man you've got to beat the man, so that's what we're shooting at now.
Expanding on the subject, Brown continued by saying “those guys don't intimidate me – they're good racers, but I'm a good racer, too. I don't care what they're doing in the other lane because I'm concentrating on running my own race. So many guys get psyched out when they go up against a top driver, but you just can't afford to beat yourself that way. You just can't let these guys get in your head – as far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to worry about him beating me – heck, he needs to worry about me beating him. If you go up against someone who is considered the favorite to win, and you beat him, then look what you've done for yourself. To tell the truth, I'd just as soon race the big name guys all the time – it just makes me work harder. In the long run the only person you have to race is yourself.” With the 2004 season winding down, Brown and his team have more than held there own in the many battles they've had so far with the stars of the sport. With a steady showing through the first six NSCA events on the eight-race schedule, Brown and his team currently stand third overall in the year-end points championship run. Speaking of the team, Brown is quick to give praise where praise is due, especially to his wife Kelly. “There's no way I could do this without Kelly,” he said. “If she ever quit, all this stuff would be up for sale. She's such a huge part of this whole deal. She manages and runs our restoration parts business - she's a total hands-on person, taking care of all our business while I'm out trying to drum up this or that. “When it comes to our racing deal, she organizes everything, helps pack up the rig before we head out, gets all the groceries in and cooks the food while we're at the track. She knows where all the tools are in the trailer and helps David and I with the car. She can do everything I can do when it comes to maintaining the car. On top of that, she video tapes every run so we can analyze them later. Good help is tough to find these days, and I honestly believe it would take it would take three people to replace her on the crew. Like I said, if she quit I'd sell all this stuff in a heartbeat! “In fact, David, Kelly and I do everything at the track the majority of the time,” Brown continued. “We've had some walk-up help from time to time, but most of the time it's just us three. It's really tough to go racing like we do with a small crew, because there's so much to do, especially between rounds. In addition to the engine maintenance, chutes have to be packed, the clutch has to be zeroed, the nitrous bottles have to be changed, the computer graphs have to be analyzed and so on.
“Fortunately, we've had a guy named Jamie Kennedy helping us out the last couple of times we've gone out, and hopefully he'll become a regular member of the crew. He's enthusiastic and pretty knowledgeable, and I feel comfortable letting him work on the car without looking over his shoulder all the time, which is real important. Hopefully he can take some of the workload off me so I can concentrate more on my driving. “As for my future plans, well, in the short term I'd like to conquer Pro Street, because there's still a lot we have to learn. I can see where we're making progress because we're able to repeat what we're doing run after run, and that's a big part of the equation. If the money was there down the road, I'd like to look at going into Pro Modified. I'd love to drive a Pro Mod car, but, as I said, there would have to be some good money behind it, because that's getting to be an extremely expensive class to run. Right now, I'm racing at the level that I can afford and hopefully be competitive in. I fit in Pro Street right now, but who knows – sometime in the future I could step up, and if it happens I'll give it my best shot, because I truly care for the cars, the people and the sport.” |
