Admit it. At one point or another, you’ve been at the race track and thought to yourself "Wouldn’t it be great to be a full time drag racer and make my living doing something I love?"

You’ve probably dreamed about driving a Top Fuel Dragster, Funny Car or Pro Stocker. And that’s natural because that’s what pops into most people’s minds when they think about being a professional drag racer.

But there is a small group of drivers out there who make their living on the dragstrip and they don’t race in any of those classes. Instead, they race among the Sportsman ranks, supporting themselves, their families and their racing operations with what they earn by racing nearly every weekend from the middle of February through November.

They are people like Dan Fletcher and David Rampy, two racers who both quit full-time jobs to devote themselves to drag racing. They are drivers who depend on going through elimination rounds and winning races to pay their way in the world. They spend nearly every weekend from the middle of February to the middle of November on the road, trying to go to as many races as they can. And unlike many sportsman racers, who combine their racing with a racing-related business, racers like Fletcher and Rampy earn their money on the track or from sponsors.

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Just in case you think the life of a full-time sportsman racer is an easy one, both Fletcher and Rampy will tell you to think again.

"If anyone thinks this is easy, let them try it," Fletcher said, adding that spending weeks on the road, driving from race to race, maintaining two race cars and doing everything at the track by himself can be very tiring as the season wears on. During the 2003 season, for example, rainouts and rescheduled race weekends took away nearly all of Fletcher’s off weekends and put him at the racetrack more than 25 weekends in a row.

"There are so many people who think this is a glamorous deal," said Rampy, a Piedmont, Ala.-based racer who has made his living in the Sportsman ranks since 1991. And though he has no plans to stop racing, Rampy says his occupation does have its downside.

"The hardest part is being away from home all the time and away from the family," he explained.

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Like most sportsman racers, both Fletcher and Rampy spent several years working during the week and racing on weekends. But somewhere along the way, both made the decision to quit their jobs and devote their days solely to drag racing.

For Rampy, the choice came after the 1990 racing season, when he realized that he could not continue to have a job and race at the same time. "Things were going really well but we were going to so many races that something had to give," said Rampy, who lives in Piedmont, Alabama. "I had to either quit my job or slow down on racing and I wasn’t going to slow down on racing, so 1991 was the first season I was not working a job and racing."

Fletcher made the move for much the same reason, but the Churchville, New York resident was also eager to get away from his job at Xerox in nearby Rochester.

"I had a boss at Xerox who was making my life miserable," Fletcher said, adding that the success he was having on the race track made turning professional a viable option.

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Though both Fletcher and Rampy have been helped by sponsors over the past few seasons – Fletcher by Summit Racing Equipment and Rampy by Winnebago – neither driver had a sponsor when they left their jobs to go racing.

"I didn’t have a sponsor but I had a wife, two sons and a brand new daughter," Fletcher said.

Both Rampy and Fletcher double their chances of winning by racing in two different classes on any race weekend. Fletcher has twin 1969 Chevy Camaros that he races in the Super Stock and Stock Eliminator divisions while Rampy has a 1932 Bantam Roadster that he races in Competition Eliminator and a 1967 Camaro that he uses to race in Stock Eliminator.

Fletcher and Rampy say that their racing lives would be easier if they did not have to worry about NHRA division races and the points they need to earn there. In the NHRA Sportsman classes, racers earn points toward the national championship at both national events and divisional races. For all but Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Alcohol Funny Car, each racer’s points are based on three national events and five divisional events. Each driver is eligible to earn points at up to eight divisional and six national events. Each driver must compete for points in at least three races in his or her home division.

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"The thing that wrecks it is going after division points races," Fletcher said. "They put you in situations that you really don’t want to be in," he said, including having to skip national events and their larger purses to go to division races.

Rampy agreed, saying "If you’re in the points race, you end up giving up national events to go after points." Giving up those national events can be costly. For example, winning at an NHRA national event can pay between $18,000 and $19,000, depending on contingency sponsorships, according to Fletcher, with a runner-up finish paying about $9,000. IHRA national events pay about $12,000 to win. In contrast, NHRA division points races pay about $3,000 to the winner.

If the divisional points races are such a problem, it might seem better for drivers like Rampy and Fletcher to just forget about the points race and race for the money. But in addition to the prestige of being champion, there’s another reason: grade points. In order to enter a national event, drivers must have earned a specific number of grade points that season or the season before. Drivers get one grade point for each division race they enter.

But win a division championship and drivers no longer need to worry about grade points for the rest of their careers because past champions can enter any national event even if they don’t have enough grade points.

"I have championships in Comp Eliminator, Super Comp and Super Gas," Rampy said, "So I can get into national events (in those classes) without grade points." Similarly, Fletcher’s 2002 Super Stock championship means he’ll never have to worry about grade points again for that division.

In addition to divisional points, NHRA’s policy of dropping one sportsman class, on a rotating basis, from all national events has created trouble for the two racers.

"That has made a major problem for us," Rampy said. "Now you also have to work your schedule around that kind of stuff." During the 2004 season, Rampy borrowed a Super Stock race car for national events that would not include either Comp or Stock Eliminator.

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Fletcher worked around the policy by racing his Super Stock 1969 Camaro in the Super Gas division and entering his Stock Eliminator 1969 Camaro in either the Stock or Super Stock divisions.

That, said Fletcher, helped kill the success and momentum he built in the 2004 season when he went to consecutive Super Stock final rounds at Gainesville and Las Vegas, with a win in Florida.

"I was doing well in Super Stock until I had to move the car into Super Gas and that was the end of it," Fletcher said.

The work doesn’t stop when the season ends. "My off-season job is tracking down the contingency money that companies owe me," Fletcher said, explaining that he usually spends the first few weeks after the season ends making phone calls and sending emails to collect contingency sponsorship money that he won but has not received.

Though both Fletcher and Rampy will talk about the difficulties of racing for a living, neither appears eager to return to the working world.

"If I found a good job with a six-figure salary, I’d think about it," Fletcher said.

As for Rampy, he says he has no plans to make any changes in his life. "It’s great not to have to get up and go to a job that you don’t like," he said.