Veteran drag racing journalist Dave Wallace has witnessed some of drag racing’s finest moments over the course of his lengthy career, but his assignment on March 14, 1990 went beyond anything he’d seen before.

Wallace was on assignment for legendary drag racing publication Super Stock & Drag Illustrated to cover the first new professional drag racing trend since the Funny Cars of the late 1960s.

Wallace grew up on the west coast where dragsters were king, and anything with doors were intended as street vehicles and not drag racing icons.

Wallace, a near five-decade veteran of drag racing [he started young], admitted there was a lure to the southeastern phenomenon of quick and fast doorslammer racing.

“I had never really felt compelled to follow a circuit until the Pro Modifieds,” said Wallace, former Hot Rod Magazine staffer who later edited Petersen’s Drag Racing. “When I went to the first IHRA Pro Modified race in 1990, I felt like I was witnessing something special. That whole movement [Pro Modified] was spectacular.”

READ THE FUL ARTICLE