Blake Housley and crew will surely be among the emotional favorites this weekend (July 2-3), at Heartland Park Topeka as they return to ADRL Pro Nitrous action from a two-month layoff following the death of team co-owner Mike Walker.

In a freak pit-side accident, Walker was struck and killed by an errant nitrous bottle during the ADRL event in April at South Georgia Motorsports Park, near Valdosta.

“We sat down as a family and talked it over and said we wouldn’t come back until we had regained confidence,” said Housley, who dates Walker’s daughter, Sara, and continues to own the team with her stepmother, Melanie.

Blake Housley and crew will surely be among the emotional favorites this weekend (July 2-3), at Heartland Park Topeka as they return to ADRL Pro Nitrous action from a two-month layoff following the death of team co-owner Mike Walker.

In a freak pit-side accident, Walker was struck and killed by an errant nitrous bottle during the ADRL event in April at South Georgia Motorsports Park, near Valdosta.

“We sat down as a family and talked it over and said we wouldn’t come back until we had regained confidence,” said Housley, who dates Walker’s daughter, Sara, and continues to own the team with her stepmother, Melanie.

“It’s still going to be tough, we know that. Mel and Sara are obviously still dealing with things and I was so used to having Mike up there and everything he did and it’s just so much different now.”

Like the true racers they are, however, Housley and the Walkers made good use of their down time to lighten up their ’41 Willys and get it tweaked and tuned by chassis man Tommy Mauney and engine builder Gene Fulton.

“I can’t say enough about those guys; they helped out tremendously,” Housley said. His father, Terry, a two-time ADRL event winner and driver of the Ballance Racing ’53 Corvette Pro Nitrous entry, also will be assisting in the car’s trackside preparation, as will Delon Joseph, a longtime nitrous racer from the Kansas City area.

“Earlier in the year, even before the accident in Valdosta, we were coming to the races unprepared,” Housley said. “But now, we’ve done some testing, been to the track three times, got rained out twice, but we finally got to make a couple of runs last Saturday (June 26), where we saw some good incremental times. We’re very excited.”

Among those times on a 145-plus degrees track at Kansas City International Raceway were back-to-back 2.69 and 2.70 passes to the 330-foot marker “on only one, small nitrous system,” said Housley, even though he kept the eighth-mile times to himself.

“We proved we can get down a hot race track, so some heat in Topeka wouldn’t bother us. We made four runs and the car didn’t shake, so we think we’re in pretty good shape right now.”

He also said the team worked on getting a new routine established.

“That was really the main thing, finding a new normal for in-between-rounds maintenance and knowing who was going to do which jobs now,” he explained. “Mike, he was the one that lined me up and made sure that we armed everything and kind of helped me remember everything before a run and actually, Mel has taken that job over now.

“She had never done that before, but she did a great job at it during testing, getting me lined up straight. She’s taken over a whole lot, she really has, and I gave her the option of what she wanted to do and she’s taken on more than enough. I just can’t say enough about her.”

Housley admitted to a little trepidation in his teammates when making the necessary adjustments to and moving about the nitrous-oxide bottles that turned so deadly against them in Georgia, but he’s fabricated a containment device for the bottles while in their heater, “so something like that can never happen to us again.”

In fact, he invites all nitrous racers to visit his pit at Topeka or any other race to check out the device. “I just want everyone to be safe and anything I can do to help that happen is worth it.”

For now, though, Housley’s sight is firmly focused on doing well and helping his entire team regain their stride.  

“We’ve got everything we need to do it; we’ve just got to put it all together to get it done,” he stated. “We’re as prepared as we can be this time. Everything is coming together and I’ve got some confidence for once about what’s going to happen. I feel like we’re at least going to go down the race track and give ourselves a shot.”

There could be no more fitting tribute to Mike Walker’s memory.