When the IHRA launched their mountain motor concept of Pro Stock during the 1977 Winter Nationals at Darlington, South Carolina, Harold Denton was not sold on the long-term success of the plan. Thirty years later, he said it was one of the things that helped propel his drag racing career.

Denton will be the first to admit that he never expected the format to catch on.
“I really didn’t,” Denton said. “It just seemed like a backyard kind of thing, like sandlot baseball. I never believed it would turn into what it is. It was a time for the country boys to shine.”

 Denton, now retired from driving, etched his name in the history books by winning that very first mountain motor Pro Stock event. Fourteen years later he would return to the same track to achieve another milestone, becoming the first-ever Pro Stock driver into the six-second zone while driving Jim Ruth’s Party Time Pontiac.

But for Denton, his eleven career final rounds began on that March day some three decades ago.

“I don’t think any one of us envisioned ourselves as making history that day,” Denton said. “It was just something new that was coming along and I felt our car was competitive enough, so we gave it a shot. If you had asked me what my odds were that day, I would have said 8-to-1.

“I saw the guys racing there, like Ronnie Sox and Roy Hill, and I knew they had much more money than I had to work with. I was on my own dime. Being smart enough to race was one thing, but having the money to do it with was another.

“I always think of that day when reminded of some advice that Kenny Bernstein gave me. He said, ‘Money won’t make you a winner, but you can’t win without money.”