Tragedy hits close to home for IHRA Nitro Funny Car racer …


Matt Hagan was laboring away in his Radford, Virginia shop, getting his nitro Funny Car ready for this weekend’s IHRA Spring Nationals in Rockingham, North Carolina. The freshman driver was meticulous in his preparation for the weekend of drag racing and even more so knowing this is only his second event behind the wheel of a nitro-burner. He is more focused than usual for those simple reasons.

Details mean the difference between winning and losing.

Then his concentration was broken by the radio. Instead of yelling for one of his co-workers to turn the volume down, he paused and listened.

The disc jockey presented a reminder April 16th was the one year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre. All of a sudden racing didn’t have his attention anymore.

“I used to party with some friends over there. I actually went to the college one exit down from there in Radford. Fortunately, I didn’t know any of the victims. It was a terrible situation any way you look at it.”

“It brought back a lot of memories,” said Hagan. “It’s tough, especially when you think of those people. You think about the incident and how it touched their lives. It’s a tragic thing you hope never happens again. As a community, everyone really pulled together. It was such a bad thing; it pulled the community together even more.”

Hagan was doing pretty much the same thing last year, as he was on this day, except he was preparing a race car for competition for the upcoming weekend, ironically also in Rockingham, NC. His work was interrupted by the sirens wailing from a convoy of ambulances and emergency vehicles, as well as Virginia State troopers, racing to the Virginia Tech campus, located just ten minutes from his race shop.

Hagan learned on that day how unimportant racing could become after he found out 32 victims lost their lives at the hand of a gunman.

Hagan had an indirect connection to victims.; having graduated from college just a year earlier.

“I used to party with some friends over there,” Hagan said. “I actually went to the college one exit down from there in Radford. Fortunately, I didn’t know any of the victims. It was a terrible situation any way you look at it.”

Hagan plans to honor the slain and wounded students by running one of the commemorative black ribbons with the Virginia Tech logo this coming weekend at Rockingham.

“You keep everyone in your thoughts, especially those families who had to go through this,” Hagan said. “It affected everyone differently around here. It brought some together and tore others apart. I hate that it happened and hate that it happened here. It could have easily happened somewhere else. All you can do is pray for them.”

Hagan wouldn’t mind winning; but not for his own self-edification. Rather he’d prefer winning as a positive alternative to such a negative situation.

“If we can touch someone out there by our efforts and ease their pain, that’s what matters the most,” Hagan said. “We’re out there to win and doing our best to represent the communities of Christianburg and Blacksburg and do the best for our area.

LEARNING CURVE – Forgive Hagan if he’s been spoiled by his early success. He earned the 2006 NHRA Pro Modified Rookie of the Year honors and chose to follow up the success with a vault into the Nitro Funny Car ranks.

He’s quickly learning the different between walking and crawling.

“I thought driving these cars would be easy, but there’s a huge learning curve,” Hagan said. “Just keeping up with the car and making sure I’m doing what I need to do is something that can be demanding. I don’t think it’s anything more laps won’t fix. Nothing replaces seat time in a nitro Funny Car.”

Hagan has been a testing junkie by blazing a trail between Rockingham, NC. and Valdosta, Ga. He parlayed the extra seat time into a qualifying berth during the season-opening IHRA Texas Nationals as well as a first round win.

In the end, Hagan has marketing motives.

“This has been a great experience because it is a step up to the next level,” Hagan admitted. “I just feel there are more sponsorship opportunities for me here. This style of racing will take me farther down the road I want to go.”