This was quite the emotional roller-coaster ride – and one in the end that left Jason Harris smiling.

Harris overcame countless obstacles to ultimately claim a runner-up finish to Rickie Smith in the Pro Nitrous class at the Professional Drag Racers Association’s 2nd annual PDRA Spring Nationals at historic Rockingham Dragway April 12.

“I came into the weekend with a completely new car, basically,” Harris said. “I had some wiring and EFI glitches coming out of Texas and I just really couldn’t get my head around what the problem was. We came home (to Chapel Hill, N.C.) and stripped and rewired the whole car and then we decided before (Rockingham) we were going to change our engine combination. We had bad weather here the week before the race and we didn’t get to test.”

When Harris arrived for the event at Rockingham, his luck didn’t change.

“We still had the same glitch we had in Texas and we couldn’t find it,” Harris said. “We just pecked along until we changed enough stuff that we finally got it out of there. I only went 3.90 on the first run and the second run I had a glitch in the nitrous system, and the third run was in the heat of the day and I shook hard. I got down to the last (qualifying) run and we were all angry and my whole crew was yelling back and forth. We worked real hard and it was just frustrating. We are not really used to not qualifying. I kind of got in my mind if I qualified I felt like I was lucky because everything had gone wrong.”

Harris did sneak into the field in the No. 12 spot in the 16-car field with a 3.816-second run at 199.64 mph in his 1968 Firebird.

“It was not really where I wanted to qualify, but I was happy,” Harris said. “That was like winning the race getting to qualify. I was so relieved. If you don’t qualify it really puts a damper on your season, especially being the champion from last year.”

Facing uncertainty in eliminations, Harris stepped up and delivered consecutive wins over Pat Stoken, Mike Castellana and No. 1 qualifier Jay Cox. All of this with a new car and a new engine program with Sonny's Racing Engines. 

“We had a new motor, new car and we just got everything worked out and the first two rounds it still kind of had a little pop about mid-track,” Harris said. “It was popping and I was having reaction time problems and we basically tested throughout the race. If something wasn’t working, we changed a bunch of stuff. I got to the No. 1 (qualifier) Jay Cox and he is a local guy and he and I race together a lot and he’s really fast. We just thought it was the heat of the day and we just needed to get down the race track and he shook. That itself was like winning the race.”

Despite all or Harris’ issues, he still had a chance to win the event, but lost a on a holeshot to Smith on the eighth-mile track.

Smith clocked a 3.824-second pass at 199.61 mph and Harris had a 3.812-second effort at 199.05 mph. The difference was at the starting line as Smith had a .037 reaction time compared to Harris’ .062 light.

“Rickie is a heck of a driver and he got a holseshot on me, and I couldn’t make up the difference,” Harris said. “The weekend was definitely an emotional roller-coaster. My team works really hard and I have a lot of good people behind me and a lot of good sponsors and I hate to let anybody down. We struggled through the weekend, but we race hard. That is our thing. We will never give up. It ended up being a great weekend. It was a runner-up finish, but I felt like I won the race three times.”

With the crazy weekend behind him, Harris isn’t about to relax.

“We are going to go test,” Harris said. “We will go out two or three days hammering out all the problems and we will be ready for Shreveport (the Cajun Nationals, April 30-May 2).”
 

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