Billy Glidden’s Mickey Thompson-sponsored race car has no idea its sporting a true all-Ford combination for the first since Glidden started frequenting the ADRL series almost a year ago.

Neither does the car know the pressure its under to help its driver regain a championship lost opposite higher funded and equally championship-minded teams.

This is why Glidden has been burning the midnight oil to provide the car with the weapons necessary to return an Extreme 10.5 championship to Whiteland, Ind.

Jason Scruggs was powering down the track in his '68 Camaro on a monster run before his effort went up in flames during the second round

of qualifying for the Pro Extreme class in the ADRL Universal Tech Institute Dragpalooza VI at Houston Raceway Park.

As the crew worked to repair the race car, Scruggs took time to talk about reason for the fire and the damage done to the race car.

Mitchell Scruggs, father of Pro Extreme driver Jason Scruggs, grew up the son of a poor sharecropper in Tupelo Ms, in a house doctor's deemed too cold for a new baby. On the day he was born, 14 year old Elvis Pressley, living four miles down the road, was doing what ever teenagers did back in 1949.

Today, Scruggs builds the engines for his son's Pro Extreme Camaro while Elvis rests in eternity at Graceland.

Thirty seconds led to the longest five months of Jason Hamstra’s life.

Hamstra was crossing the finish line during the Speedtech Battle for the Belts competition last October when he lost control of his Camaro and drove head-first into the retaining wall at Texas Motorplex [Ennis, Tex.] before sliding to a stop in the shutdown area.

Hamstra was transported by helicopter to nearby Parkland Hospital, where doctors checked him and save for some bumps and bruises was given a clean bill of health.

The one area the doctor’s couldn’t check was the young driver’s psyche and the mental issues associated with a devastating high speed crash.

Joshua Hernandez of nearby Conroe, Texas, leads the Pro Extreme field at Houston Raceway Park (HRP) after three of four scheduled qualifying sessions for the American Drag Racing League’s (ADRL’s) season-opening Universal Technical Institute Dragpalooza VI presented by Safety-Kleen are in the books.

Also on top of their respective classes are Burton Auxier in Pro Nitrous, reigning Flowmaster Extreme 10.5 World Champion Spiro Pappas, Ashley Owens in Pro Extreme Motorcycle and Extreme Pro Stock racer Cary Goforth.

Hernandez steered his supercharged ’57 Chevy to a 3.68-seconds pass at 208.17 miles per hour in his second attempt on the HRP eighth mile. He can secure the official ADRL speed record for the class by running within one percent of his pole-sitting pass this weekend.

A field of more than 500 of the nation’s best sportsman drag racers has packed the pit area at No Problem Raceway Park in Belle Rose, La., for the opening day of the sixth annual JEGS NHRA Cajun SPORTSnationals. The first of three SPORTSnationals events backed by JEGS Mail Order, the No Problem event has long been a favorite of racers across North America.
           
Among the early qualifying leaders are former national champion Frank Aragona Jr., of Freehold, N.J. who is currently in the No. 1 spot in Comp eliminator and Art Leong of Richmond Hill, Ga., who is the top qualifier in Super Stock behind the wheel of his ’95 Dodge. Wade Owens of Cape Girardeau, Mo., topped a field of more than 100 Stock Eliminator drivers with his ’66 Chevelle.
           
Tom Elliott and John Benoit are the provisional leaders in Top Dragster and Top Sportsman, respectively. Elliott, of Brooks, Ky., drove his dragster to a 6.14 at over 226-mph for the No. 1 spot in Top Dragster while Benoit, of Montpelier, Vt. wheeled his ’68 Camaro to a 6.47 to lead all qualifiers in Top Sportsman. All 32-qualifiers in Top Dragster are in the six-second zone with Shane Vicknair of Laplace, La., holding down the final spot in the field with a run of 6.91-seconds.

ADRL Pro Extreme racer Hugh Scott gets all kind of messed up during second session qualifying on Friday at the ADRL Dragpalooza. Amazingly, he emerged from this run with little damage to his '41 Plymouth.

FULL PHOTO SEQUENCE

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.

They are drag racing’s version of Appalachia On Steroids.

Not many people would write those words in black marker on hunks of tape slapped on the front fenders of a race car, nor would they be likely to later paint that car a brilliant shade of construction-barrel orange and adorn it with Barney-the-dinosaur-purple flames. But not many people are Arthur Camp Stanley III.

Unless one of them is his son John, of course.

Amy and Ken Faulk have been selected by JEGS to serve as Grand Marshal/Honorary Starter for the 7th Annual JEGS NHRA Cajun SPORTSnationals. The event is March 19-21 at No Problem Raceway in Belle Rose, La.

Amy has always loved cars and grew up around her dad’s radiator and body shop.    She meet Ken in Memphis and the two were married in 1971.  In 1973 she began racing Ken’s Super Stock. Ken raced a little but really just preferred working on the cars, so Amy became the driver and Ken concentrated on building their motors and tuning the cars

In 1979 Amy won the Super Stock national championship and in 1980 was elected to the Car Craft Magazine All-Star team. Since the early ‘70s, she’s been heavily involved in the automotive aftermarket and has held management roles in the automotive industry with Racing Head Service/Competition Cams, TCI/Fel-Pro/Federal-Mogul and currently serves as the chief administrative officer of Hypertech.