We interrupt this 500-inch Pro Stock driving career to bring you mountain motor racing.
 

That’s the proclamation that Matt Hartford heard late in the 2008
season. He’s heeded the call to drive the Dingman Motorsports, Wilson
Manifold mountain motor Pro Stocker.
 
Give Hartford 320 extra cubic inches and he’s a happy camper.
 
“Oh yeah, believe me this is fun,” Hartford said. “Eighth mile drag
racing is a driver’s game. Last night during qualifying I saw Robert
Patrick put a .001 on me on the tree.”

Eighteen Years A Top Fuel Racer and Still Shutout in Gainesville

One
would think in 18 years of trying that a decorated veteran such as
30-time winner Cory McClenathan could have gotten at least one victory
at the NHRA Gatornationals.

Thus far the traditional first event on the east coast event has been this Top Fuel Superman’s kryptonite.

He’s hoping the 40th running of the event will be the year he gets the
best of Gainesville Raceway, site of the traditionally jam-packed event.

"I'm excited to get to the Gatornationals," added McClenathan. "It is
an important race because I've always gone through my racing career
thinking I want to win one race at every single event we go to.
Gainesville's been one of those events that's kind of eluded me and I
want to make sure that I get to do that. So that’s one goal I'm really
working hard towards.”

For the last six years, the date of the JEGS NHRA Cajun SPORTSnationals has been circled on the calendars of sportsman drag racers across the country. One of three sportsman events backed by JEGS Mail Order, the Cajun SPORTSnationals annually attracts a field of more than 500 competitors to No Problem Raceway Park in Belle Rose, La.
         
The event continues a longstanding tradition of NHRA SPORTSnationals events, where competitors in the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series are the stars of the show. At the end of the action packed weekend, champions will be crowned in Competition Eliminator, Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, Super Gas, Super Street and the Sportsman Motorcycle class. The Belle Rose event also features open competition in Top Sportsman and Top Dragster, two relatively new classes that are becoming tremendously popular with racers and fans alike.

NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year contender Matt
Hagan will be sporting a new look headed into Gainesville. Gone is the
Brakesafe livery and replaced with his family's Shelor.com colors.

Hagan confirmed the change in sponsors but declined to provide any details.

"In these tough economic times, I think it's a good thing to support our family business," he added.

Shelor.com is a 24/7 web site, representing eight new-car franchises
and a used-car super store in Southwest Virginia. As one of the largest
automotive groups in the nation, it provides a huge selection with
big-volume discounts.

The switching of sponsorships is expected to make barely a ripple in the waters for the up-and-coming rookie driver.

Hagan's rookie season is already off to a good start with the
Virginia native has qualifying for each of the first two races and
winning his first round of pro Funny Car competition at the last event
in Phoenix. Standing No. 10 in the rankings, he's aiming to win even
more rounds this weekend, driving the Shelor.com Dodge Funny Car.

For Rodger Brogdon and the Steve Kent racing Pro Stock team, this
weekend’s NHRA AC Delco GatorNationals can’t come soon enough. After
the race in Phoenix, the team left with a checklist of items that
needed attention, but also with renewed enthusiasm knowing that they
were now headed down the right path.

With a considerable amount of on track testing being done in the last
two weeks, the team has been able to address the areas that needed
attention and were ready to head for Gainesville, when a Cagnazzi
Racing engine became available for both Gainesville and Houston.

Phoenix Drag Tires, the flagship brand of Coker Tire’s Performance
Division, will support the Outlaw Racing Street Car Association by
offering contingency prize money to those participants who win or
runner up using it’s highly successful drag tires in competition.

Performance division employee and fellow outlaw competitor, Eric
Gullett feels like this partnership is a natural fit for the growing
Phoenix product line.

The more things are different for Mike Bell and Roy Hill, the more they
are the same. 

The duo has returned to Pro Mod racing after taking a few seasons off.
They still bicker. They still fuss and they don’t always see eye to eye,
but they still have fun. 
 
“Some things never change,” Bell admitted. 
 
Bell and Hill, after taking a couple years off, will be making a run at
the 2009 National Guard ADRL Pro Extreme title with a combination
foreign to both of them. They have a new clutch program, new engine and
a new screw-type blower.

Not many girls growing up in the Winston-Salem, N.C., area were
attracted to fast motorcycles like Angie McBride.  She not only turned that fascination into reality more than a decade ago, she took her quickest two-wheel quarter-mile ride Monday.

It came during a test session in Cecil, Ga., but the 6.950-second
effort aboard the Nitro Fish Buell brought a satisfied smile and a big
boost of confidence as she prepared for the season’s first NHRA Pro
Stock Motorcycle race – the ACDelco Gatornationals at Gainesville
Raceway, Friday through Sunday.

“We had an awesome test session,” McBride said.  “We were the quickest
bike of the day.  We also had runs of 6.99 and 7.02 so I was very
pleased with what we did.”

Promoters George Howard and Steve Earwood weren’t ready to declare
North Carolina drag racing recession-proof Monday, but in the wake of
the success of their TCI Twin Tens event last weekend at Rockingham
Dragway they certainly were more optimistic about the 2009 season.

Clarkton’s Allen Britt and Lumberton’s Jerry Brewer walked away with
the biggest individual purses of the weekend as each claimed a $10,000
prize, Britt for winning the Pro race on Saturday and Brewer for doing
the same on Sunday.

What was most impressive to the promoters, though, was the field of 491 race cars representing eight states.

“We felt like our racers would support us, but we were still surprised
by the turnout,” Earwood said.  “Those are pre-recession numbers which
we think shows that even in hard times, people need entertainment and
they need diversions.”

Jim Deist, who created some of the first commercially available
parachutes for use in drag racing and founded Deist Safety in 1958 to
continue that work in other lines of driver safety, died March 9. He
was 80.

Deist learned the parachute-manufacturing business while working at
Irving Air Chute in the late 1940s, and his passion for drag racing led
him to combine the two. With the encouragement of early parachute
customer Mickey Thompson, he founded Deist Safety and soon added custom
seat belts and, in 1961, his first firesuit. Deist also expanded beyond
the dragstrip to include land-speed-record cars.