Former Employees of Knoll Gas/Torco Race Fuels Return With Competition Race Fuels …

All Bill Card and his business associates want is a fair chance.

Card is one of a half-dozen former Knoll Gas/Torco Race Fuels employees
hoping to resurrect a familiar brand albeit under the new name
Competition Race Fuels, Inc.

He feels the hard-working employees were the victims of what he felt
was damage perpetrated by top level employees of the former Knoll
Gas/Torco Race Fuels regime.

Card and his constituents are in the early stages of what promises to
be a monumental challenge in rebuilding a positive business from bitter
ashes.

By the time the New Year’s Eve chimes reached 12, Clay Millican
finished breathing his sigh of relief.  Year 2008 was officially history.  Bring on 2009!

Millican, a fan favorite Top Fuel driver from Drummonds, Tenn., now has
a firm grip on what his drag racing future holds – competing in all 24
of NHRA Full Throttle series races.  It’s comforting because 12 months
ago he had no insight on what ’08 held.

“We are excited this year because (team owners) Mark and Lauren Pickens
said we would be running all of the races,” said a happy Millican. 
“That certainly was very comforting to know going into this New Year. 
All we had last year was craziness . . . like being told we weren’t
going to run.”

K&N Engineering has announced a primary sponsorship agreement with
three-time national champion Dan Fletcher. A 56-time national event
winner who is ranked in the top 10 on NHRA's all-time win list,
Fletcher will compete in Comp, Super Stock, and Stock during the 2009
NHRA season.

"We are extremely pleased to add Dan Fletcher to the K&N family,"
said Steve Williams, vice president of PE & RD at K&N
Engineering. "Dan is a proven winner whose record speaks for itself.
His outgoing personality has also made him one of drag racing's most
recognizable Sportsman drivers, and we believe he is a perfect
representative for our company."

Following last week’s announcement by Roger Burgess, owner of R2B2
Racing, that he was temporarily suspending racing operations, Burgess
announced today that Frank Hawley will become General Manager of R2B2
Racing.  

Hawley, who drove selected races for Burgess in 2008 as a Teammate of
Melanie Troxel is well known in NHRA Drag Racing having won two NHRA
World Championships in Funny Car and numerous National titles in Top
Fuel in addition to being the owner and operator of Frank Hawley’s Drag
racing School.

Mike Chrisman, the son of legendary drag racing pioneer Art Chrisman, has entered into an agreement that will find him

John Rodeck & Mike Chrisman (Henry Walther Photo)

behind
the wheel of a nostalgia front engine Top Fuel Dragster for the 2009
season. Ironically Mike’s competition debut will come at the historic
March Meet in Bakersfield, California exactly 50 years after his father
won the inaugural US Fuel & Gas Championships (later to be known as
the March Meet) at the same Famoso Drag Strip in 1959.

For the past 17 seasons Chrisman (who is known to his peers as ‘The
Bulldog’) has piloted a Junior Fuel Dragster that he campaigns with his
father. Racing in the ANDRA, GoodGuys/VRA, and NHRA Heritage series the
team has earned three season championships. He also holds the
unofficial low ET Saki Championship record that was set while racing in
Japan.

He was 25 when he reached motocross racing’s “retirement” age, but far removed from kicking back in an overstuffed chair.

Von Smith then doubled the number of wheels he used for racing and
slipped seamlessly into drag racing.  He began with muscle cars and
segued into a variety of racing categories – Top Sportsman, Alcohol
Funny Car and Pro Modified. 

Now, 20 years later – and without any knee surgeries that precipitated
his earlier decision to bid farewell to motocross racing – Smith and
Howard Moon, Al-Anabi Racing team crew chief and tuner, are preparing
for the 2009 National Guard American Drag Racing League (ADRL) season. 
The goal, of course, is to present team owner Sheik Khalid Bin Hamad Al
Thani of Doha, Qatar, with multiple race victories and, ultimately, the
championship trophy.

They are joined by rising star K.A. Balooshi of Dubai, who will be at
the controls of an Al-Anabi Racing Pro Mod Nitrous 1968 Chevrolet
Camaro.  

SPEED TV will televise four hours of the fourth annual Whelen Geoff
Bodine Bobsled Challenge from Mount Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid,
N.Y., beginning at noon, Jan. 18, and at 2 p.m., Jan. 25. Catch Jeg
Coughlin Jr.'s dominating opening day, Morgan Lucas' win in the NASCAR
versus NHRA portion of the program, J.R. Todd's race day surge, and Bob
Vandergriff Jr.'s painful-looking wreck that had the Top Fuel veteran
sliding more than half a mile down the course on his head.

Eliminations continue for the second annual CompetitionPlus.com War Stories Showdown, a competition which places sixteen of drag racing's personalities head-to-head in storytelling competition. Over the next four days, you will be presented with the semi-final round stories of each respective contestants. They are paired on an NHRA eliminations ladder seeded by reader vote last week.

Today's competition features the No. 4 seeded Gary Scelzi squaring off with the No. 1 qualified John Force. The second match up will be the No. 10 ranked Pat Musi matching up with No. 3 Don Garlits.

Popular Funny Car Driver Takes Mike Aiello “Person of the Year” Award as well as Professional Driver of the Year …

Tim Wilkerson is living proof that one doesn’t have to be a champion, to be a champion.

The veteran Funny Car racer from Springfield, Ill., parlayed a strong
2008 championship runner-up into the first-ever double victory for the
tenth annual CompetitionPlus.com DOT COM Awards as voted on by the
readers of the popular Internet magazine.

Wilkerson not only claimed the Professional Driver of the Year award,
but also the prestigious Mike Aiello Person of the Year accolades. In
both categories Wilkerson scored just over 50% of the votes. A total of
10,055 votes were cast in this year’s competition.

NHRA President Tom Compton, left, congratulated NHRA Top Fuel champ Tony Schumacher, who won his second Jerry Titus award.

Tony
Schumacher, whose record-setting NHRA drag racing season was capped
with a fifth consecutive Top Fuel championship, was announced as winner
of the Jerry Titus Memorial Trophy at Saturday night's 39th annual
American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association All-America
Team ceremony, presented by A1GP World Cup of Motorsport.

In the closest margin in over a quarter-century, Schumacher edged
NASCAR Sprint Cup titlist Jimmie Johnson by one vote. Shirley Muldowney
received one vote more than Bobby Allison in 1982.