On July 5th, Rockingham Dragway will host the 5th Annual Freedom Fest
with a new series of festival-style events combining grassroots drag
racing with classic rock ‘n’ roll. Created by the producers of the hit
Speed series PINKS, 1320x is an all-day celebration of the American
muscle car and is presented by Ellerbe Telephone Communications and RBC
Bank.

Along with the heart- pounding excitement of heads-up, outlaw, and
bracket racing, the event will feature the Classic Gear Jammers circuit
and a car show— capped by a concert by popular local groups "Twisted
Motive" and “Zephyr’s End”.

“The American muscle car— Fords, Chevys and Mopars—represents freedom,
and it has propelled freedom around the world,” said Stephen Pullin,
executive producer and president of Pullin TV. “And, there is no better
place than Rockingham Dragway to celebrate these great cars and launch
the 1320x brand.”

In two weeks, every Funny Car and Top Fuel team in the NRHA will be
running on the recently introduced 2550 Goodyear racing tire. The 2550
replaces the 2420 which has been in use for over two years, but will no
longer be available starting in Denver.

Development of tires for the Funny Car and Top Fuel categories is a
challenging process. To quote a driver, “even two perfect runs are not
the same”.

“It's true,” Stu Grant, General Manger, Global Race Tires, said during
the Nationwide Series race at Michigan Int'l Speedway. “Development in
Top Fuel/Funny Car, that's a difficult process because a  pass in drag
racing is very difficult to duplicate. You have some many things going
on, the temperature of the racetrack, the nitro (mix) the humidity;
there are so many different factors that effect a pass so it's much
harder to compare a to b in Top Fuel/Dragster than it is to get a lap
on a NASCAR Sprint Cup car on one set of tires versus another; its a
little tougher environment.

XM Satellite Radio’s Power Shift, hosted by Joe Castello, pays tribute
to the history of the NHRA Powerade Drag Racing series with a special
“NHRA Legends” edition. Power Shift “NHRA Legends” will air Wednesday
night, July 2nd at 8 PM Eastern time on XM Sports Nation, XM channel
144. The show will feature in depth interviews with NHRA Drag Racing
legends Don “the Snake” Prudhomme, Shirley Muldowney, “Big Daddy” Don
Garlits and legendary NHRA broadcaster Dave McClelland. These NHRA
legends will discuss the history of the sport as seen over the course
of their careers in racing. Power Shift “NHRA Legends” will also
feature classic drag racing commercials first made famous by Steve
Evan’s “Be There”. Cameron Evans, son of the legendary NHRA broadcaster
will appear on behalf of his father. Power Shift “NHRA Legends” will
take any NHRA fan for a ride down memory lane.

Who is NHRA Pro Stock driver Dave Connolly hanging out with on
LifeLockRacing.com?

Check it out: click on LifeLock drivers to see Connolly and his LifeLock
Racing teammates, and then take advantage of LifeLock’s Connolly Countdown to 10
promotion.

Everyone enrolling in LifeLock’s proactive
identity theft protection program during the Countdown to 10 will automatically
receive a special promotion price, 30 days
free and an autographed Dave Connolly t-shirt. 
Go to LifeLock.com and click on Enroll Now and enter promotion
code NHRA, or visit cagnazziracing.com and click on the LifeLock icon.  The deadline for enrolling is September
1.

For the third time this season, Steve Harker and the OMS Graphics Top
Alcohol Funny Car Team made it to another national event final round
appearance and this time walked away with a runner-up finish at this
past weekends NHRA Summit Racing Equipment Nationals held in Norwalk,
OH.

After Qualifying in the number two position with a 5.66et, Steve Harker
faced off against the 15th qualifier Keeter Ray in the first round and
defeated Ray’s 5.74et with another blistering 5.66et at 254mph pass.

Harker looked set to face off against Marty Nothstein in round two
however Harker went into serve tire shake around the 330ft mark and
clicked it off early but lady luck was with the OMS Graphics Team as
Nothstein had left a red light at the starting line handing Harker the
win.

Before the Englishtown, N.J., NHRA SuperNationals two weekends ago, members of
the Rockstar Energy Drink Dodge Funny Car team made a random and emotional visit
to a New York City firehouse and found a drag-racing fan among the firefighters.

Tim Waterman, Clarence Huizenga, Michael and Angela Lance and Ashley
Yost (granddaughter of DSR crew chief Ed McCulloch) were enjoying the sights in
New York City before the Englishtown event.

"We were just walking around
the city," said Tim Waterman, whose responsibilities are the body and fuel on
the car that Jerry Toliver drives in the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series. "I'm
a volunteer firefighter at home, and Clarence used to do that. And we just
thought we'd visit some of the firehouses. And we stopped at Rescue One (at 43rd
St. between 10th and 11th Avenues) and we found out that one of the firefighters
there works with the folks at the Bristol and Las Vegas tracks every once in a
while on the NASCAR side. And he just welcomed us in and gave us a tour and
talked to us about the guys that they lost during 9/11 and asked if we could put
some stickers on the car and wear some hats in Englishtown.

Funny Car innovator Jim Head has few regrets in drag racing. One of
those few transpired last Sunday in Englishtown, N.J., when he elected
to race in Sunday’s final eliminations.

Against his better judgment, the outspoken Head was silent through his actions.

“By the grace of God, I was the number one qualifier at Englishtown,
which is an absolute positive deathtrap,” Head said. “Has been for
years and we’ve just been giving them a free pass because of [late
track owner] Vinny Napp, who is long gone. I had an opportunity [to
make a stand] because I don’t have a sponsor to please and I’m not in
the points. I could have said until there are major safety improvements
to 3500 foot race tracks with concrete at the end. I’m not running and
I will go to my grave regretting that I did not do that.”

Jack Beckman drives the new DSR-1 chassis design, the first in-house chassis from Don Schumacher Racing.

If
you don’t want to wait in line for a new chassis, you simply create
your own. Essentially this is why Don Schumacher Racing took the path
towards developing an in-house chassis based on the Murf McKinney Funny
Car chassis.

Two races into the roll out process, Jack Beckman is ready to give the
DSR-1 chassis a passing grade. Beckman tested the chassis in Martin,
Mich., before heading to the NHRA Supernationals in Englishtown, N.J.,
where he introduced the car to competition.

“We made four half-track passes and a few shorter runs to make sure
nothing fell off,” Beckman said of the initial test session. “Anytime
you put new pipe on even if it’s a carbon copy of the last car there
will be differences just in the stiffness of the new pipe. We like it.
It’s responsive; it’s responsive to the driver and so far it seems to
respond to the tuners changes. Now that being said there’s an infinite
amount of variables out on the race track and the only way they’re
going to find out what it wants is to make runs at different tracks in
different conditions.”

V. Gaines isn’t hard to notice in the Pro Stock pits lately. He’s the guy who looks as if he found his best friend.

That’s a somewhat accurate description, although the lost friend was
his crew chief Clyde West, who was away for nearly a month on medical
leave.

West suffered a ruptured colon in the days before the NHRA O’Reilly
Midwest Nationals at Gateway International Raceway across the river
from St. Louis, Mo. The determined tuner returned to action on a
limited basis in Chicago guiding Gaines to a solid semi-final finish.

“You can definitely tell he’s back,” Gaines said. “Tom Martino has been
absolutely marvelous in keeping our ship sailing. Clyde knows the team
and knows the operation and his influence has shown in the past two
weekends.”

 

Funny Car racer Tony Pedregon was a bit apprehensive about bringing an
unproven chassis into competition after destroying his trusted unit
during the final qualifying session at the NHRA Route 66 Nationals in
Chicago. He was likely wondering why he hadn’t made the switch sooner
when he crossed the finish line ahead of Robert Hight in the final
round of the NHRA Summit Racing Equipment Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio.

Pedregon drove to his second victory since pressing the new chassis into service.

“I think people are probably thinking that it’s the chassis and I’ve
always felt that a brand new chassis is much better than one that’s
been run all over it,” Pedregon said. “It’s been put through the
fatigue of the track and you think about the fatigue going down the
road. But I believe that we were one or two adjustments away from
having the same kind of performance with our old car but I think it was
just a coincidence but it just shows the new rules that we implemented
with this new compliant car. It drastically improves the safety and you
really don’t compromise any performance so from that perspective most
of the racers are happy about that.”

Pedregon was all smiles as he drove his way to a career 39th victory
and vaulted his Q-Power team into second place in the Funny Car point
standings behind Tim Wilkerson. Understandably the defending Funny Car
world champion has experienced easier winning weekends.