2009 ADRL DRAGSTOCK - EVENT NOTEBOOK
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SATURDAY NOTEBOOK -IT'S ALL ABOUT THE STORYTELLING; EXPERIMENTING WITH GLIDDEN
WHAT IN THE HECK JUST HAPPENED? - The oddest thing happened in the Extreme Pro Stock final round in the ADRL Dragstock event 
at Rockingham Dragway. Two cars burned out, rolled to a stop. Then as they backed up, both cars swapped lanes as if their actions were choreographed.
And, they were.
Doug Kirk and Brian Gahm understand that drag racing purists might have opinions regarding their actions and that’s fine. They could care less.
On a run where points were as meaningless as who won the race, the veteran Pro Stock racers and longtime friends deemed putting on a show for the capacity crowd to be of greater importance.
“We wanted to do this in Houston, but we were afraid to try it with the series just getting started,” Kirk, the eventual champion pointed out. “After I got to the final round, I went over there and told Brian – ‘I aint touching nothing on my car. I told him it is what it is because I feel like I have already won tonight.
“That was the same tonight. He and I are like two brothers. We talk every day. We race together. We travel together. We vacation together. Everything we do, we do together. In front of all of these great people and the National Guard, we wanted to put on a show for them.”
Kirk and Gahm are adamant they wanted to pull off the stunt for a long time. Prior to the final round, they approached ADRL’s Competition Director Bubba Corzine about pulling off a lane swap following their burnouts.
Initially, Corzine didn’t go for the idea but when he took a few minutes to study the proposal he slowly warmed to the idea. The more he studied that the race had no championship implications and it was clear to the racers that winning was meaningless, he went along with the plan.
ADRL rules state that any car that crosses the centerline, during the burnout or on the run, they are disqualified. If both cars cross, the first car committing the infraction is disqualified.
Corzine chose to use a loophole in the rulebook that affords him to have the final decision to grant permission for the drivers to swap lanes following their burnouts.
“I felt that it wouldn’t hurt anything and gave them permission,” Corzine said. “We’re in show-business. I love drag racing and we have rules to be fair. But when it comes down to it, we are challenged to give the fans a show and that’s what we did.”
Gahm, the runner-up on record, said their antics were for the fans.
“It worked out great and I hope the fans enjoyed it,” said Gahm, smiling. “I was laughing while I was backing up and my guy came on the radio and yelled, ‘You’re out of the groove.”
“What did I care, it wasn’t my rubber anyway.”
WELCOME TO DRAG STRIP OWNERSHIP - Finding a way to pack masses of race fans into his Rockingham Dragway has always been a 
challenge for owner and operator Steve Earwood. Every year the ADRL’s Dragstock event rolls into town, he thinks back to his first year as owner of the track and wonders how in the world he reached this point.
Seeing full grandstands represents a milestone for Earwood and he shares the sentiment of the late IHRA founder Larry Carrier who once stated publicly that the most beautiful drag strip is a full one.
Earwood’s initial experiences with Rockingham Dragway were not beautiful.
Earwood was worn out just from the myriad of hoops he jumped through to get the financing to purchase the facility.
“Then boom … we had 32 days till the Winston Invitational,” Earwood explained. “It was 20 hour days and seven days a week leading up to it.
“We bought the track in February and had the Winston Invitational race 32 days later,” said Earwood, in between work duties. “[We] had no phones. [There were] no lights, [I had] no staff, no secretary, no nothing.”
Earwood quickly realized ignorance is bliss.
“There was just so much that I didn't know and that was a good thing,” Earwood said.
Earwood was a press and media specialist during his track management days at the Texas Motorplex and Atlanta Dragway. Many of the day-to-day tasks were delegated to specialists in those fields. When it came to the Rockingham experience, Earwood was in uncharted waters.
“These other tracks that were operated had sponsorships, press and publicity and I had ticketing people and they had bathroom people and they had security and parkers,” said Earwood with a smile. “Well here it is now that it's all mine. When I worked for Billy Meyer he took care of all that crap. In Atlanta, when I ran it, one of the wives of the owners took care of all the ticketing and all that stuff. I never really had to physically do everything.
“When you have an actual event, it's like running a small city. You have a fire department, you have security, you have parkers, you have bathroom people and it truly is like running a city. You're kind of like the city manager and if you haven't done that before it can be quite a challenge.”
That’s why if Earwood didn't have had Roy Hill as a partner at the time, he might have suffered considerably when it was discovered that counterfeiters had wreaked havoc on his ticket sales.
There’s law enforcement and then there’s Hill’s method of solving the issue.
“We had taken in $32,000 worth of counterfeit tickets in so we clamped down everywhere and starting asking where everyone bought a ticket from,” Earwood recalled. “ So we identified what the people looked like that they were buying the tickets from.
“Roy had some of his associates at the track start combing the parking lots and they found one guy selling these tickets. This was on Sunday, so we called the sheriff.”
The sheriff, Earwood said, fit the stereotype of the southern law enforcement official.
“Roy knew the process of what you do with a criminal from firsthand experience, so he had the guys drivers license and all that,” Earwood continued. “He hands it to the sheriff and says here's the clown who we found selling counterfeit tickets. The sheriff, who is a very good friend now, looks at the license and says, ‘is that a boy or is that a girl? The guy had long hair so obviously he was trying to say it wasn't a guy. He said, ‘Son I don't like getting out of bed early on a Sunday morning unless I'm going to church.”
The track officials confiscated the wads of cash the perp had stuffed in his pockets and refunded the money to the victims.
“There was another incident with another gentleman who wasn't near as cooperative,” Earwood said. “He and Roy got in the backseat of a Ford 500 that I had at the time and I drove around for a bit. Roy and he had a real heart to heart conversation about what he had done and to make sure that it wasn't done before. I dropped him off in the backwoods here back when we had a lot of woods here.”
Story has it that Roy wanted to find out where the rest of the associates were with the counterfeit tickets and he actually had a pair of pliers and clamped them down on the guy’s tongue and threatened to pull it out if he didn’t roll over on his associate.
“Before it was over, this guy had went and got counterfeit tickets to Disney World, Gatornationals and other major events,” Earwood added.
In the end, Earwood and his makeshift staff pulled out a successful event.
“I look back at it now and I'm thinking how did we pull that off,” Earwood said. “I mean I had limited parkers and I didn't know what the heck I was doing with ticketing. We got through it and it was just terrific. That first Winston Invitational was quite a challenge. It was probably best that I didn't know then what I know now.”
HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW? - Jason Hamstra believed running a Lenco transmission with a torque converter was something cool to do 
long before the Pro Extreme competition did. Saturday evening, during the ADRL Dragstock event, Hamstra provided an excellent case for why a Pro Modified style car can win without having a clutch-equipped transmission.
Hamstra defeated ADRL newcomer Ken Walsh to win his second career Pro Extreme national event title.
“We just tried to make consistent laps and the car is really fast,” Hamstra said of his clean sweep victory from the pole position. “It goes down the race track every time.”
That kind of consistency has worked well for Hamstra whose winning elapsed time varied no more than .02 from start to finish.
“I would think that people are going to be looking at our combination in the near future after as well as we ran this weekend,” Hamstra said. “You can’t ask for much more than we had tonight. I don’t hear as many naysayers anymore.”
DISTRACTIONS, NO PROBLEM - If you’re looking to beat Pro Nitrous front runner Mike Castellana and believe that distracting the 
Westbury, N.Y.-based veteran is the best plan, you might want to try something else. Amidst a weekend filled with distractions and a near crash on Friday at the ADRL Dragstock in Rockingham, N.C., Castellana not only won, but did so in grand fashion.
Castellana beat teammate Burton Auxier in the final round of a race where he made clean sweep of the competition beginning in qualifying.
What distractions?
Castellana qualified No. 1 even though his Camaro drifted dangerously close to the concrete retaining wall during the run. Castellana's 3.861 run would have been a world record if he could have backed it up in eliminations. He didn't.
As if that wasn’t enough, he was faced with the challenge of releasing one of the Al-Anabi/Awesome Motorsports crew chiefs on Friday evening, although that was not related to the aforementioned accident.
“You just take the situations as they come and remain focused on what you need to do,” Castellana said. “There are always distractions, but you always have to look past those if you want to be successful.”
The ability to block out the distraction and concentrate on the racing is according to Castellana on of his best attributes. It also helps to have two fo the three team cars in the final round.
“We were really in a win-win situation with two Al Anabi cars in the finals,” Castellana said. “We won, no matter which team turned the win light on.”
A CHANGE OF COURSE - For anyone who believes winning is easy for Extreme 10.5 racer Chuck Ulsch, he has some sound advice. 
Sometimes you can’t always believe what you see.
Ulsch entered eliminations at the ADRL Dragstock event as the No. 2 qualifier and worked his way past potent competition comprised of Todd Moyer, Spiro Pappas and Jeff Paulk before taking out the No. 1 qualifier Gary White and his potent in-line six Scion.
“It wasn’t as easy the second time,” said Ulsch, whose Rockingham victory marked his second since winning Richmond back in August. “It was a lot of work and I had the best crew working with me to make this happen. Everything came together and when I needed to drive well, I did a pretty good job.”
Ulsch used consistency as his greatest weapon by running 4.052, 4.015, 3.997 and a 4.028 in the final round.
Prior to the Richmond victory, Ulsch made it a point to mention that he was gunning for the three-second runs, first, and focusing on winning rounds second. His last points-earning race before the Speedtech Battle for the Belts produced a change of heart once he earned the first three-second XTF run in ADRL history.
“Make no mistake about it, I come here to win,” Ulsch said. “I want to win all of these races and if we set some records along the way, that’s just an added bonus.”
Ulsch believes his team has peaked at the right time.
“This didn’t happen overnight,” Ulsch explained. “We’ve been working towards this since last year. We knew that we would run good this year, it was just about having it all come together at the right time.”
KING OF THE HILL - Roy Hill and Rockingham Dragway go way back. So far back, Hill adds, that Plymouth Dusters, Chevrolet Vegas 
and Ford Pintos were the race cars of choice.
Back in the day conversations always make the Pro Stock icon smile.
He reels off the names of friends no longer with us.
“Ronnie Sox … Don Nicholson … they were my heroes back then and they are still to this day,” Hill said.
The first time Hill played on the Rockingham drag strip was 1972.
“I had just purchased an old Duster from Bobby Yowell,” Hill recalled.
Hill remembers vividly a Friday at the IHRA Rockingham event when Sox laid down a 9.51 elapsed time to take the pole.
“That was flying,” Hill said. “I had Sox & Martin go through my cylinder heads and we had just rebuilt the engines. Don Nicholson went out there and went an 9.51 as well. I was back in the middle of the pack to make my run.”
Hill smiles and swears, “I ran a 9.51 at 153 miles per hour.”
Was he legal?
“What brought that up?” Hill asked, and then laughed. “Sox and Martin did the heads. We rebuilt the short block. So, yes we were legal.
“I guess. I can’t remember exactly, I’ve had a couple of hard weeks.”
Then Hill takes on a serious tone.
“It was special just to be in the game with those guys,” Hill said. “I can’t remember how many rounds I went. But what I do remember is that I took that old Petty Mopar and ran with my heroes. That’s what I’ll carry with me to the grave.”
Hill won Rockingham a total of seven times in his near three decades of racing at the famed facility.
IT ALL BUFFED OUT - All is well in Kenny Doak’s world.
The Extreme 10.5 racer from Pipersville, Pa., returned to competition at Rockingham Dragway with a repaired race car and an overwhelming desire to showcase the car’s potential. It was a bit of unfinished business as Doak had qualified three weeks ago at the last ADRL event in Columbus, Ohio, only to have a shutdown accident render his car too damaged to race for the balance of the weekend.
Doak can thank chassis builder Gary Naughton for preparing the car for this weekend’s event.
“We had our work cut out for us that's for sure,” Doak said. “All new wheelie bars, chute pack, rebuilt the wheelie bar holder … had to put fresh tires on it, rebuilt the back of the car with the wing. All the front end damage and I did all the glass work.”
According to Naughton, the Chevelle returned from the body shop an hour before the scheduled Rockingham departure.
“I gotta thank Brian Petrie at Creative Customs, our body shop,” Naughton said. “He did a phenomenal job getting it back together for us.”
The team arrived at the race on Thursday and spent the spare time putting the finishing touches on the Chevrolet.
So how did the repaired racer do?
“We went right down the track just where we left off so we're hoping to throw a little more at it over the course of the weekend. It was quite the thrash.”
And because of that, all was fine in Naughton’s world.
Doak qualified 12th at Rockingham with a 4.301 elapsed time at 180.28 mph.
GLIDDEN EXPERIMENTS - Billy Glidden plans to experiment on Saturday at the ADRL Dragstock event in Rockingham, N.C. The 
defending Extreme 10.5 champion has bolted an experimental engine between the fenders of his Mickey Thompson Tires & Wheels-sponsored Pontiac GTO.
“We’ve spent a lot of time on the engine we are working with,” Glidden said Saturday morning as he made adjustments to the 440-inch power plant. “We are trying everything we possibly can to keep up with the cars that are really running fast.
“This is an experimental piece from Jim Kuntz. It’s a lot different.”
Glidden is also running the Glidden/Victor II cylinder heads on the experimental engine. The intake is a sheet metal intake by John Beck.
“It’s a totally different design,” Glidden added. “The dyno didn’t give us the naturally-aspirated results I’d like to see. But we are running nitrous oxide and it’s his [Kuntz] belief that it will run different. We figured this weekend would be a good time to figure that out.”
Glidden has the luxury of testing for the future this weekend since he’s clinched the top seed in the Battle for the Belts competition next month in Dallas, Texas.
“We have nothing to gain points wise from this event,” Glidden concluded.
COMINGS AND GOINGS - With another day of racing still to be run, the backside of Rickie
Smith’s eighteen wheeler leaving Rockingham Dragway told the story 
Saturday morning.
Smith, the legendary doorslammer driver from King, N.C., and crew chief
for the Al-Anabi/Awesome Motorsports, parted company with the operation
Friday evening.
Smith was already planned to part ways with the operation, just not this quickly.
“I told Shannon [Jenkins] and Mike [Castellana] that I planned to
fulfill my obligation until the end of the season,” said Smith, while
driving home. “I didn’t think there were any problems but I guess it
got back to the Sheik.”
Smith said he met with Sheik Khalid Bin Hamad Al Thani, along with
Jenkins and Castellana, at the track on Friday at the track. When the
meeting was over, Smith started packing to leave.
“They just kind of ended the deal then,” Smith explained. “I’m not mad
and I don’t have any hard feelings towards anyone. As far as I am
concerned, there are no hard feelings on my side. I just wanted to give
them a month’s advance notice.”
Shannon Jenkins, speaking on behalf of the Al-Anabi/Awesome Motorsports
team, confirmed there are no hard feelings towards Smith and the
parting of ways was nothing more than a difference of opinion.
“The Sheik Khalid and Rickie just didn’t see things eye to eye,”
Jenkins said. “Rickie felt it was time to move on and they agreed upon
that. It took place in the middle of a race, that’s about all I can
say.”
Reportedly, Smith’s replacement is Jeff Perley, most recently the co-crew chief for Allen Johnson’s NHRA Pro Stocker.
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FRIDAY NOTEBOOK – OF FIRES AND EDGE OF THE ENVELOPE RUNS
A RECORD AND A PUCKERED REAR – If Pro Nitrous racer Mike Castellana had been racing in another sanction, his Friday evening 
qualifying attempt would have been disqualified. Under the ADRL’s liberal rule system, not only was Castellana’s run legal, it was also a provisional ADRL world record.
Castellana rode the left lane outer boundary marker all the way to the finish line for a 3.861 elapsed time at 185.21 miles per hour. His run will go into Saturday as the provisional ADRL Pro Nitrous world record.
“It was a good run but the car kept drifting to the left,” said Castellana of the record run. “It got close to the wall and I stayed with it as long as I could. It got loose, but I knew I had to stay with it in order to make a good run in the late session.”
Castellana said his Camaro got loose just shy of the 660-foot mark, and the track felt slippery.
“I don’t know that I would have aborted the run had we have been racing quarter-mile,” added Castellana. “I just had to stay with it. I think the run aborted me before I had a chance.”
Castellana believes the run might have taken a turn for the worst had he not have stayed with it and finessed the car back into the groove.
“I knew I was close to the wall and figured it might get loose over there and it did,” Castellana said. “I saw the wall. It was close.”
BLOWED IT UP REAL GOOD – Pro Extreme racer Tommy D’Aprile didn’t exactly get off on the right foot during Friday’s qualifying. The
According to D’Aprile, his engine broke a piston and shot oil out of the top of the engine. The oil leak covered the windshield and put oil underneath the car. If not for a masterful driving job by D’Aprile, the car could have suffered serious damage.
Instead he emerged with a “stripe” courtesy of Rockingham Dragway’s right lane retaining wall.
“It broke a piston and shot oil out the top of the engine. It covered the windshield and caught the intake on fire. It put oil everywhere and the car was just skating so hard that I couldn’t stop steering it.
“I was just so glad that I didn’t destroy it,” D’Aprile said. “I did tag the wall a little bit. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I was fortunate.”
Despite the mechanical fracas, D’Aprile managed the second quickest lap of the first session with a 3.765 elapsed time at 200.08 miles per hour.
“The engine let go well before the 660 and it still ran as quick as it did,” D’Aprile said. “I think we still have a lot to play with.”
How scary was the fiery explosion for D’Aprile?
“Actually the last time somebody asked me that, it was the scariest thing I had experienced,” said D’Aprile. “This time I thought it was going [into the wall]. There was so much smoke that I thought it was going to crash badly because smoke was filling up the cockpit quickly. I felt fortunate that grazing the wall was all the happened.”
MORE CARNAGE – The ADRL doesn’t field any Funny Cars but their Pro Extreme division produced two fires that would have made the
The remnants of the engine block Frankie Taylor wounded on Friday event. The engine explosion engulfed the car in flames momentarily.“It broke a rod,” Taylor explained, as his crew thrashed in the background. “It caught on fire I guess and it cleaned up. I don't know just a bunch of work.”
Taylor, who is unqualified, plans to have the wounded racer repaired in time for Saturday’s final session.
D’Aprile has experienced an extremely flawed event to this point. He brought the repaired Mel Bush Motorsports Camaro to the starting line and half-way into the run exploded the engine and trailed a fireball.
This time, at the top of second gear, D’Aprile said the engine had the top of a fuel pump come off. The parts failure ignited the spewing fuel.
“I think whether or not we run tomorrow is up to the team owner and the crew,” D’Aprile said in a dejected tone. “Do you push it? I don’t know because we have a good running car. It’s just the little stuff that keeps biting us.”
GOFORTH CALLS ON EXPERIENCE – Dean Goforth has been on a performance roll as of late. The Extreme Pro Stock racer from Holdenville, Ok., found it appropriate to continue his momentum into the ADRL Dragstock in Rockingham, N.C.
“We got everything together and put a new engine in the car from Sonny Leonard,” Goforth said. “My team has done a real good job of getting everything hooked up and working right. I finally did a good job of driving.”
A good job of driving, as Goforth puts it, is to keep the car straight.
“That’s something I haven’t done in a while,” Goforth admitted. “Everything was perfect and it was just a good run.”
For the past few seasons, Goforth has competed under the IHRA sanction, racing a quarter-mile. On this pace-setting run, he admitted the lure of staying with the run through 1320 feet was very tempting.
“It was awfully hard to get out of it,” Goforth said. “I didn’t want to get out of it. It was a really good pass. I knew my guys would get me if I didn’t get out of it. It’s hard to quit when you feel like you are on a good pass.”
It was a good pass for Goforth, one so good he believes that it will survive Saturday’s final qualifying session.
“I don’t think the run will change and we did about as well as we could,” Goforth said. “Unless the weather changes drastically, I don’t see the number getting beat.”
CONTROVERSY – Bennie McDonald described his emotions following the first qualifying session as both happy and upset.
McDonald, a Pro Extreme racer from Locust Grove, Ga., was in the second pair of cars in the first qualifying session, when his Corvette ran a tenth quicker than his personal best. Unfortunately for him, his incredible .870 sixty-foot time, threw up a red flag to race officials who disqualified the run citing the car caused the timing system to malfunction.
The second quickest short time of the session was a .934.
“You feel like you’ve caught the winning pass in the football game only to have it snatched away,” McDonald said as he wrenched his engine in preparation for the second qualifying session.
“We had made a lot of changes to the car and it picked up nearly a tenth quicker than our best. I guess I will just have to go up there and run some more runs like that.”
McDonald’s disallowed eighth-mile run was a 3.779. Ironically, the second-quickest sixty-foot time also ran a 3.777.
Bubba Corzine, ADRL Competition Director, contends there is no way McDonald’s car could have run that quickly to the sixty-foot mark.
Corzine, who formerly worked as a technician for Compulink timing systems, said the malfunction at the sixty-foot would have tainted the run through to the eighth-mile.
“Occasionally you will get a car run a .920 and that’s about it,” Corzine said. “It’s physically impossible for a 2,700 pound car to go that quick. We know that.”
Corzine believes when he sees a run like the one McDonald pulled off, he almost immediately attributes the time to either a dragging blanket or clutch dust.
“What happens is when you get a quick sixty like that you get a slow reaction time,” Corzine said. “That means the beam was held open. If you see something under a .920, then something’s wrong.”
The explanation from Corzine is of little consolation to McDonald who said he’s had sixty-foot times just as quick at non-ADRL events.
“I had run a 2.64 to the 330,” McDonald said of the controversial run. “I know the way the car was set up and I know it run what it ran. It’s their ballgame and I have to play by their rules. I’m not one of the big dogs, so I look at it like one of the little guys.”
McDonald’s second run resulted in tire shake and an aborted run. His sixty-foot clocking was an .885. He also left before the tree was activated, yet received a reaction time.
The ADRL has offered to pull the car to the starting line Saturday morning in order to determine what the problem might be.
GET THE POINT? - Four points never meant so much to a driver.
For Fredericksburg, Va.-based Robert Patrick, those points determine whether the 2009 season will be deemed a success or failure. If Patrick can pick up four points on eighth-place ranked Cary Goforth, he will be one of eight drivers qualified to compete in the ADRL’s Speedtech Battle for the Belts competition.
If Patrick’s most recent events are an indicator of his momentum, then the competition had better watch out.
“We’ve had a good running car lately,” said Patrick, who is currently ranked tenth after the first session of qualifying at the ADRL Dragstock event in Rockingham, N.C. “We know the challenge we have before us and we are just going to go out there and do what we have to do.”
Patrick missed the combination on the first qualifying attempt but isn’t overly concerned with the slow start. The previous two races of the season began the same way but ended with the former mountain motor Pro Stock champion pushing his Purvis Ford-sponsored entry to the No. 1 qualifying effort in both.
“Clearly it’s been the little things out there that have bit us at the most inopportune times,” Patrick said. “That’s a part of drag racin g and if you don’t learn to accept it, then you’ll drive yourself crazy dwelling on it. If you want to be competitive in this class you have to learn that drag racing can be cyclical.”
Qualifying has been an important link in the chain for Patrick who boasts back-to-back semi-final finishes.
Patrick races eighth-mile this weekend but earlier in the season, he competed in quarter-mile, mountain motor competition at Rockingham Dragway and performed impressively en route to a semi-final finish.
“I grew up coming to Rockingham Dragway and this place has always been special to me,” Patrick said. “Getting into the Speedtech Battle for the Belts this weekend would be just another great memory from here.”
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