I wish I could share
with you the last correspondence Wally Parks emailed me. But, I
can’t.

Wally Parks always had
a way of sharing his heartfelt opinions and stating his case to the point you
understood where he was coming from.

Wally always headlined
these letters A PERSONAL RESPONSE and NOT FOR PUBLICATION. Please forgive me,
even with his passing – I cannot violate his wishes even though it would bring a
tear to your eye to read.

My Christian beliefs
won’t allow me to say that it was like getting a letter from God, but in the
drag racing world there was no one higher on that throne.

Wally was larger than
life in my eyes. However, in the instant I read his letter, I felt he was as
human as any of us. He was like a kid with a drive to be the best. A kid that
wanted to beat the odds to succeed – a lot like
myself.

In the days ahead dozens, if not hundreds,
of journalists and friends will pay tribute to the Founder of the National Hot
Rod Association, Wally Parks.  Each will be heartfelt remembrances of the man who literally
made drag racing into a major league
activity.  Some of
us will be writing with tears in our eyes. 
We’ll have to stop from
time to time to wipe them away before they fall onto our
keyboards.

Steve Earwood is more than a race promoter. He’s an artist. Some call him a professor.

Earwood says his art isn’t rocket science. It is basic fundamental promotions and public relations. His curriculum is Filling the Grandstands 101.

Earwood once handled the public relations duties for the National Hot Rod Association before embarking on a successful journey of track management and inevitably ownership. He’s held positions with Billy Meyer’s Texas Motorplex and was responsible for the revitalization of the “tired” Atlanta Dragway in 1987.

Earwood and now John Force Racing publicist Dave Densmore worked together on many projects and set the standards high for drag racing promotions.

Earwood now promotes Rockingham Dragway and has been successful over the years with this project.

We caught up with Earwood recently and asked him about the state of drag racing, its promotions and other key issues.

Drag racing has enjoyed some colorful personalities over the decades
but few can rival the aura of Don “the Snake” Prudhomme. A veteran of
the Top Fuel and Funny Car nitro wars, Prudhomme amassed a career four
world championships and 48 national event victories.

Prudhomme has logged 45 seasons in drag racing, 13 as a team owner. He raced for 32 seasons logging 389 round wins out of 589.

Prudhomme reached many milestones and broke several barriers in the
sport. He became the first driver to log four consecutive world
championships, won the NHRA U.S. Nationals seven times, was the first
to run 250 MPH in a Funny Car and that’s just a few of his
accomplishments in a paragraph full of notables.

With those kinds of credentials, one would think the Snake might have a story or two to tell.

Prudhomme joins the likes of John Force (and we’re still laughing at
his), Don Schumacher, Whit Bazemore, Scotty Cannon, Connie and Scott
Kalitta who have shared a few of their prized tales of the good old
days with Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com.

On a mild
evening in March of 1987, an unheralded Pro Stock racer lit up the scoreboard
in Darlington, South Carolina with a 202.24 mile per hour
blast to become the first doorslammer driver to break that once unbreakable
banner.

Fast forward
two decades later on a balmy Carolina
afternoon and an outlaw Pro Modified racer blasts out a 200.86 trap speed. He
followed up with a pair of 205.13 MPH gems. The difference between the two is
the 2007 version was done in half the distance.

Bill Kuhlmann
was the original Mr. 200 MPH and made a career off of that run.

Jason Scruggs
can only hope his trio of double-century laps can render the same result. After
all, even Bill Kuhlmann didn’t run three 200 MPH runs in that first day.

Scruggs, whose
father Mitchell Scruggs introduced him to the sport as a teenager, said
Kuhlmann will always have his place in drag racing’s history books. He said
he’s honored just to be listed in there, wherever he ends up at.

“Bill Kuhlmann
will always be Mr. 200 in my books, but this was nice to do considering it will
be one of the last doorslammer barriers for a while,” Scruggs, of Saltilla, Mississippi
said.

The car is familiar, with its distinctive black and yellow
paint scheme, but the name on the side, and the product that it represents, may
not be. That’s a situation that Jeff McGaffic, owner with wife Bonnie of the
J&B Motorsports Nitro Funny Car, and new sponsor, The MetalWood Bat
Company, aim to address at the Suzuki Motor City Nationals presented by GM
Performance Division and Heritage Newspapers at Michigan’s Milan Dragway.

For years motorsports and so-called stick-and-ball sports
have been in direct competition for fans, television time, and corporate
sponsors, but by forging this new association Bob Chalfant, CEO of The
MetalWood Bat Company, and McGaffic just might have taken the first steps
towards bridging that gap. For the last several seasons the drive to bring
non-traditional sponsors to the two-lane acceleration game has picked up a real
head of steam, and this latest endeavor will hopefully play out as a
successful, long-term relationship for the folks concerned.

There's been quite a bit of publicity, stories if you will, about folks
joining a drag race team for a day or longer as a guest or "honorary"
crew person.
   
Recently part-time IHRA Pro Stock and now Pro Street racer Art Hodges
made a young fan’s dream come true by announcing the Hodges Custom
Homes ‘Crewman for a Day’ promotion, as announced on Torco’s
CompetitionPlus.com.
   
The promotion was to see a fan spend time working on the Hodges Custom
Homes / Strange Engineering supported Dodge Stratus at the West Coast
Hot Rod Association Deeds Performance Summer Nationals presented by
Holders Air Conditioning and Heating.    
   
“We wanted to give a young fan the opportunity to see what running one
of these Pro cars is really like,” Hodges said. “This is not going to
be a stand back and watch scenario, we want the person to work with the
team in all facets of what we do and really make it an experience that
they will remember."
   
I'll bet they will. As will Harry Sistrunk, who worked earlier this
season with Don Schumacher Racing and penned a column "From the Road"
for the National Dragster.

There is added value to a
man's life when in his death he saves the lives of others.

Eric Medlen was lost to
the world of drag racing when he died at Gainesville
on March 19th, while making a routine test run. Since that time, John Force and
John Medlen, Eric's father, have worked tirelessly to put together the Eric
Medlin Project - meant to move drag racing to an entirely new level of safety.

Working alongside Force
and Medlen is another group determined to elevate the safety of any man or
woman who slides behind the wheel in any form of motorsports - Ford.

Building on the wealth of
information gathered from years of being a leader in driving safety initiatives
in open-wheel racing, where Ford Racing engineers partnered with Ford's safety
lab, Ford Racing has started applying much of the same technology and expertise
in to the sport of NHRA Drag Racing.

Anytime a
rookie gets in over their head, you only have to look to Gary Scelzi to know
just how bad the situation could have been. Focus on Scelzi’s facial expression
when the unfortunate situation inevitably transpires.

Do that
sometime and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what he thinks of today’s current
licensing process for a nitro racer. Scelzi minces no words when he says it needs revamping.

How badly is
he bothered? So much so that the four-time champion has pondered starting a
drag racing school or a driver tutoring service.

Scelzi just
doesn’t want them to get hurt. Most of all, he doesn’t want to get hurt
himself.

Let’s look at
Scelzi’s credentials to determine if he is qualified to challenge the current
process. He’s got three Top Fuel championships, one in Funny Car and has 41
victories in 68 career final rounds. He’s won in four different categories, two
of which were sportsman divisions. 

But does he
really want to start up a school after all the talk of a sabbatical? If it
saves a life or prevents an injury, he says he might.

“It’s not a
bad idea, but the problem is that it would take a lot of time,” Scelzi said. “I
guarantee you that I could help a lot of people. What’s going on is this
evolution of putting young rookie drivers out on the track and setting them up
for failure.”

Scelzi said
nothing prepares a driver more than time and experience, especially the latter.

When we stop and think
about our lives, even for a moment or two, numbers tend to dominate our
thoughts.  Oh, maybe not consciously, but
they’re there nevertheless.  Things like,
how many years ago we graduated from high school, how old the kids are, how long
we’ve been drag racing fans, things like that.

This was my 40th NHRA U.S.
Nationals.

I never thought about it
in those terms before, but when I realized that I started coming to Indy in
1967 – and camped in the infamous Lions Campgrounds that first year – I
realized that a lot of my history is somehow tied to this place.  But I am not alone.  There are thousands of racers, fans and
supporting sponsors who have been coming to what’s become O’Reilly Raceway Park
at Indianapolis
for decades.

In some respects the
Nationals – and it really is the only race whose name can be shortened to those
two words – the Nationals – and still have everyone know what you’re referring
to –will always be the epitome of drag racing. 
As Del Worsham said during an interview on race day Monday, he didn’t
realize how important the race was when he won it the first time around, and
remains almost desperate to win it and experience that euphoria again.  A few years back, upon winning, Larry Dixon,
Jr. said to a television reporter he knew had no understanding of the event’s
importance, “You just don’t have any idea what it means to win Indy.”  Dixon
knew, because he’d worshipped at the feet of his team owner, Don “The Snake”
Prudhomme, when he was a young mechanic. 
He’d also seen how crushed Prudhomme had been when he failed to win
during the Final Strike Tour, his last opportunity to add one more Nationals
trophy to his almost overwhelming collection.