On the surface, Don Prudhomme easily appears to be the coolest drag racer on the planet. Truth be known, at least one thing makes him uncool to the hilt. 

Prudhomme cannot stand disappointment. 

It rattles him to the core. 

Disappointments are a part of life, but that doesn't mean one of the most iconic drag racers in history has to like them. He's referring to those letdowns when someone puts in the work, invests the money necessary, makes the most-logical decision ... and then is gutted as everything goes to hell in a handbasket. 

"It's really difficult to do for these crew chiefs and everything with the track temperature or the air changing, and you go out there, and you smoke the tires, and you're out," Prudhomme said. "For me, it was just too many disappointments. We had some success too, for sure, but the disappointments far outweighed the success, and it really got me where I was tired of it, tired of the disappointments."

All those times on the 1970s Diamond P broadcasts when Prudhomme looked like he wanted to fight after a loss were nothing more than watching his educated decisions turn into tire smoke, tire shake, and defeat.

"I'm here [at the U.S. Nationals] with [Ron] Capps, and we got the tribute car, and it's great and fun. But when I'm standing behind that car, and it smokes the tires out there, I have the same disappointments that when I was doing it myself or on the team," Prudhomme admitted. "It's just something that all you want to say is, 'S***,' when it happens and it's over. And so through my later years, the disappointments were too much."

The wins were plenty, and though Snake didn't lose much when he did, it bothered him. Prudhomme had won six of the eight races when the 1975 U.S. Nationals arrived, but a loss in that event to Raymond Beadle bothered him badly. However, it was the 1976 season where Prudhomme reached all eight final rounds, losing only the NHRA U.S. Nationals to Gary Burgin, that rattled him worst of all. Though the wins started to slow down in the championship years of 1977 and '78, it wasn't that Prudhomme didn't care, he just became more proficient at masking his disappointment. 

 

 

"I always cared, but the first thing you have to think about is sponsors," Prudhomme counseled. "You can't get all pissed off, and you have sponsors at the races. But I always was disappointed, and obviously they were, when you go out first round. You're there three days busting your ass and you go up there, smoke the tires and the sponsors say, 'What do we do now?'

"It's over. With Skoal, they were a great sponsor, but they were real disappointed when we got beat or went out. And they weren't no more disappointed than I was, but it just got to be a drag."

Prudhomme wasn't necessarily burned out as the four-year run as champion ended with the 1978 title. But by the time his run as an owner reached the 2008 season, he knew it was time to chart a new path and leave the straight-line sport behind. 

The sport was changing, and with nitro racing, the changes were coming at breakneck speed. It would eventually inspire him to walk away after decades of making it his world.

"It was so much different with the Army car and stuff because I was in charge," Prudhomme said. "I knew the car, I tuned the car, I could feel the car. We didn't even have computers in the cars back then, and so I knew a lot more about it than a lot of guys that were driving. A lot of guys just knew how to drive. I knew how to do the engine, the clutch, everything. And Bob Brandt was a great help. So therefore, I didn't have to depend ... on a crew chief to make the car run.

"Once I started depending on that, then that brought me into a whole different world of people -- the Leonard Hugheses and people that worked for me that were okay but burned out themselves. We had Dick LaHaie, he was really good; won a couple championships with him as a crew chief. But he was older and got sick and couldn't do it anymore, and Donnie Bender basically took over and we didn't have success, and I was just tired of it, man. I was over it.

"When the economy was so bad and our sponsors -- Skoal, U.S. Tobacco -- they couldn't advertise anymore, and the world was upside down and we were looking for a sponsor and that's about the time that I got burned out. I went out and visited Monster Energy, and [Kenny] Bernstein had them for a little while on his Funny Car and we had a real good driver in Spencer Massey and I went out to see [them] and they said, 'Well, get back to us.'" 

With those words, Prudhomme concluded it was time to ride off in the sunset.

 

 

"I went back and forth and back and forth, and I got on the freeway headed home -- and by that time, every team around Schumacher's, all of them, they're picking at your people because your people know you don't have a sponsor and they want a job," Prudhomme explained. "And so from the drivers on down, they were on your back. They have families. I know they had to race, but I didn't want to lose them. So I called my wife on the way home, and I said, 'How much money we got?' 

"And she says, 'I'll have to call you back.'

"She called me back and gave a rough idea, and I said, 'Good, because it's over. I ain't doing this anymore. 

"And I quit."

But, these days, Prudhomme, who still commands "the look" to bring the drag racing world back onto its axis, still smiles when he remembers the days when he and the car were best friends. 

"When we drug it up there, man, it fit me like a shoe," Prudhomme said. "I was connected with that car. I wasn't a guy sitting in there, and somebody else was running the engine that I had to depend on."

The competitive nature for Prudhomme started and ended with drag racing. 

"I wasn't that competitive playing checkers or stuff like that," Prudhomme said with a smile. "It was just mainly drag racing because that's the way I came up, and I didn't bother myself with other things. And in today's world, I don't like to compete. I was out driving some Dodge Demons the other day, and we were running down the quarter-mile and I loved the car, but I didn't like the idea of competing and trying to cut a light and how fast is it going. I just didn't dig that. Isn't that terrible?"

It's just life. 

"It's the truth," Prudhomme surmised.

"The bottom line is that the sport really treated me good," he continued. "Thank God, I got a beautiful home and wife, a daughter, and a couple of bucks in the bank, and I don't have to work, and I can enjoy life."

Most of all, he doesn't have to deal with nearly as many disappointments.