The last 20-plus months have been a challenge for the storied Holley Performance Products Inc.

Since February of 2008, the company, which is headquartered in Bowling Green, Ky., has filed for bankruptcy twice.

Despite Holley’s difficulties, Tom Tomlinson, the company's recently appointed Chief Executive Officer, says Holley has a bright future.

Gifted writer, talented photographer, innovative editor – Steve Collison was all of that and so much more.

He passed away at age 54 nearly a decade ago, on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2000, fittingly while hard at work at his desk, pounding out the latest issue of Drag Racing USA.

Collison, who was inducted into the Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2003, left behind a legacy as one of the premier photojournalists in drag racing history. More important were the relationships he forged with others in the industry – photographers, writers, manufacturers, and, especially, racers. With him, it was always about the racers. Collison – "Stevie" to his friends – may have been on a first-name basis with every pro driver in the sport, but he valued his relationships with no-name little guys at least as much.

There’s definitely a buzz surrounding NHRA’s announcement Thursday that it’s hosting the inaugural Four-Wide Nationals March 25-28 at zMax Dragway in Concord, N.C.

Not lost in the excitement of the upcoming event is how the NHRA is going to run the historical race from a technical and administrative level.

Graham Light, the NHRA’s senior vice president-racing operations, believes the sanctioning body is ready to hold this historic event, especially at a top-rate venue like zMax.

The most difficult reality to swallow is the harsh reality of the end.

“It's life,” said a very pragmatic Spencer Massey, the day after Don “Snake” Prudhomme announced his retirement from drag racing after over 50 years in the sport as both a driver and a car owner.

“We all knew it could happen. But, as a team we all stuck together and we all knew it was a gamble.”

Less than six months ago, in the midst of the biggest drag race of the year, the U.S. Nationals, Prudhomme let the world know he was losing US Tobacco as a sponsor and the prospects for going forward did not look good. Prudhomme outlined at that time how he either needed to find a new sponsor, a business partner or an auctioneer.

Attitude’s CompetitionPlus.com opens its annual “What’s New” gallery to prepare you for the upcoming 2010 season. This annual feature will run through February. If you have a new car rendering or photo, please send it to us in .jpg format and make sure it is a minimum of 700 pixels wide.

His days used to be consumed, thrashing and coaxing additional horsepower out of his various race cars. Butch Leal is now a proud grandfather; and a darn good one if he might say so.

Those daily thrashes now pertain to spending time with them, heeding to their activities, and he’ll tell you that a seven and eight year old will keep a grandfather on his toes.

“I never had much time to raise my own kids because I was off racing all the time,” admits the 65-year old Leal, who resides in Tulare, Ca.

The excess was intoxicating. Drag racing, particularly its nitro Funny Car class, was the loudest, smelliest, most gut-churning, and in Dean Skuza's words, "the most luring thing I'd ever seen."
 
Today, Dean Skuza says he has "lost interest in it, pretty much."
 
How could that be?
 
The young man from Brecksville, Ohio, had been hypnotized, nearly, with it all. "The whole idea behind a Funny Car -- the short wheelbase, trying to go that fast -- it almost defies physics," he had said. Skuza, who naturally gravitated to things defiant, didn't take long to climb from the top of the grandstands at the IHRA race at nearby Norwalk and into one of the swoopy, crazy-fast machines. And he became one of the best on the NHRA tour.