The details are a little fuzzy at times, but it’s been 16 years. Cut ‘em a little slack.

But the 2004 IHRA Pro Stock points chase is one that should be revisited; not just for its ultra-competitive nature, with nine winners in 12 events. There’s the fact that the chase for the title almost came down to best buddies named John from Long Island, N.Y.

John Nobile and John Montecalvo met sometime in the late 1970s, when drag racing was a mainstay of sports on “The Island.” That’s when they first squared off in grudge matches at Westhampton Dragway, and they’ve been close ever since.

“I would give him anything I had, he would give me anything I need,” Nobile said of their relationship.

“We’re like brothers,” Nobile added. “He lost his brother a long time ago (Ronnie, 1992) and I kinda slipped into that pair of shoes. … John’s a sweetheart of a guy. I love John.”

Back in those days, the bigger shows on “The Island” took place at National Speedway. Big stars such as Shirley Muldowney, Don Garlits, “Jungle” Jim Lieberman, Ronnie Sox, Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins and Roy Hill raced on its quarter-mile, and Richie Zul and Scott Shafiroff were among the local big-shots.

National Speedway “was right around the corner from me in my hometown,” Montecalvo said. “It was, like, five minutes down the road from my parents’ house. I used to drive there with open headers and slicks and race.”

He and Nobile were both intensely attracted to Pro Stock, where “the drive to want to be like those guys” was an inspiration, the latter said. “It’s the top of the doorslammer class.”

Fast-forward to 2004, the IHRA Pro Stock season and a couple of long-time friends from New York.

John Nobile vs. John Montecalvo: That was essentially the cross-continent chase that lasted from March outside of San Antonio, Texas, to the season finale at Rockingham, N.C., seven months later. The racers live 35 to 40 minutes apart on Long Island, depending on traffic, but the 2004 story begins at a track some 1,900 miles from home.

In the finals of the Amalie Oil Texas Nationals, Montecalvo struck the first blow with a holeshot victory over Nobile. 

 

 

 

Four weeks later in the finals of the series’ first stop at Rockingham, Montecalvo drilled his friend at the flash of the green light and won convincingly. As their rigs made the haul back up I-95 to New York, Montecalvo possessed a 40-point lead and a bit of hubris. Nobile’s Ford ZX2 had a hood scoop plug on which was written “Who’s Your Daddy?” Montecalvo responded with one of his own that answered “I’m Your Daddy.”

And that’s when the IHRA Pro Stock season got … well, “wild” is the best way to describe what transpired. In succession, here’s how the events played out in a prime example of parity in the class: 

Brian Gahm won at Virginia Motorsports Park;

Elijah Morton was victorious in Grand Bend, Ontario;

Gahm took the gold at Edmonton;

Chassis builder Rick Jones captured the show at Milan, Mich.;

Toronto fell to Robert Patrick;

Frank Gugliotta grabbed the trophy at Martin, Mich.

At that point, Montecalvo was atop the standings by a somewhat-comfortable 85 points. He would lose that comfort zone by the end of the weekend at New England Dragway. 

In mid-September, when the tour rolled into Epping, N.H., Nobile was present, but his mind was elsewhere. His best friend and fellow racer, Bob “Scrawny” Lasordo, was hospitalized on Long Island and fading fast from the effects of cystic fibrosis. Nobile was not enthusiastic about leaving Lasordo’s bedside to go racing.

“I saw him the day before we left to go to Epping … (and told him), ‘I’m going up to Epping, I’m gonna break the track record, I’m gonna break the world record,’ ” Nobile said. “He said to me, ‘(Expletive) that! Go up there and win the race!’ And I said, ‘Alright, I’ll try and do that, too.’ ”

A day later, in the opening round of qualifying, Nobile needed just 6.453 seconds -- the quickest Pro Stock run ever at the time -- to cover the quarter-mile and lay claim to the No. 1 qualifying spot. But all day, minus those 6.453 seconds, his mind was on his pal “Scrawny.”

“I’ve never seen anybody with the drive to want to do what he wanted to do,” Nobile said of Lasordo. “I can remember going to the race with him when he had an I.V. in his arm to take antibiotics. We would unscrew the I.V., he’d make a run and come back, and we’d stick it back on him. He just wanted to race.”

After that round of qualifying, Nobile got a call that his pal “Scrawny” had died, and he decided to leave the event and head home. Montecalvo, who was also friends with Lasordo, couldn’t believe Nobile was going to skip the race.

“I said, ‘John, we’re in a battle here for a championship,’ ” Montecalvo said. “‘You’re qualified No. 1 -- you have to come back.’

“‘Well, I’m not gonna have time, there’s no way I can do it.’ ” 

But that was true only if he were driving. That would have involved catching a ferry for the 80-minute passage from Orient Point on the northern tip of Long Island to New London, Conn. After that, he would have to dash the 150-plus miles to New England Dragway in time for the opening round of eliminations.

Instead, Montecalvo and his wife, Lois Anne, who is a pilot, suggested Nobile charter a small plane and fly back to Epping. He even offered to pick his title foe up at an airport near the racetrack.

On race day -- Sunday morning, Sept. 12 -- Nobile, his son Vincent and John’s brother-in-law made their way to Republic Airport, a small, regional facility in Farmingdale, N.Y.

 

 

 

“So I went into the building and I said, ‘I want to rent a plane.’ Girl there was a sweetheart: ‘OK, where do you want to go?’ I tell her I want to go to Epping, New Hampshire. She said, ‘Oh, we go there a lot,’ and this and that.

“She says, ‘So when do you want to go?’ ‘I want to go right now.’ She goes, ‘Right now? I don’t have any charters ready’ and ‘I need a pilot.’ And when she said that, I burst out crying -- grown man, crying in front of this kid. She couldn’t fathom what the hell was going on, so my brother-in-law told her.

“There was a gentleman standing there who was a pilot and had his own plane. He hears the story. He tells me, ‘Get your bags, I’ll take ya,’ and he did.”

And by that time, he was poised to move to the top of the standings.

Montecalvo, the points leader, had struggled on his three time-trial runs -- a faulty battery charger proved to be the problem, he said -- and he missed the cut for the 16-car field. Nobile made the most of his opportunity, knocking off John Bartunek, Patrick, Carl Baker and Rob Mansfield to vault to the No. 1 points position. 

“Everything fell into place for him,” Montecalvo said. “I didn’t qualify; he qualifies No. 1 and wins the race.”

“I was unbeatable that weekend,” Nobile said.

Just two weeks down the road at Budds Creek, Md., the roles in the points were reversed again. Nobile took himself out with a red light in the first round of eliminations and Montecalvo advanced to reclaim the top spot. But he couldn’t capitalize on the opening and promptly red-lighted against his second-round opponent. Pete Berner won the event.

Moving on to Norwalk, Ohio, Montecalvo was ousted in the first round while Nobile was guilty of a red light in the second.

That sent them to the season finale at Rockingham with Nobile clinging to a slim 10-point lead. By the time qualifying had ended, he had stretched the gap to 24. He added nine points for qualifying that many positions ahead of Montecalvo, then tacked on another five for setting the IHRA record at 6.435 seconds.

Before they left the track Saturday night, they agreed to meet in nearby Southern Pines at a steakhouse to celebrate their combined accomplishments to that point. Montecalvo jokingly dubbed it “the last supper.”

“It was pretty exciting knowing it was me and him,” Nobile, now 63, said. “We knew that one of us was bringing that trophy back to Long Island.”

Heading into Sunday’s eliminations, Nobile’s task was simple. To lock up the championship, he needed to advance one round farther than Montecalvo. 

Their duel for the championship that Sunday -- Oct. 24, 2004 -- almost didn’t occur due to a near-miss two days earlier.

A lingering mechanical issue for Montecalvo -- diagnosed in the offseason as a fuel line that was slowly dissolving -- surfaced again during his burnout in Friday’s opening qualifying session. 

 

 

 

 

“I go to stage the car, and it just wasn’t going to happen so I shut it off,” Montecalvo said. “John pops the clutch and immediately makes a left turn into my lane. It would’ve taken the No. 1 and 2 cars out. It was crazy.”

On Sunday, Montecalvo’s lingering performance issue ruined his title hopes. His Cavalier stumbled when he launched, producing a molasses-like .189-second reaction time, and Mansfield knocked him out of the title picture and secured the championship for Nobile.

“Rob apologized on top end: ‘Man, I’m so sorry,’ ” Montecalvo, now 59, said. “I said, ‘Rob, it’s a race, what’re you gonna do? I wouldn’t expect you to do anything else other than try to kick my ass.’ ”

Nobile, meanwhile, rolled on to the finals, where he dropped the decision to Gahm. The victory was Gahm’s third of the season, and he passed Montecalvo for second in the final standings despite having failed to qualify at three events.

Montecalvo said he used the lessons from the ’04 season to help him eventually win championships. He took the IHRA gold in 2009 and secured PDRA’s Extreme Pro Stock crown in 2019.

“I think it inspired me to work harder,” he said. “It made me realize that every single round counts, every qualifying pass counts. We just had to work harder.”

While the Long Island paisans didn’t finish one-two in the manner they’d chased each other all season, the thrill of the chase remains a cherished memory … with a hint of a competitive edge, even to this day.

Nobile “always has a lot of parties at his house, and Lois Anne and I, we socialize with John and Susie. There are a lot of times I’ve had to see that trophy sitting in his lobby. I’m like, ‘Could you at least cover it up while I’m here?’ ”

 

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