Part 1: Time, Not Opponents, Is Billy Glidden’s Biggest Enemy

 

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Billy Glidden didn’t have time to play any guessing games.

He and wife Shannon, who’s the lone crew member for his NHRA Pro Modified operation, had just pulled into the driveway of their Whiteland, Ind., property after racing the day before at Bristol, Tenn., at five o’clock in the morning. They had made time for a quick shower, then flopped onto their bed for a two-and-a-half-hour nap. Hardly refreshed, they were unloading their race trailer, on the clock again to get to Norwalk, Ohio, in time for this weekend’s Summit Racing Equipment Nationals – a showcase race for sponsor Mickey Thompson Performance Tires and Wheels.

DSC_1980But Glidden had to go through a needle-in-a-haystack exercise.

He had qualified fifth at Bristol Dragway for the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals and defeated Pete Farber in the first round, but in his quarter-final loss to Troy Coughlin he faced the realization that “we’ve got an issue somewhere that continually gets worse. And it got so bad that it finally made me aware there’s problems other than tuning.

“I’ve been blaming [his perceived lack of progress] on my tuning, lack of time with fuel injection. And I don’t think it’s entirely that. I’ve got a part failure somewhere, and so I’ve got to find that,” Glidden said. “Now I’ve got to take this [engine] apart and start breaking it down, diagnosing, ‘Where is the problem?’ and find this problem and get it fixed. And unfortunately, I won’t even have a chance to go out and let loose of the clutch to see if what I’ve done is good or bad. That’s going to happen when I make my first qualifier at Norwalk.”

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Testing is a luxury, partly because he lives in the Midwest and has to wait out the stubborn winters and uncooperative weather before he can get up to Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis and sneak in some Wednesday night test-and-tune runs. “But then again,” he said, “that’s really most of a day’s worth of time we just don’t have to put into it right now.”

He said he does “end up in Bradenton [Fla.] between November and March before Gainesville [the Gatornationals that open the NHRA Pro Mod season] no less than three times, sometimes four or five.” But that adds to the staggering travel costs. “We’ll spend almost half our income in a year on diesel fuel,” Glidden said, lamenting the five-miles-per-gallon return on that service-station investment. “And when we’re driving into a headwind, [it’s] worse than that,” he said.

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Photo courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

Billy Glidden, figuratively speaking, is constantly driving into a headwind.

With funding coming only from Mickey Thompson Tires, Glidden has learned to maximize his bare-bones, do-it-yourself program that by design involves just he and Shannon. And, just as when he raced in such fraternities as the 10.5 crowd, Fun Ford Series, NMRA, NMCA, and ADRL, Glidden has debunked the myth that only cubic dollars make winners.

Although he dismissed his June 7 victory at Englishtown. N.J., as merely “perseverance – or a blind squirrel [finding an acorn once in awhile],” Glidden struck a blow that day for all the low-budget racers at dragstrips across the nation. And he did it at the same racetrack where his father, legendary Pro Stock racer Bob Glidden, earned the last of his 85 Wally trophies exactly 20 years, 17 days before. Heading into the Norwalk event, he’s third in the standings, only eight points behind Bob Rahaim and 41 off the pace of Donnie Walsh, the man he beat in the Old Bridge Township Raceway Park final.

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He was uncomfortable basking in the glory of such an accomplishment. Certainly he was proud that he is improving from a year ago, a time he said “we couldn’t make one quarter-mile run without destroying an engine.” Instead of patting himself on the back, he credited fuel injection and the time it took to learn what makes these newly configured engines happy.

We’re trying to take the equipment that we have and compete against the best in the world. We’re trying to run a 100-yard sprint with high heels, and it’s pretty tough.

So when he talked about tearing down his engine to its skeleton in search of that malfunctioning part that has been pestering him, Glidden had neither anger nor weariness in his voice. He spoke in even tones, matter-of-factly, as a man who had a list of chores to do who knew he never would have enough time to do them all but was willing to try.

And why not? His whole mission has been a bit Quixotic, idealistic in a romantic guy-kind of way.

“We’re trying to take the equipment that we have and compete against the best in the world,” Glidden said. “We’re trying to run a 100-yard sprint with high heels, and it’s pretty tough.”

That’s just the path he has chosen. It’s part of his DNA, his destiny, his decision.

He has just the one funding source, and he is content with his daily challenge to please the folks at Mickey Thompson Tire and squeeze the maximum from his equipment.

“We just don’t have any frills. We don’t go out. We don’t go to the movies. We don’t go out and eat. We go home or we come here [to the shop]. This is it,” Glidden said.

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Photo courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

He blew off any notion that he feels like Bob Cratchit, Ebenezer Scrooge’s overworked, underpaid, clerk who robed himself in a comforter and tried to find warmth from a candle because the boss wouldn’t heat up his workspace. How could he feel abused? He’s the boss.

Glidden said, “Here we don’t run any air-conditioners. We don’t run normal heating for a building like this. Last winter, we invested in a wood-pellet furnace, and it’s sitting right here in the middle of the shop. That was the cheapest financial way to heat the shop. I don’t know why this shop is on such a crazy industrial-type rate. But if I run the heater in this shop for one month, it’s over $4,000. So we’ve not run heat in here since 2004.

“I’m not kidding,” he said. “This is it. And we find a way to enjoy each other’s company 24 hours of every day. We have our struggles, like everybody else – but probably less than everybody else, just because it is how it is. I mean, this is what we do. I’ve got a beautiful, loving wife who has accepted this is our way.”

We have our struggles, like everybody else – but probably less than everybody else, just because it is how it is. I mean, this is what we do. I’ve got a beautiful, loving wife who has accepted this is our way.

Shannon Glidden had planned to be a teacher. But her husband said eventually she realized “she could be working a 9-to-5 [job] or she could be putting up with . . . it’s hard tellin’ . . . a mall shooting or some kid going wild. So we’re fortunate in a lot of ways. There’s people all over this country and world that have it way worse than we do. So we’re fortunate.

“It’s a real chore for you to find a husband and wife who can be around each other 24 hours of every single day, work and not work, and be able to do the same things together every single day. I’m not too sure you’ll find anyone else, maybe,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong – we have our tiffs. But pretty much we keep going.”

He said she “grumbles a little,” just like she did that morning after Bristol, when she barely had closed her eyes, it seemed, and at 10 minutes until 8 a.m., he was nudging her and saying, “We’ve got to go. We’ve got to go.” Thankfully, he allowed that such sleep deprivation was worth at least a pout.

Shannon Glidden would be an ideal candidate for patron saint of Women Who Married Racing Men Before They Realized What That Entailed. She didn’t come from a racing background, although as a Central Indiana native, she was aware of the racing world and its economic impact on the Indianapolis area. She knew little about cars, although Billy Glidden said when they met, she could put air in a tire and oil in an engine, “probably – but other than that, nothing.” Her dad wasn’t connected with any form of racing. He was Greenwood, Ind.’s Parks and Recreation Director for more than four decades. And that’s how they met.

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“In the early 1990s, I would go find gyms at night where I could play pick-up basketball. She just happened to be there as a scorekeeper. As it turns out, when I was in high school, she had a big crush on me – I suppose . . . that’s the way she tells it,” he said. “Someone said that they knew me and brought me over to her and introduced me to her. About a month later, I was looking for a place just to play basketball, and I knew her father was the Parks and Recreation Director. So I called him and she ended up on the phone.

DSC_3125“She actually had the courage to say, ‘Would you go get a Coke with me one night?’ or whatever. The next time I saw her, she wanted to play basketball one-on-one for a Coke. And that’s actually how we started. So it’s been since early 1990,” Glidden said of their relationship.

Long before that, Billy Glidden pondered a career in basketball.

“I actually was better at that by quite a lot than I am at this drag racing stuff,” he said, “just that the family was in this and this is what I knew. I just couldn’t abandon [it]. I probably had a good shot [no pun intended] at making basketball a living. Probably had a really good shot at it.

“In 1986, I was the local NBA Amateur Player of the Year,” Glidden said. That’s a genuine achievement in the state of Indiana, famous for its basketball talent throughout the years.

He said he spent some time “trying to prove my worth” to a couple of NBA players with racing interests: Larry Nance, who drove a Marine Corps-sponsored Pro Stock car after he retired from NBA action, and Brad Daugherty, Nance’s Cleveland Cavaliers teammate who was a NASCAR team owner and ESPN NASCAR-programming analyst.

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Glidden said, “I had an opportunity to go to a summer pro league for a pro team, but that’s when Dad crashed in Atlanta.” He was referring to the frightening, barrel-rolling incident Bob Glidden experienced in 1986 in the 7-Eleven/Chief Auto Parts Ford at the end of a semifinal victory over Butch Leal. The elder Glidden wasn’t injured, amazingly, but it was a financial setback for the do-it-all-in-house pioneer.

I actually was better at that [basketball] by quite a lot than I am at this drag racing stuff, just that the family was in this and this is what I knew. I just couldn’t abandon it.

“I stopped playing basketball altogether until 1990,” Billy Glidden said. “Just quit. Just stopped cold turkey. Decided it was time to help with what was going on here solely – no other interests. So I quit basketball.”

Does he regret that?

“Mmmm . . . not really, because I don’t have time for regrets. I don’t have time for that, and it’s a waste of time,” he said. “Most people – in this country, anyway – live on their regrets and wishes and ‘I coulda – I shoulda.’ I just don’t look at it that way. I have to deal with today, right now.”

DSC_2641Billy Glidden hates squandered time. One year, at Carl Weisinger’s World Street Nationals at Orlando Speed World Dragway, traffic along Colonial Drive was backed up for nearly a couple of miles. And Billy Glidden had to qualify. His timetable hadn’t budgeted for traffic snarls. So, with his exotic birds lined up on his shoulder, Glidden, dressed in his firesuit, walked along the side of the road and into the track.

Less than 18 hours after the Bristol eliminations, about 400 miles north of the East Tennessee hills, Billy Glidden hadn’t penciled in time to chase some misbehaving engine part. But that’s what he had to do. “I have to deal with today, right now,” he would say.

And with that, Billy and Shannon Glidden methodically dove once again, elbows-deep, into an engine.

About the author

Susan Wade

Celebrating her 45th year in sports journalism, Susan Wade has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with 20 seasons at the racetrack. She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, St. Petersburg Times, and Seattle Times. Growing up in Indianapolis, motorsports is part of her DNA. She contributes to Power Automedia as a freelancer writer.
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