A five-time overall champion who broke the 6-second and 200 mph barriers and who has never failed to finish, Larry Larson has accomplished virtually all there is to achieve at Drag Week. But there’s one final prize out there that he’d like to own.
Larson, one of the sport’s most diverse and decorated racers, confirmed this week that he plans to return to Drag Week in 2018 following a three-year hiatus — and much of his motivation is the allure of the five-second barrier, which has been approached but untouched by he and his closest challengers.
We’ve entered 11 races in Unlimited, between Drag Week and Rocky Mountain Race Week, and we’ve finished every one of them.
“I’ve laid back the last three years; I built my truck and I took it out to try to get them to change the rules, but they wanted to leave the rules wide open the way they were. And I see both sides of it — they want the crazy cars and the drama and all that goes with it,” he says.
“I was sure that [Tom] Bailey, [Jeff] Lutz, or somebody could get this whole five-second deal done. Do I want to be the first to do it at Drag Week? Sure I do. I figured last year was the time, because the air was good, the tracks were good, and everything was there for it. Jeff ran fast, but he didn’t get it done, and Tom had his troubles.”
“It’ll be nice to go back,” he says. “I have some sponsors that are always asking me if I’m going. I’ve been doing Rocky Mountain Race Week, which pays good money. But I think next year I’ll go back [to Drag Week] and see if we can do it again. We’ve entered 11 races in Unlimited, between Drag Week and Rocky Mountain Race Week, and we’ve finished every one of them.”
Larry has frequently cited the lack of payout and rule enforcement — specifically, trailer sizes and the number of crew members that can work on a given car — in years past that left a bad taste in his mouth for his departure from the event that his name was, for nearly a decade, virtually synonymous with. But, he believes things have improved, and, with the “five” still dangling out there, he’s hesitant but excited to give it another go.
“Some of the other guys who were entered the first few years, say 2005 to 2010, now that they’ve heard I’m going back, they’re all fired up about going back, too. So it could be kinda’ cool. But if I see something that’s BS, I’ll call it.”
Regarding the run at the fives, he says “ last year would have been the year to do it. I looked at the tracks [this year], and with the temperatures in the 90s, I felt like the only one that may have been conducive to going that fast was St. Louis.” With that, he remained on the sidelines and left to fate the outcome of what is likely the final performance frontier in true street legal drag racing.
I don’t know what I’m going to do at this point, but I may have a little something up my sleeve for those boys, and they probably won’t like it.
Larry says emphatically that he “will take the truck —I don’t know what I’m going to do at this point, but I may have a little something up my sleeve for those boys, and they probably won’t like it”.
“It’s all about innovation and doing different stuff,” he continues. “It kinda’ gets boring after a while, so why not doing something different? I did that when I brought the truck out, and people complained, but the rules allowed everything we did. At the end of the day, I want to do something more legitimate, and, following my original plan, I’ll probably try to figure out a way to do it with no trailer. I’ve said it since the first year, and I still to this day think that they could fix 80 percent of what’s wrong with Drag Week if they said no trailers.
“But, at this point I think we’ll go back and see if we can make it 12 entered and finished, and hopefully we can set one more milestone,” he says. “After that, I don’t know what there is to do. We’ve had a good run….I’m definitely pleased. We’ve had a lot of help from a lot of manufacturers, and without their help and support, there’s no way I could do what I’ve done.”