(Trackside photos courtesy of Steven Bunker)

The history books were re-written following an impressive weekend for the West Coast Outlaw Pro Mod Association in Sonoma, Calif. back in early March. Though there were many career bests and impressive battles, the real story lies with Dan Nickelson and his record breaking 5.706 E.T. pass. Dan isn’t the type to be in the spotlight, in fact most of the time he avoids it, but fortunately we were able to catch up with him and get some history and the real story of what it took he and his crew only two years to accomplish. 

Anyone familiar with Dan knows he has been a competitive drag racer for as long as he could drive a car. His passion for drag racing goes far beyond just sitting in the seat and beating the guy in the other lane as his real competition is himself.  This genetic trait that Dan carries has led him to numerous drag racing records including two Nitro Coupe Championships with his 1994 Chevy Beretta.  

Before purchasing the Beretta, Dan drove an infamous blown gas AA/Altered 1962 Corvette Roadster.  With the help of Jim Lemond and a few others, Dan won multiple division events, a national event and the World Finals in 1989. The Corvette was legendary in its own right, holding the E.T. and mph record for over six years, including two years after Dan quit racing with the NHRA.  Going even further back, Dan won the AHRA World Finals in 1970, held the D-Automatic record for years with his 1969 Chevelle Super Stock car, and for a short time, held the record for E-Stock with his 1966 Chevelle.

With this many accomplishments, it’s hard to imagine anyone would have time to raise a family or enjoy anything unrelated to a drag strip, but Dan did find a way. Dan explains that the secret to his success is not the burden of his family but the support they gave him throughout the years.

“My family, especially my daughter Melissa, has been a huge help throughout the years.

Melissa isn’t afraid to get dirty and comes out whenever she can to help out. It’s always been important to me to have her at the track, not just for the help, but to have my family there working together to accomplish a goal. It really made racing enjoyable even during the hardest seasons when all we did was thrash from race to race.” 

That much thrashing took a toll on Dan and eventually his back suffered the consequences. After repeated requests from his doctors to stay out of a race car Dan finally gave in and tried to take some time off. Just like most racers though, his blood bled drag racing and he couldn’t stay away. His fix was to build motors and help some friends out with their cars. 

”As my back got worse and worse my doctor got harder and harder to deal with,” explained Dan. “He eventually left me with only one option and that was to stay out of a race car. I knew it was coming but I just couldn’t get out of it completely, so I built a couple motors for my friend Mike Davis and started tuning his alcohol sand dragster. We won the championship three years in a row. At that point I had the bug again and knew I would eventually get back in a car.” 

After two back surgeries and some well needed rest, Dan purchased a Jerry Haas 2000 Dodge Viper to compete in the West Coast Outlaw Pro Modified Association during the 2011 season. The plan was to go out and have a good time without thrashing on the car.  

“I just wanted to go out and have fun. I didn’t want to carry spare motors or too many parts but just enough for the easy work. If we broke then we would just go home and try again next race. I figured if we could run a conservative tune-up, cut good lights, and get down the track then we could win some races without the hard work,” said Dan. 

It didn’t take long to remember how much work a clutch car was and Dan knew something had to change. “Racing a Pro Mod car with a clutch is a lot of work.  The driveshaft, transmission, bell housing and clutch all have to be removed so the discs can be resurfaced almost every pass. That’s the only way to get them to go down the track consistently. The clutch had to go if I wanted to stick with the plan so I ordered a Bruno drive and Spec Rite Torque convertor. At that point a torque convertor was going to slow us down, but I figured with the extra time between rounds I could work on the tune-up with Randy [Goodwin] and hopefully make up for it.” 

The tune-up was a learning curve for Dan as the combination was all new. To get a good baseline, he tapped into Goodwin’s knowledge and expertise.  “All the Pro Mod motors I had tuned up to that point were Alan Johnson Chevy-based engines.I knew I needed a good baseline from someone that knew what they were doing with a BAE Hemi,” explained Dan, “So I got Randy to help us out and he really stepped up our program. It’s amazing what a car will do when you have right tune-up and Randy got us there quick.” 

The tune-up wasn’t the only work that needed to be handled even with the new torque convertor relieving some of the stress. “Pro Mod cars require a ton of work between rounds. At the beginning, I worked and learned from Randy on the tune-up while Cory Dow, Melissa, and Tina, my girlfriend, managed the timing and other maintenance. Eventually, Cory, Melissa, Tina and I were on our own, so we had to make sure we had a good system in place to get everything done and still have time to BBQ.” 

Enjoying racing is what they did and their reputation for this rang throughout the pits, easing some of their competitor’s worries of Dan’s true capabilities.

With the learning curve accomplished in the 2011 season, Dan pushed forward to 2012 with big plans. He didn’t lose sight of the enjoyment of racing but he did accumulate some more spare parts and scheduled to go to a few more races. As with most plans though, things didn’t go without a hitch and in July at Mission, Canada, the Viper hit the left guardrail at high speed. 

“I had to back pedal at about 100 feet and when I got back in it the car lifted the front tires and planted the wheelie bars,” explained Dan. “The wheelie bars broke, the right rear tire hooked and the car made an immediate left turn into the guardrail.” Dan suffered a couple broken ribs, and a new realization that 2012 would not be the season he had hoped for. 

“The broken ribs weren’t really a big deal” said Dan. “I have been in crashes before that included fire and even another one with broken wheelie bars that sent the Beretta shooting up in the air like a rocket. I’ll take broken ribs over fire any day.”   

Dan saw the quick end of his season as an opportunity to work out some of the bugs in the Viper. The car needed to be front-halved due to the wreck and the body was trashed, so he sent it to Bunker Race Cars to get completely re-done. “I wanted to make some changes to the chassis to lighten it anyway and also redo the four-link, so this was a good excuse,” said Dan. “We replaced the firewall with titanium and added carbon fiber wherever we could. Also, they built a new rear end housing and we completely reconfigured the four-link so I could adjust it the way I wanted.” 

With all of the changes done, Dan picked up the car in Sacramento and was more than a little impressed with the work from Bunker Race Cars. “The work Bob Bunker did on the car was outstanding. Not only did he work with me on the modifications I wanted but he finished the car quickly. I have to say the craftsmanship and quality of their work is top notch.” 

With the Viper almost completed Dan saw the opportunity to catch the end of the 2012 season and get a couple shake down runs in. ,It still needed paint and to be put back together so he quickly sent it to a local body shop for the final touches. “Once I got the car back from Bunker I immediately took it to Bob Cole with Cole Automotive in Long Beach. He was able to get the car in and get all the body work and paint done really quickly.  For the amount of work it needed and the timeframe Bob had, he did a great job.” 

The Street Car Super Nationals in November 2012 was the next race that Dan could feasible be ready by, so the thrashing began to get everything wrapped up.  Not only did he get the car prepped to go, but Dan found time to go through the motor and made some adjustments to the torque convertor. “We worked hard to get everything done and even though we didn’t have much time, I still wanted to make some adjustments to the convertor.  The guys at Spec Rite really helped us out getting the convertor built to work with our combination. I never thought a convertor car could go this fast but I guess when you have good parts and the right guys building the convertor, anything is possible,” explained Dan. 

The combination worked as the newly rebuilt Viper put down consistent 6.00s and gave Dan some really good data to work with for the next race.

Since the new chassis was working well, Dan felt it was time to step up to a larger motor he built with a C-Rotor supercharger. He felt that the smaller motor wouldn’t allow him to get to the 5.70’s without really straining the parts and turning their casual weekends into a lot of hard work. 

“My ultimate goal was to get into the 5.70’s without having to work hard on the weekends to do it” explained Dan. “I knew this new engine combo would get us there eventually but I didn’t expect it this quick.” The first race with the new engine was in February at Las Vegas and it proved to be a handful with the extra power. “We couldn’t get the car to go down the track with the new motor. We knew it had the potential because we ran in the 6.30’s while pedaling it, but without making a full pass we had no data to work from. The increase in power was incredible. We kept taking timing out and more timing out and nothing worked. The car was just too violent.” 

With no good runs from Vegas to get a baseline Dan decided to make some gear changes to try and calm the car down and get prepared for Sonoma in March.

March 2, 2012 at Sonoma Raceway and Dan still hadn’t made a complete pass with the new motor. At this point his intentions were not to break a record or even make a fast pass, but to take enough power out of the motor to get down the track. “We took quite a bit of timing out of it on the first run hoping that we could get down the track, but it still blew the tires off.” 

For the second pass, Dan took a ton of power out of the motor just to try and get the car to work and that’s how he set the Pro Mod world on fire. “We literally took about 300 horsepower out of the motor in a dire attempt to get a baseline run to work with,” Dan said. “But when I went through the lights I knew we had made good pass.”

A good pass indeed: Dan had set the Pro Mod E.T. record with a 5.706 at 251.53mph. 

“When I saw the time slip I was shocked — I thought there was no way that just happened so we went back to the trailer and Cory and I started looking over all the data. Sure enough, the data backed it up, and it still had more to go.” 

After a run like that most racers have an internal instinct to think they can go out and blow that number out of the water and Dan is no exception. 

“My immediate thought was there’s more in it, but I had to wrangle myself back in.”he explained. “So I talked it over with Cory and we decided to just make sure we could back up the pass for the record and try to win the event.” Not everyone at the track was convinced that really happened either and the talk around the pits was that there was no way the old Viper could back up that number.  To the shock of the Pro Mod world, Dan backed up the pass with a 5.731 at 248.30 mph during his first round of eliminations on Sunday. By the end of the day, Dan and his team had secured the Pro Mod E.T. record and beat out his competitors to win the Sonoma Event.

“My intentions were always to win events and be competitive, but it was never to set the record. We got lucky and stumbled upon a combination that really works, but it wasn’t without all of the help and work trying different combinations in the motor, chassis and gearing,” said Dan. “I really want to thank my daughter Melissa, Cory Dow, Ben Bolyan Jr. and Tina Carlson for all of their help. I couldn’t have done it without them!”

Now that the cats out of the bag, the rest of the Pro Mod racers know they have another real competitor in their midst that can set records while still enjoying a good BBQ lunch between rounds.  Congratulations to Dan Nickelson and the rest of his team for a job well done.