If social psychologists only knew it, drag racing offers a playground for fascinating case studies in human behavior. That such varied personalities, let alone drivers who represent all races and ages and both genders equally and without fanfare, can co-exist for a common goal should be motivation enough for scholars to hang out at National Hot Rod Association racetracks.
 
They could start with Jim Head.
 
The veteran independent Funny Car driver is an entertaining blend of direct and diplomatic, feisty and funny, strong and sentimental. He’s a rebel without a pause whose six victories have come in both the Top Fuel and Funny Car classes — although he speaks about the pro ranks as if he still were a grassroots, sportsman-level Comp Eliminator racer.
 
Jim Head never has met a banquet he liked or a legitimate debate with a sanctioning-body official he didn’t like.
   
He judges himself by the same yardstick he uses to measure anyone else’s contribution.
 
He has a unique definition of success, of being competitive — and it has nothing to do with the fact he’ll start the 2013 season with a 351-race winless streak.
 
He calls himself a mechanic, yet he has a civil engineering degree, owns a Columbus, Ohio-based general-contractor company that specializes in paving airfields, and is a pilot who transports himself to and from races. And he often talks about himself in third person.
 
He has a smile that could capture attention on a dentist’s billboard and a booming laugh but is stone-serious about safety in racing and aviation.
 
He teeters on the tightrope of driving longevity, often barking out mock-curmudgeonly, “I’m getting old!” but finding himself saying, “I am not willing at this point in my life to say that I can’t be competitive.”

He says self-effacingly that his peers consider him hopeless, but he’s just hopelessly devoted to drag racing — and to wife Tammy. But he’s a man’s man, a racer’s racer, and at age 64, he’s still doing it his way.
 
Yes, Jim Head, in racing parlance, is a one-off. And he’s just happy to be here, to be alive, He gives the credit to God and to Tammy.
 
“We’ve been together 26 years. Not only is she an integral part of the race team, but I’d be dead many years ago if she wasn’t a part of my life,” Head said. “Racing was killing me when I met her. It was literally killing me. It was a matter of time, and I knew it. And I saw the end of the line. I was going off a cliff, and I knew it. I was going to go off that cliff and die. And the Lord sent me Tammy. And it’s all been good since.”
 
In his pre-Tammy life, Head said, “I was a crazy-ass Funny Car driver. Single and going crazy. And all of the vices of the ’80s, I had ’em all. And it just can’t go on. You have to have stability in the long run. I’d been married twice. Racing had run off the first two wives, and it was not pretty. Just ask people who knew me. They said, ‘That’s a Roman candle about to burn out.’ And I was. I was nuking myself. I was crazier than hell.”
 
Tammy Head, who’s just as shy as he is boisterous, “just settled me down,” he said. “And I’m a Christian. She brought me back to the church, and that’s a big deal. Without Tammy there’s nothing. Nothing. Without Tammy there’s nothing – but a burned-up cinder. And with Tammy I am what I am.

 
“People say, ‘Well, you’re still f—– up.’ And I say, ‘Yeah, I can relate to that! You’re probably right.’ But without Tammy there’s nothing,” Head said. “I’m a very successful contractor. My business would not have been successful, because you have to have a successful life to be good at anything. I’m not a very good racer, but I’m a great businessman. But she’s the glue that makes everything. Jonie Earp works on my race car. Tammy works on me! She doesn’t work on my race car. She works on Head! Head doesn’t exist without Tammy, not even a day.”
 And not even a day goes by without Head’s attention turning to his Toyota Camry and this racing life he has spun for himself.
 
“I tried to quit drag racing in 1999, and they gave me the Blaine Johnson Award. So I got an award for my efforts for safety. So I had to go to the banquet, and I didn’t want to go to the banquet. I don’t get along with the NHRA types. I don’t get along with banquets. I don’t like that stuff,” he said. “I had to make a speech. I was very emotional. I don’t know if people recognized that. I said these words: ‘I love all racers.’ People said, ‘Aw, Head, you don’t love that many people.’

“No, I didn’t say I loved that many people. I said I love all racers,” he clarified. “What I meant by that — real racers, real racers that have gone up and down the highway and worked on their tow truck, put tires on their trailer, crawled under everything they’ve ever owned and fixed it ’cause it broke and got to the next race and worked on their race cars and loved the sport enough to do those things with their own hands and their own money.
 
“Anybody can write a check. But not anybody can crawl under this trailer and work on the axle. That takes heart. That takes drive to want to get to the next race,” he said. “So what I meant — and no one understood it, I’m sure — was real racers. I’m sure I would upset people who think racing is about writing checks. And it’s not. Real racers, regardless of their financial abilities, race.

 
“And I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum. I’ve raced a fuel car when I had no money, let alone my Comp cars and my gas cars that I raced for 15 years with no money. And now I have a lot of money. But I’m the same racer I was when I had no money,” he said.

“I would do anything to make my car run better. Back then, in the old days, I didn’t have people who worked for me. Now I have lots of people who work for me. But they’re all of the same mold. All my guys are just hard-working individuals that don’t do it for the money, because I sure don’t overpay anybody. They do it because they love to race. They’re real racers,” Head said. “And out here there’s a lot of posers and there’s some real racers. I love all the real racers.”
 
They include J.T. Stewart and John Mitchell, his friends who passed away this summer (as did Head’s 88-year-old father). Head boldly has remembered Stewart on his car and in his pit and organized a party in their honor at the Pomona, Calif., season finale.

“One of my pet peeves around this sport is we forget about the people who got us here,” Head said. “And I don’t mean the Prudhommes and the Bernsteins of the world. I mean the J.T Stewarts and the John Mitchells, not the big-name guys but the guys who got us here. Ed McCulloch and I, we had our differences over the years but I really miss him. He was a great racer — those kind of guys: the guys who aren’t always out there trying to be famous, the publicity hounds. Ed McCulloch was a real racer.
 
“There’s really hundreds of ‘forgotten’ guys. I never knew any fuel racers until 1980 — none. I didn’t know they had the class until 1980, and I’d been racing since ’64. So for 16 years I had a sportsman gasoline-burning car. And then I switched to fuel and now I know everybody that’s ever run fuel since 1980. But prior to that, I don’t know their names like I should,” he said.

 
“I never walked to the starting line in my life to watch a fuel car go down the racetrack until 1980. I couldn’t care less what [they] were doing. I knew that they blew up a lot. I could hear the booms from back in the pits. And all that meant to Head was that his session of Comp Eliminator was going to be delayed another hour. It just pissed me off,” Head said. “And quite frankly it pisses me off  to this day. I don’t like it, and they ought to fix it.”
 
What Head indicated he especially would like to fix is his own performance level.
 

Image courtesy NHRA/National Dragster

“My mission is to continue racing for the rest of my life and to whup up on every SOB here. That’s my mission. Now, I’m a long way from completing the mission, but that’s my mission,” he said.
 
What does it take to do that without massive sponsorship dollars?
 
“It takes tenacity,” Head said. “I love racing. I love it — a lot! And I am not willing at this point in my life to say that I can’t be competitive. My definition of competitive is being No. 1 qualifier and low E.T. every round. That’s my dream. People say, ‘What would satisfy you?’ Well, there’s only one thing that would satisfy me. I couldn’t care less what the numbers are. I want to be low E.T. every round of qualifying and I want to be low E.T. every round of eliminations.”

And win the race?
 
“I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. You see, that’s what people don’t get. I don’t give a s— about wining the race,” Head said. “Low E.T. four rounds of qualifying and low E.T. four rounds of racing. And if I’m runner-up, I don’t care. That would be nirvana. It doesn’t get better than that. What about if you won the race? OK, I guess that’d be a little better, but I really don’t give a s—. I’m a mechanic.”

Data-sharing is something he neither has craved nor has embraced.
 
“Some of my friends try to help me, but they always come back to the same conclusion: ‘You’re hopeless.’ Trust me, I’ve got some pretty fast race teams that come in here and try to help me. I’m not going to use any names. I’m talking about big-time Funny Car racers, and they all come to the same conclusion that I’m hopeless. And I would agree with that,” he said. “It is my deal. I try to copy and it didn’t work. I was copying for awhile, and I was dying. I went back on my own little mission and it’s a little better, not a lot, but it’s my own mission.”

His son Chad, 39, Al-Anabi Racing’s general manager, has performed well in his Nostalgia Funny Car that Del Worsham built, and Oct. 29 he earned his nitro Funny Car license in his Dad’s Camry. Both father and son have been coy about whether Chad Head will drive the nitro car in 2013.
 
“Stay tuned. I have no idea. We’ll see. I have no plans,” Jim Head said. “He has the ability to get in a fast car and acquit himself very well. He has proven that already. If he has any brains, he’ll be running from the thing and go do what he does. He is gainfully employed by Alan Johnson . . . and as far as I know, he’s going to continue to do that for a long time.”
 
He had just finished saying, “I don’t want to drive my car. I’m too old. I want to run my car. The driver is just a monkey.”
 
What he means is he wants to field the car, run the operation, but not necessarily drive.
 
“Anybody can drive these [cars]. You get in, you hit the gas, you hold your breath. It’s all good. It can be taught. In Chad’s case, he got it by osmosis. He was good when he got in. He’s always been around it his entire life. He absorbed the ability to be calm, cool, and collected and not do anything dumb. It’s not hard. But you have to have your wits about you. It’s not for everybody,” Head said.
 
He said he’s a “student of motorsports accidents, all of them,” as well as a student of aviation accidents. The reason? “I’m trying to avoid them,” Head said. “Either in the cockpit or standing on the starting line, watching another human being in my car, you’ve got to be pretty serious about that. And I am very serious about that.”
 
So what will be in store for Jim Head next season? Who knows? Only those who could get inside the head of Jim Head.