Scott Palmer is far more than the loveable, throttle-whapping NHRA Top Fuel owner-driver. But that passion that precipitated the popular practice is exactly what has turned him from a mere survivor into a drag racing analyst.

Make that one who recognizes the sport has appeal beyond the NHRA. Palmer understands the more trendy forms of drag racing have something to offer the staid sanctioning body if it wants to grow its appeal at the start of its eighth decade.

As Palmer approaches his own third decade of racing, he has begun to parlay his observations as a multiple-motorsport owner-driver into a course that fits his needs. He has evolved from competing in the drag boat world with his “Liquid Voodoo” entry into an IHRA regular into a struggling NHRA campaigner ultimately into a racer who has found his comfortable niche in the wide spectrum that is drag racing.

“I’ve never wanted to be world champion. I don’t want that. That’s not my goal,” Palmer said. “My goal is to be competitive. I want to be a badass part-time guy, but you have to be a full-time guy first to know how hard it is. You have to be able to do this back-to-back-to-back. That was hard.

“I’ll tell everyone, ‘I want to be a part of Zizzo’s,’” he said. “They come out, and you look on that sheet.” ‘You got T.J. Zizzo?’ ‘Oh, shit, that’s not the one I want. That’s not a good first-round draw.’ That’s what I want.”

That’s why people come. The less risk there is in your sport you could see [a dropoff]. Like when we quit doing big burnouts, quit doing pedal fests, and the tracks are so sticky now that the cars usually don’t smoke the tires as much [and] there’s no pedal fest.

Through his years in the sport, Palmer has learned to work smart, not just hard. And he has chosen to run what makes him happiest – and that means never running a full NHRA schedule anymore.

“I’ve just done things my own way and sometimes it’s not good. Sometimes it’s not welcome, but I stuck with it. I’ve talked to Ned [Walliser, NHRA’s vice president of competition] and Josh Peterson [vice president of racing operations]. All my craziness finally came around. The world came to me,” he said. “Now you need something going on in the world to spice it back up. You’ve got to do something for the fans. You got to get them back involved.

“I talk to Ned Walliser all the time. He’s great friend of mine, and he’s definitely trying to change it up a little bit. He’s put some ideas out there. He’s stepping back, looking at the big picture, saying, ‘OK. We’re going to try something, try to change it up a little bit.’ I think Ned deserves credit for having an open mind and thinking about changing it up a little bit,” Palmer said. “I don’t know the answer.”

He has a pretty strong sense of what is working for other drag racing endeavors, particularly the Discovery Channel’s “Street Outlaws: No Prep Kings” and Chris and Tera Graves’ Funny Car Chaos.

“No Prep Kings is the biggest thing going right now,” Palmer said, intimating that the NHRA recognizes that.

“I’m sure they keep an eye on that. I’m glad they do that. I’m not like the safety guy out here by any means, but them racing on a racetrack has to be better. DeWayne Mills is a good friend of mine. Kallee Mills, his daughter, runs those deals, No Prep Kings. You worry about it. She’s just a young girl [23 years old]. I’m worried about her on the street. Dewayne had a bad crash last year in Nebraska, just devastating. So them being at No Prep Kings is a lot better than probably in Nebraska on a farm road,” Palmer said.

“There’s a reason that that world is most popular right now. People like the excitement. I’m from the Oklahoma City area so of course, I’m their biggest fan, because all those guys are from where I’m from. But nobody wants to pay to watch dominoes. They want to pay to see people do things that are not safe,” he said. “They don’t buy your t-shirt for playing badminton and tennis. They come to see the chance of something going wrong, like it or not.

“It’s part of our sport. It’s dangerous,” he said. “The reason it’s cool is because not everybody’s willing to put it out there on the line. And that’s OK, too, because you need people that want to come to the race to see us do that crazy stuff.”

It’s why he was such a fan of the late Evel Knievel. Palmer said, “There were times, I watch all the videos on anything he would say: ‘I knew there’s no way I’d make that run. But there’s 60,000 people in Wembley Stadium or wherever to watch me make this jump. I knew I couldn’t make it once we built the ramp.’ He’d say, ‘I know I couldn’t make it. But I had to make the jump, anyway.’

“That’s why people come,” he said. “The less risk there is in your sport you could see [a dropoff]. Like when we quit doing big burnouts, quit doing pedal fests, and the tracks are so sticky now that the cars usually don’t smoke the tires as much [and] there’s no pedal fest. I know it’s dangerous. I don’t like the parts attrition that brings, but if you go back to 1985 or ’90 before we ran one, and you watch those old clips, big burnouts, smoke pulling off tires, Cruz [Pedregon] and John Force pedal fest, that’s the runs that we all remember. Those are the runs that made us want a Top Fuel car. You don’t really remember all the great runs.

“That’s why drag racing is so popular, too: it’s who gets there first. You don’t get caught up in the numbers. When that number comes on the scoreboard, then everybody compares that all over the world, to what every other car ran. And they’re not there on that track in that situation. They’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, so-and-so ran two-tenths faster than that last year.’ The fans don’t care what you run. They’re there to see the race.

“All these cars look fast until the number comes up. The average fan will never tell a 3.95 run from a 3.75 run. I can hardly tell watching from the stands. I probably can’t tell,” Palmer said. “But still, sitting in the stands, you see a 3.95 car go down the track, there’s no way you’d look at that say, ‘Well, that didn’t look very fast.’ No way. But when the number comes up, then you’re comparing it to Steve Torrence’s car, Brittany Force’s car. So the cars that have run 3.90s, they’re not big guys, but they are. They still are. Without us little guys, they [the NHRA] are going to be in trouble for awhile.”

Funny Car Chaos, however, is in no trouble. The series that began in 2017 with a single event at North Star Raceway at Denton, Texas, has expanded into a nine-race series with two Nitro Chaos shows (in June at Iowa’s Eddyville Raceway and July at Missouri’s Mo-Kan Dragway) set for 2022.

“It’s so fan-friendly at Funny Car Chaos. All the racers are fan-friendly,” he said.

During the October Stampede of Speed at Texas Motorplex, near Dallas, Palmer’s Top Fuel hauler and operation were on the grounds at Ennis, Texas, all week – parked right smack in the middle of the NHRA Fall Nationals midway. Motorplex General Manager Andy Carter told Palmer, “You know, it’s going to be a big hassle because of the people everywhere and getting in and out of your pits.” Palmer replied that that might be so, “but if those people don’t show up, we don’t get to race, ever.” Palmer said, “I think people forget that. So, yeah, I’ll fight my way through the crowd to get to the staging lanes. That’s not a problem for me. They’ll help you. They’ll be part of it. All the racers, they’ll show them around. It’s really a down-home feel. Not everybody can go to [an NHRA] national event. Not everybody can go that far. Not everybody can spend the money to go to a national event. Funny Car Chaos, they get a two-day race. Chris [Graves] runs a tight ship.”

Last March, Graves kicked off Funny Car Chaos’ 2021 season with a 64 Funny Car format that conjured memories of promoter extraordinaire Bill Doner’s wild West Coast antics in the 1960s. And it was a massive success – something Palmer said he knew he had to enter.

“I actually went and bought an Alcohol Funny Car,” he said, “because when I knew this was coming here [to Ennis] in the spring in 2021, there were no fans at NHRA. So I wasn’t running during that, and they were going to have 60-something Funny Cars in the lanes. There was no way I was not going to be one of them in the lanes. I had no clue that I would even get in the show, because those guys are all tough. That’s what people don’t realize, they’re fast racers. Everybody runs good at Funny Car Chaos. But luckily, we qualified ninth or something and got in the show and runner-up in the B-class. So we ended up having a good time. My steering wheel came off in the final round. Just so everyone knows, you can’t steer a Funny Car with your hand on the steering shaft. I tried, scraped the wall, scratched it up a little bit, but we had a lot of fun.” (The steering wheel, he said, “will never come off again. It’s got a bolt in it now.”)

…the cars that have run 3.90s, they’re not big guys, but they are. They still are. Without us little guys, they [the NHRA] are going to be in trouble for awhile.

The new Nitro Chaos spinoff requires a car to run on at least 80-percent nitro to enter.

“There were 16 cars basically burning 90-percent nitro on the property at Eddyville, Iowa. We had a great time. We struggled the whole weekend to make it happen, and we should have been beat every round. But luckily, we did it. We had a lot of fun,” Palmer said. “I was worried about taking an NHRA car to this, but the track is the equalizer. And it’s not the track surface. There was a little bit of a short shutdown, but you have to be really careful. We caused more troubles for ourselves that weekend, because there’s a lot on the line. I mean, you want to go there and do good. But you’re there with all these racers that don’t get the credit they should for how good they are. These guys are so tough.”

And their cars have cool names, like cars did in the early days of the sport: Blown Centless, Bucket List, Crop Duster, Chasin’ My Childhood, Dragon Slayer, Invader, Mr. Explosive, Still Crazy, and Wild Thang.

Palmer’s racing schedule was diverse this past year. By the end, he had introduced equally versatile Alex Laughlin to a dragster – his dragster – and coached him through seven races. Laughlin said he loved it, loved working with Palmer and Palmer’s longtime crew, and hoped he would continue partnering with the veteran in 2022.

When Palmer brings out his Top Fuel car, whether he’s driving or Laughlin is behind the wheel, it’s a far different situation these days.

“I’ve definitely had to do every job on the car. Everything. I know my place. Ten years ago, I knew I didn’t really have the resources to be out here. I knew that, so I just did the best I could to survive,” Palmer said. “Then when I got the resources, then I knew I could do it. I just needed the right guidance. So I went to the Laganas [brothers Bobby and Dom, who today are key members of the Torrence team that celebrated a fourth straight championship] – of course, because we’ve always been buddies.” And he went to Billy Torrence and ‘Mama Kay’ Torrence and “I just said, ‘I’m not going to waste Tommy Thompson’s money. So I need some help.’”

They obliged, and they still play an integral role in his operation. “They look at our run. They give me the guidelines for the tune-up. I do it off their guidelines. They make the last-minute call. Then at night they look at it for me. They come back [in the morning] and say, ‘This is the plan for the day.’ It’s not just ‘Here – we’ll sell you parts.’ I don’t really buy parts from them. I buy new parts. When they order clutch discs, we order clutch discs. It’s crazy how in we are with them.”

But that advantage hasn’t been enough to keep him focused solely on the NHRA Top Fuel class. Palmer also put on a show for the Stampede of Speed opening night with his 11,000-horsepower nitro Pro Mods – which included his off-the-chain long, smoky burnout.

“Yeah,” he said, “I probably ran more races, even last year, than I did run in the full season. We ran John Stouffer’s ’71 ’Cuda Pro Mod in the Midwest Series last year, which was eight races. We did probably five exhibition races and five or six match races. This is during the COVID shutdown. I just won’t run without fans. So that’s why I didn’t run much last year in Top Fuel because to me, it just doesn’t feel the same when they ran all the races in Indy [three hastily arranged ones in July and the regularly scheduled U.S. Nationals in September], but I understand why they did it. We’re lucky we’re still here.

“I understand what they had to do,” he said of the NHRA. “And I want to support them, but the people and friends who…I don’t have a sponsor. I have friends who help me. We’re all friends, and nobody that helps me would enjoy going to a race with no fans. That’s why we like the fans being there. Why would we whack the throttle if nobody’s standing back there? The cool factor is gone. In 2019, I told everybody, Tommy Thompson, everybody who helps me, Kent Longley from Marck Recycling, I told them, ‘OK, that’s cool. We’ll never run 24 races again, though.’ We’ll never run the full season.

“From now on I’ll be 10, 12 races and I want to do my Studebaker. I’ve got a Pro Mod. I like to do other things, too,” he said. “This year, we’ll probably end up being, I would say, 30 races if you count them all up at the end of the season, but it will be 10 of these, 10 NHRA races, the rest are match races, Funny Car Chaos.”

This evolution just might have been an epiphany somewhere along the line, but Scott Palmer is happy with it.