Wolf’s Word: Rubbing Shoulders With The ‘Little Guy’

As the Editor of one of the more all-encompassing drag racing publications in the business, my travels to cover events for Dragzine have taken me far and wide across this great country to a range of venues. It’s been providing me the opportunity to witness a lot of great racing, but also to interact with racers on every rung of the proverbial drag racing ladder. This includes everyone from the professional drivers of the NHRA living a life of relative luxury, to the average blue collar racer whose only mission is to have fun and maybe, just maybe, earn back their entry fee.

While there’s no denying that passion runs deep from top to bottom in our sport, there’s no place that it’s more evident than in the grass roots levels of racing, at the local eighth-miles situated off the beaten path, where there’s little fanfare or recognition, but where racing in its purist form can be easily found. Just spend a few minutes talking with these folks who spend all week punching a clock just so they can put a few bucks into their pride and joy to go racing on Friday or Saturday night, and you’ll understand.

While it’s certainly an enviable experience to rub shoulders with the professional racers and take in the pomp and circumstance of it all, each time I have the opportunity to interact with the working-class racers that make our sport go ’round, I can’t help but be enamored by their stories. You can hear the passion in their voices as they talk about their race cars that they’ve worked so hard and spent so much of their own disposable household income to get running. These individuals aren’t out to please a corporate sponsor with their words (although they’d all certainly welcome the support), they aren’t chasing championships, and racing doesn’t put food on their tables. They take it serious, but in a different kind of way.

As is common with any form of sport, as you ascend higher up the drag racing food chain, your hobby becomes less of a hobby and more of a job. You go from relaxation at the track to suddenly finding the race track your workplace. You’re on the clock, so to speak. Professional drag racers have sponsors to tend to, interviews to give, hats, tee shirts and babies to autograph. Then somewhere in between all of that, they drive a race car. With so many people to please, so many things to tend at at once, bills to pay, and an operation to oversee, it’s common for them to get lost in it all – to lose the passion, to become inaccessible, to downplay their need for positive interaction with the fans and media.

Just spend a few minutes talking with these folks, who spend all week punching a clock just so they can put a few bucks into their pride and joy and go racing on Friday or Saturday night, and you’ll understand.

That, however, is not something you’ll encounter out in the sportsman pit area or at your local bracket race.

Just walk up to any small-time racer and see how eager they are to engage you in conversation about their cars. They’ll talk your ear off about the car, the engine, how hard they’ve been working to achieve a new career best run, or something they’ve done on the car they take great pride in. They don’t have any high horses to sit on, no bones to pick, no ropes to stand behind. If you hang around long enough, they might even offer you a burger or brat off their grille.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a magazine Editor offering to put their car in a magazine or you’re out at the track for the first time and don’t know a dragster from a Datsun. These racers are simply full of passion, and it takes no time to see that. They know they aren’t top-billing at any race, nor will they be on television getting rich off of racing, or signing seven-figure sponsorship deals. And in truth, they’ll tell you it doesn’t really matter. Sure, they’d all love to live that life and wouldn’t scoff at the chance, but it doesn’t mean they don’t love drag racing.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be launching a new “Readers Rides” segment here on Dragzine to showcase these very individuals and the cars that they’ve poured their blood, sweat and tears into to make a running reality. These men and women, their machines, and their stories deserve to be told, and we couldn’t be more honored to share it with the world.