Compton, California’s Artis Houston races in the NMCA West Series’ 275 Drag Radial heads-up class and was on pace to finish out the season as the class champion. That is, until this past Friday afternoon when an as-yet-undetermined mechanical failure sent him into the wall at Famoso Dragway in Bakersfield, California somewhere north of 160 MPH.
“Something locked up in the drivetrain during deceleration and it took control of the car and I was along for the ride. I’m thankful God allowed me to walk away from this. I have never experienced complete silence in the car so fast, which kind of tells me the rear tires were airborne…further explaining why I had no control of the direction the car was going before impact,” he explains.
Not only did Artis lose the championship, he also has a tall order to get the car repaired to race again. We spoke with him on Monday, and he says “Definitely a tough one…but making it through. Some good people are stepping up to assist. Without them…I’d be done.”
We don’t want Artis to be done. He’s one of the standard-bearers of drag radial performance on the West Coast and a legendary figure in the heads-up world out there. As you might imagine, some kind folks have started a “Help Artis” thread on Yellowbullet.com, where Artis has posted the extensive list of items it’ll take to get Big Blue back together again.
Artis often races all by himself in NMCA West 275 Drag Radial and PSCA Wild Street competition, and since his program is run on a shoestring budget, an issue like this could take him out of racing for a long time, if not forever. Let’s see if we can help him avoid that fate. If you’re of the PayPal sort, the address to drop a donation is artiehou @ gmail.com [remove the spaces].
You might also like
Bulletproof Your Build With SFI Flexplate Kits By ATI
ATI Performance built these SFI Flexplate Kits to handle massive horsepower. Protect your custom GM driveline from catastrophic failure.
