There’s no doubt that Billy and Shannon Glidden are two of the hardest working people in all of drag racing: a two-person team that runs an entire Pro Modified operation on any given race weekend and have been very successful at it over the years. In February, Glidden had a horrific crash at Orlando Speed World Dragway that destroyed his familiar nitrous-fed 2010 Mustang and put his racing future into question. Now, Glidden is back in the driver’s seat and ready to take on the world’s biggest drag race, the U.S. Nationals.

The violent crash that Glidden experienced in February would have ended operations for some teams, even those with greater financial resources, but Glidden’s pure determination to keep racing wouldn’t allow it. After taking time to heal, Glidden was ready to get back to racing.  “Shannon and I have been able to make our living racing by doing consulting work for companies, tire testing, and other things like that. After the crash and the issues with finding a car we lost our support, but that call was made and it was outside of our control,” Glidden says.

The search for a new car wasn’t going as planned and things weren’t looking good for Glidden, but Todd Hoerner from Sonny’s Racing Engines was determined to get Glidden back to the track. Glidden has been working with Sonny’s for over two years on getting their new Hemi engine program running, so it was important that he get back to the track and make it happen.

“Hoerner actually found this Camaro and made us aware of it. Ray Skillman, who I’ve done engine work for in the past, said if we could find something that made sense, and for the right amount of money, he would help us get the car. Since this car was really both of those things it made sense to get it and try to get back to the track as soon as we could. That’s how it came about getting this car; the Skillman family are just great people and helped us on this, along with many others,” Glidden explains.

After Glidden got the car, work began to fit the new big cubic-inch Sonny’s engine between the frame rails. “We were a bit concerned the engine would be a tight fit because of how big it is. After getting it bolted in, we thought the next issue would be getting headers made but that ended up getting done fairly easy, as well.”

When the motor was in place, Glidden began to really look the car over and decided there were a few things he wanted to change, leading to some long days and nights and a solid four months of work to get the car to the point he wanted.

“I added bars to the car in a lot of places because I wasn’t happy with how they were laid out in some spots. The tubes for the seat actually were part of the frame and I had to adjust that because the car didn’t fit me well; the pedals also had to be move to fit me better. The front, back, and middle of the car have all been changed to be more like what I want. The car needed to be totally re-wired so I did that, as well,” Glidden says.

All of that additional work wasn’t in the schedule and led to some highly unexpected delays in getting the car out for testing. “We didn’t have a hard timeline, but thought the car would be ready for testing weeks before Indy. It turned out that we only got out the Wednesday before. Since we got the car going it hasn’t had any huge issues and we’re working through the problems we’ve seen, it just takes time. We made it to Norwalk to do some tire testing and just get used to what needed to be done with the car in a race day situation,” Glidden explains.

After the Norwalk event, Glidden’s goal is to get the car back home, go through the engine to make sure everything is okay, and load up for what will be an emotional U.S. Nationals event.

“My dad asked for us to run at Indy and that’s what we wanted to do. We also wanted to make to to the event for the Skillman family and our fans. We’ve worked really hard on making Indy and don’t know what to expect. The plan is to go about this the smartest way we can and give it our best shot for those who support us and our fans. We’re going to go through the car to make sure everything is ready and make sure we’re prepared. I think this car could be very quick based on our testing data, so we’ll see.”

Billy Glidden is a true gladiator in the world of drag racing and he is proving yet again why he has earned the reputation. No matter what the outcome is at the U.S. Nationals, Glidden has lived up to his status as one of the best in the business under the toughest circumstances.