My career in NHRA professional drag racing began in 1993 but I appeared on the scene with some drag racing background. After the typical post-high school hotrodding days in my '64 Chevelle and later moving to driving locally
fabricated racecars at my local dragway in the Southeast, my real opportunity to drive a professionally built car came in 1988. At that time, Jerry Bickel, a presently well-known chassis fabricator built an NHRA legal PRO Stock car for a long time family friend named Herman Baker. The car was set up and first test
driven by Rickie Smith, the then IHRA 5-times World Champion, who afterwards turned the keys over to me for me to make my first ever 7-second pass. However it would be some time and on the heels of a tragic event before I would again see the seat of a professionally built car. In 1992, my ambitions of racing professionally were for a while, interrupted by the untimely passing of the car’s owner. However the relationships I had built with Rickie Smith and Jerry Bickel continued, and it was those relationships and their first impressions of me as a driver that soon launched me to becoming a professional racer.
Jerry Haas, another PRO Stock chassis builder and NHRA PRO
Stock personality gave me the opportunity to get behind the wheel of his PRO
Stock Oldsmobile in 1993. But before I got behind the wheel of his personal, high dollar PRO Stock car, he wanted to make sure that my short time in the seat previously wasn't just a streak of luck .
In March of 1993, I made a trip to Roy Hill’s Drag Racing School in Sophia, North Carolina, to make the runs necessary to obtain an NHRA
PRO Stock license. Not only were the runs successfully completed, but in addition, my run set a Roy Hill Drag Racing School record. With the blessings of the NHRA Licensing Department, I found myself in front of more than 100,000 people that included family, friends and fans at the 1993 Fram Nationals in Atlanta, Georgia behind the wheel of Jerry Haas’ personal PRO Stock Oldsmobile.
I continued driving for Jerry Haas through the 1993 Mopar Nationals in Denver, Colorado. Then Steve Schmidt asked me to debut the then
new Pontiac Firebird design at the 1993 U. S. Nationals in Indianapolis, Indiana. After that, in 1994, Jerry Haas asked me to step into his ride again to help him and his crew sort some issues with his car.
After my last appearance as a driver for Jerry Haas, I began a project to build my own car. The car was a 1996 Pontiac Firebird built by Don Ness of Don Ness Racecraft in Minneapolis, Minnesota with some factory help from Pontiac Motorsports. The hope was to have a marketing partner before or soon after the car came to life. The car made its debut at the 1996 Fram Nationals and won NHRA’s Best Appearing Award.
Last
September, I drove a Dodge R/T for Larry Morgan and Dodge Motorsports at the Mid-South Nationals in Memphis, Tennessee.
