Drag Illustrated Issue 114, October 2016 | Page 56

56 | D r a g

I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com

Issue 114

P HOTOG RA P H BY R OG E R RI CH A RDS
Gateway Motorsports Park | Madison, Illinois | Sunday, September 25, 2016

Although he’s better known as the father of his world champion sons, Britt and Slate, Larry
Cummings is a sportsman drag racing legend. In his four decades behind the wheel, Cummings
has accumulated countless IHRA victories, and a number of division championships. He was a
constant fixture in IHRA’s national top ten throughout the 1990s and was an original member of
the Budweiser sportsman “Super Team” in the ‘80s – the first multi-car, corporate-sponsored
sportsman racing team. The bulk of his success, however, came in IHRA competition. Since he and
his Moser Engineering-backed team turned their focus to the NHRA about five years ago, Britt,
Slate, and team driver Jody Simoneaux have all tasted victory, but the prestigious NHRA Wally
trophy had proven elusive to the family patriarch – until the NHRA Midwest Nationals outside St.
Louis, Missouri, where the 69-year-old scored his first NHRA Super Stock victory. Cummings was
infallible in the final round with a .005 light and an 8.538 on his 8.52 dial to stop fellow 69-yearold Keith Lynch, who won back-to-back Super Stock national championships in 1982-83.

LONG-AWAITED

CAUGHT!