30 UNDER 30
30 UNDER 30
DAN FERGUSON
Second generation racers often find it easy to navigate through the world of drag racing , and if they hail from an already-famous family , they ’ re almost sure to receive notoriety themselves . Rarely does a first generation racer pave a way to stand out from the crowd , but 29-year-old Dan Ferguson not only accomplished that , he made it look easy . As soon as the Pennsylvania native entered the scene , he commanded attention , vying for - and then winning - a world championship in his first year competing on a national level .
Ferguson had raced off and on locally for a few years when he decided to attend the PDRA ’ s inaugural event held at Rockingham Dragway , where he hoped to qualify for the ultra-tough Top Sportsman category . After not only qualifying , but going to the semis at the season opener and then the finals at the next event at South Georgia Motorsports Park , Ferguson was determined to chase the championship , despite his shoestring budget . At just 26 years old Ferguson earned the 2014 PDRA Top Sportsman title . The following year he remained in the thick of the hunt , finishing second to the late Ronnie Davis . This season , Ferguson picked right up where he left off , continuing to be the dominant threat in the category . He confidently picked up his second world championship in three years .
The success Ferguson has seen in his young career is almost unheard of in Top Sportsman . He ’ s led the points for an astounding 20 out of the 25 events held by the PDRA in the past three seasons , as well as participating in 27 of 36 potential rounds of racing in the 2016 season with a 20-7 win-loss record .
“ My first championship was tough ,” Ferguson admitted . “ I had some help here and there , which I am very thankful for because there was times it made the difference between making the next race or not making the next race , but I was mostly self-funded . I went to Rockingham because Rockingham was my home track [ at the time ] and I used to love that track . I just wanted to try and qualify for the PDRA race . I qualified and ended up making it to the semis . The next race was at South Georgia , not too far away , so I said if I come out of here top five in points , I ’ m going to go to the next race . I ended up going to the finals that race and took the points lead . From that point on I decided to keep scraping and finding ways to make it from race to race . I race pretty cheap ; I try to be smart about how I spend money and only buy things that are necessary , so sometimes
I won enough money to cover a lot of it . Winning the 2014 championship was probably the biggest accomplishment in my life . In that season , to go from being an unknown guy who came with his buddies to have fun , just wanting to make the field , to have kept going the rest of the season and end up winning the championship while mixing it up with guys like Ronnie Davis , Bruce Thrift , Billy Albert , Aaron Glaser is still surreal .”
Even though Ferguson finished a very strong second in 2015 , he considers it a learning year that honed his mental game . “ I had my car working good last year and I was driving really well . Then in the middle of the year , I had a couple of red lights and it started getting in my head . I was going out early rounds and not winning any money , so I was worrying about that . I just got myself in a bad frame of mind , sabotaged myself mentally I think . I just started doing bad the rest of the year . It ’ s a very mental sport . Staying focused up there is the hardest part . You got to cut a good light . You have to stage perfectly , because it could affect your reaction time and your consistency , and you have to watch your opponent the whole way down the race track and make a decision if you ’ re going to lift or hit the override or just run it on through . Before you even race , you have to try and predict what you ’ re going to run . There are a lot of elements to bracket racing . For a driver , I think it ’ s a lot harder than heads-up racing .
“ I never count my eggs before they ’ re hatched but I was able to stay confident most of [ this ] year . When you lose your confidence , I think it really hurts your driving and that ’ s what happened to me last year . I beat myself . So I learned from that . And then this year , I just tried to keep a good frame of mind . I knew we had as good of a chance as anybody .”
One of the biggest battles Ferguson faced this season was also a mental and emotional one . At this year ’ s PDRA Spring Nationals , Ferguson ’ s friend and mentor and all-around racing legend , Ronnie Davis , succumbed to injuries from an on-track accident . Ferguson felt the ripples from the shock more than most .
“ It sucks . I really miss him . We had a lot of stuff we were talking about that we never got to do . We ’ d been talking about me possibly moving down to Georgia in fall of 2016 , to work for him in both his golf cart business and racing . We had talked about the possibility of me putting in some years with him , learning the golf cart business , and buying him out one day when he was ready for that . I think we would have gotten along good racing and working together . It was
pretty devastating . When you lose a close friend so unexpectedly like that , it ’ s pretty hard .”
Ferguson and all who knew Davis were certain that he wanted no one to stop racing . Ferguson continued the same fateful event where Davis crashed and ended up winning it in his friend ’ s honor . “ We all love this sport , and if he was willing to put his life on the line to do it , so was I . I was determined to go finish the deal out , hopefully win in his honor , and we ended up being able to
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