Drag Illustrated Issue 120, April 2017 | Page 26

Dirt Quain Stott faces obstacles in preserving drag racing history By Ian Tocher Q uain Stott is dressed head- to-toe in white, true to the style of many drag racers of the late-‘60s, as he stands between two period- correct gassers completing their burnouts at Montgomery Raceway Park. As the cars roll to a stop, a pair of pretty, back-up girls step in front of them, one wears a miniskirt, the other a bell-bottomed pantsuit. Following a couple of old-school dry hops, the cars stage and leap off the line in a heads-up run to finish line, an eighth of a mile away. No ETs or speeds flash across the scoreboards, though, not even in qualifying, just a simple win light to indicate the quicker run. It’s all part of the grand illusion Stott is at- tempting to create with his South East Gassers Association (SEGA), formally established in 2012 after a successful one-off affair the previous fall. “When people come to a South East Gassers event I want them to feel like they’re almost step- ping back in time, getting to see what drag racing 26 | D r a g I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com was all about back then. And as far as gassers go, real gassers, there are two things that have to happen,” Stott insists. “They have to burn gasoline and they have to run heads up—no exceptions. “They truth is, if we hadn’t have come along five or six years ago, the fans would be done thinking that gassers bracket raced in the 1960s because that’s all they ever see. And that’s just not true,” he contin- ues. “It just kills me. And I don’t hate bracket rac- ing, not by a long shot. I have relatives and friends that bracket race, I help them with their cars, but I hate a gasser that bracket races because they never done it. You can’t claim you’re having a 1960s gasser race if there’s any kind of disqualification for going too fast.” After starting out a bracket racer himself in 1975, Stott eventually made his name in the rough- and-tumble Pro Mod ranks of the 1990s and 2000s, racking up 14 consecutive top-10 IHRA point finishes and reaching the pinnacle of the class in 2006 with the IHRA Pro Modified world championship. Stott drifted over to the ADRL after that, where he notched four national-event wins in the p r e m i e r Pr o Extreme class before gradu- ally becoming disillusioned with increased automation in the cockpit; so much so that in a not-so-subtle protest he actu- ally changed the word preceding his name over the doors of his ’63 Corvette from “Driver” to “Rider.” Always known as a tough competitor and will- ing to speak his mind, Stott also was considered one of the “good guys,” popular with drag rac- ing fans and foes alike. That’s what makes it so Issue 120 Gasser Wars