“THAT’S HOW I’VE KIND OF ENDED UP STAYING IN PRO STOCK.
I’M NOT A THRILL SEEKER FOR SPEED. I DO ENJOY
THE ACCELERATION. LIKE I SAID, I ENJOY THE CHALLENGE
OF THE PERFECT ROUNDS AND THE IMPERFECT RUNS.”
With that being said, it seems like the recent
criticisms of the sport have always gone back
to Pro Stock. Do you feel like the class has been
picked on the last handful of years?
I don’t know if “picked on” is the right word.
Pro Stock, as we know it, that started in the ‘60s
as damn near factory hot rods; they were factory
hot rods, you know what I mean? There’s been
so many transitions over the years and then it
just kind of stopped, say from the early 1990s
all the way through to 2016 when we went to
fuel injection. The technological advances didn’t
stop, just the class itself with keeping up with
its counterparts coming out of the factory, or
Detroit, in our case. They didn’t parallel as they
did in the earlier lives of Pro Stock. I think that
was one of the early appeals of the class because,
quite frankly, they didn’t have fire coming out of
the headers, they didn’t have big superchargers
on them, burning nitromethane like Top Fuel
or Funny Car. I can’t tell you why things didn’t
change or stay pace in those couple of decades.
But I think the class is in a good spot, I really do.
You’ve stepped away from the sport on a pro-
fessional level a couple of different times, com-
ing back the latest time in 2015 with Richard
Freeman and Elite Motorsports. That’s been a
unique pairing and something a little different
as far as your career is concerned. What was it
about the Elite Motorsports opportunity and
working with Richard that drew you back?
I’ve tried to retire from this path several times,
genuinely. I did step away from it at the end of
2011 and didn’t really have an intent to come back.
My friends at Mopar and Dodge were very eager
to put a program together, and we got together
and were able to put a really neat program to-
gether. When I completed that contract in 2014,
I had elected to step away again and I genuinely
did not plan on racing professionally again.
I’ve got a couple of cars that I bracket race and
a couple of cars that I have access to that I can
race in the Lucas Oil series and that was perfectly
fine for me. My wife’s a racer as well, so we were
racing together in that format and that works
out really well. But, Richard Freeman asked me
to come out and drive a car since Drew Skillman
wasn’t racing the West Coast Swing (in 2015)
and, you know, we did very well. We got to the
semifinals in Sonoma and the finals in Seattle.
Richard and I, we’ve always talked about racing
together. At that time, we had known each other
a good 10 years and had kind of grown up in the
sport a little bit together. We always had fun when
we were together as far as just BS’ing and maybe
going out for dinner or whatever the case may