Drag Illustrated Issue 152, January 2020 | Page 33

Special Section
ELITE TOP DRAGSTER
KELLAN FARMER
Kellan Farmer had a point to prove when he set
out on his 2019 Lucas Oil Elite Top Dragster world
championship hunt. Farmer, the Race Tech Race
Cars shop foreman, wanted to dispel a myth that
Race Tech cars wouldn’t be competitive in fast
bracket racing applications.
With an event win and the championship in
hand, Farmer feels he proved his point.
“We really got our point across, especially since
it was my first season running that fast,” says Farmer,
26. “You can’t really tell me that it was driver experi-
ence. I’m pretty much going to count most of my
wins to that car and how consistent it was. It could
just go rounds. It proved our point, and just having
all our hard work pay off made it worth it.”
Perhaps Farmer’s biggest challenge of the
season presented itself in late summer when he
suffered a high-speed wreck during an evening
test session to prepare for the final few races. His
nitrous-assisted Race Tech dragster was totaled,
but friend and customer Phil Unruh loaned him
his new twin-turbo dragster to finish the season.
Farmer and his father, Russ, had to learn the new
combo, while Kellan also had to mentally move
past the crash.
“I had just come out of wrecking a race car,”
Farmer says. “I got in that thing and it was wanting
to hit the wall almost every pass. It was not fun.
I was not having a good time. But I wanted this championship bad. I’m telling you, it has been a
dream of mine to be a champion since I was a
little kid, so I wasn’t going to give it up. I was
scared to death. I still had the willingness to do
it, but man, was I scared.”
Farmer failed to qualify at the penultimate
race at Darlington, though he pulled out a semi-
final finish to hold off Brian Bednar and his su-
percharged entry.
East Coast Nationals at her home track, GALOT,
then won the Summer Nationals at South Georgia
before falling to her boyfriend, Noah Johnson, in
the Northern Nationals final round in Ohio.
Messer was crowned the champion during the
Darlington race when her closest challenger, Steven Boone, went out early.
“Of course, the races before, my dad was so
worried,” Messer says. “Me and him would have
talks and be like, ‘Look, it’s all in God’s hands. He
already has it all planned out for us.’ The best we
can do is go out there and have fun.”
TOP DRAGSTER 32
KIMBERLY MESSER
Kimberly Messer’s Lucas Oil Top Dragster 32 world
championship season speaks to not just her and
her father Ricky’s talent and determination, but
also to the success of the PDRA Jr. Dragster ranks
to develop new talent to feed the “big car” ranks.
Messer, 19, closed out her Jr. Dragster career in
2018 and went right to work in Top Dragster 32
in 2019.
“Me and Dad, we’ve always been a team,”
Messer says. “We’ve always had that and we
knew we could do it. It wasn’t that we were
doubting ourselves, but with it being my first
year, we just didn’t have those [championship]
intentions. We were going out there, having fun,
making memories.”
Despite those modest goals, Messer strung
together a season that also netted her the 2019
PDRA Sportsman Rookie of the Year honors. She
opened the year with a runner-up finish at the
PDRA660.com 33