The following are excerpts from a teleconference featuring 2015 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Pro Stock world champion Erica Enders, Top Fuel world champion Antron Brown and current Funny Car points leader Del Worsham.
MODERATOR: Erica is the driver of the Elite Motorsports Chevy Camaro and claimed her second Pro Stock world championship with nine victories and 11 final-round appearances during the season. She has 21 career victories, which is the most by any female Pro Stock driver, and is now second on the all-time female win list behind Angelle Sampey. Erica, another incredible season for you and your Elite team, just wrapped up on Sunday. Have you had a chance to process it all yet?
ERICA ENDERS: Not really. I’ve been super busy since all of that happened with SEMA. Flew to Houston late last night, got meetings and stuff today. I haven’t had some downtime for it to set in. But Sunday was just an incredible day. To be able to lock up the championship after winning second round when my teammate Vincent (Nobile) beat Greg (Anderson), going on to win the race, it’s just like all this stuff is so storybook, so awesome. I’m really blessed to be a part of a great team and great organization at Elite Motorsports. Our season’s not over yet. We get to go to Pomona next week and plan on winning that one, too. We’ll see how it goes.
Q. How does the team stay hungry for Pomona?
ERICA ENDERS: We’re all racers. We all grew up at the racetrack. I started in a junior dragster. Rickie Jones was at the track when he was a little kid as well. We stay hungry because it’s our passion and we want to be the best. My guys are perfectionists. We go out and make an excellent run and win the race, then come back and analyze the data and say, We needed to do this and that. They just want to be perfect. Even though we were the best that day, they want to get better.
I’m the same way as a driver. I want to go in and just do the best that I can for the guys that work so incredibly hard for me. Yeah, I mean, we’re going to go to Pomona. We accomplished what we wanted to as far as the championship is concerned. That pressure is off of us. But we definitely want to go out there and finish the season strong.
Q. Looking through your numbers, it seems incredible that 2012 was your first race win. To go from 2012 now, two championships, 21 victories, talk about the last couple days being a whirlwind, but what has this been like to be right in the middle of all that?
ERICA ENDERS: It’s pretty surreal, to be honest. I mean, I spent my entire career trying to get to this point. I’ve said it a million times before, but I’ve had way more valleys than I’ve had peaks. It took me seven years trying to make Pro Stock work in order to get my first win. It just seemed like an eternity. Once that first win happened, I won a handful of races over at Cagnazzi’s. My career took a turn for the best when I joined Richard Freeman and Elite Motorsports. It just goes to show with the right people, anything is possible. Money and sponsorship doesn’t hurt, horsepower doesn’t hurt, but those things don’t win races, those things don’t win championships. It’s been proven over and over again because the most wealthy guys in the sport haven’t been able to get it done. We run on a very limited budget and we’ve been able to do it. It’s just the right group of people in the right places. We have great team chemistry. We’ve gelled so well. We work well together. We trust each other. Most importantly, we have fun. Having that much fun I feel like makes us even more successful on the racetrack. It has been a whirlwind to have been able to win 21 Pro Stock races in three years. It’s crazy. I had always hoped, but I never thought it would happen. Just goes to show that God’s timing is perfect.
MODERATOR: We’ll open it up for questions.
Q. To win two championships in a row, championships are never identical, what is the most important feeling you get with this championship?
ERICA ENDERS: I don’t know. That’s a tough question because, I mean, being able to accomplish what we did in the fashion that we did it in 2014, I didn’t think it could ever be topped. The first is always the best and the most memorable. But having the second and doing it back-to-back is pretty cool because I wanted to prove so badly that it wasn’t a fluke and that we do mean business. My guys are just incredible. The most important part of it is being able to enjoy the success with the people I care about the most. Last year, having it go down to the final round at the final race of the year, then this year it was so different because we were able to lock it up in Vegas with one more race to go. So we’ll go into Pomona kind of with a little bit of weight off our shoulders. At the same time, I just mentioned, we want to go out to Pomona and win that race as well. My guys are perfectionists and extremely competitive. To be able to do it back-to-back says so much about our team and what we’re capable of.
Q. From the short time from Las Vegas when you clinched the title for this year till now, have you been surprised by anyone at all who contacted you to congratulate you?
ERICA ENDERS: No. I mean, not really. I’ve gotten to spend some time with Shirley Muldowney since then. We did an event at SEMA yesterday. She’s in my hometown of Houston today, we’re having a luncheon together. Pretty cool to have somebody I’ve looked up to, mentored me, she’s been one of my biggest supporters. That’s been pretty awesome and surreal.
A ton of phone calls, thousands of emails and text messages. I spent the last two days at SEMA at Las Vegas, you can’t walk three feet without stopping and talking to somebody. It just shows that our fans are so loyal and they are so supportive of our sport, it’s pretty neat.
Q. This may be a little in advance, but how much hungrier does this make you to want to add championship number three and four and as many as you possibly can?
ERICA ENDERS: I definitely want to strike while the iron’s hot. We’ve got such a great program. It does make me more hungry. I didn’t think I could want anything more than I wanted the 2014 championship. But this year when we came out, I made a decision that I was going to play with all the heart that I got. I drove so much better this year than I drove last year. I drove good last year, but this year I drove even better. I really stepped up to the plate, and so did my guys. We struggled so much with the two new rule changes with the fuel and the tire this year. Next year the rule changes are going to be even more intense with going to fuel injection, having a 10, 500 rpm limiter, shorter wheelie bars. The rules are absolutely crazy. Having said that, I feel like I have the smartest and best guys in the business on our side. So I know our off-season is going to be full of a lot of hard work and testing. I feel like we can crawl our way back up to the top, and definitely it’s going to make us more hungry to prove that we can do it over and over again.
Q. For the first time in the history of the NHRA, with you winning your championship and Antron winning in Top Fuel in the same year, this is the first time we’ve had two champions that are of a diverse nature. Your accomplishments on the track obviously speak for themselves. But being a female racer, do you not like that term? Does it discount? Are you just a racer?
ERICA ENDERS: I’ve always just wanted to be a racer. That’s exactly what I am. I’m not just the best female Pro Stock driver, I’m the best Pro Stock driver right now because I have the best team and we won the championship again. The female aspect of it, it’s a question I get in every interview that I do. It’s just part of the program. It’s of interest to the fans, it’s of interest to the media. It’s awesome because it’s a male-dominated sport. We’re able to succeed in it regardless of gender, regardless of race for Antron (Brown). I think it’s awesome. It just goes to show what people are capable of. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, the color of your skin, what gender you are, what religion you are, we’re racecar drivers. That’s what I’ve strived to be. I think the more successful we are on the racetrack, the less people are going to look at the girl aspect of it.
Having said that, you play the cards that you’re dealt. I think it’s awesome and it’s interesting. I’m proud to be a part of the female movement with Alexis (DeJoria) and Courtney (Force) and Brittany (Force) and the other ladies out there who are competing and doing wonderful in our sport. It’s really neat. It’s a double-edged sword. I don’t know how to properly answer that question. But I’m proud of it. I’m proud to be a female racer. I’m proud to have the records that we have for females in our sport. My goal is to continue to strive to be the best drag racer in the world. I’ve got a long ways to go to catch Angelle, but that’s my next goal. We’ll see how it goes.
Q. Do you have goals for next season? Is it working with Jay, getting that super team now? What have you started to lay out for next season?
ERICA ENDERS: Next season is going to be awesome. We’re going to have four cars, myself, Jeg Coughlin, Vincent Nobile and Drew Skillman. So I think the talent level of those drivers is just awesome. I think all of us are going to get better because of the opportunity of working with each other. It’s no secret that Jeg is probably the best driver that Pro Stock has ever seen. To be able to race alongside of him, bounce things off of him, it’s going to be great. We raced a couple races together this year. Since then he raced at Indy was his last race. I talked to him on the phone over the weekend. He helps me in certain areas. When he came to race for us, I helped him get familiar with the racecar, clutch pedal setup, whatnot. I think we can make each other better. Vincent and Drew, they’re both talented drivers. I think next year is going to be wonderful. I’m very optimistic about it. Our goals are definitely high. We want to do better than we did the year before. We were able to do that in 2015. We were able to better ourselves from ’14, which looking at our season in 2014, you might think that would be hard to do. Definitely after this season, it’s going to be very hard to get better than that. That’s our goal, that’s what we strive for. I’m excited about the changes and the new teammates. I think the sky’s the limit with this group of people.
MODERATOR: Brown claims his second Top Fuel world champion with seven victories and nine final-round appearances. His Matco Tools dragster was one of the quickest and fastest of the season as evidenced by his six number one qualifying positions and his national record performance at Brainerd earlier this year. Antron, kind of compare how does this championship compare to your first one?
ANTRON BROWN: Well, I’ll tell you what, this championship right here, when you win this second one, the first one’s always going to be sentimental because it’s your first one. You finally as a team, a collective group, you figure out how to get the job done by winning that championship. Now the second one, we knew what was at task because what makes the second one so sweet, it makes it better than the first, is that the competition has evolved. The class as a whole has gotten extremely competitive, gotten extremely difficult, where we went from probably six to eight teams that were capable of winning races to now we have about 14 to 16 teams that can win races. We literally had a solid 10-car field that can actually contend for the world championship. With that being said, when we came in, we knew all of our work was cut out for us. Our team, Brian Corradi, Mark Oswald, our whole Matco Tools team, we went out there and had a game plan from the beginning of the year to attack. We’re going to attack every race like it’s a Countdown race. We knew we were going to have some mishaps and hiccups here and there, but we treated it as such. We grew. We were just priming our self for when the Countdown started. We were able to make the necessary adjustments and peak at the right time like we wanted to.
Q. Antron, you talked about that. You were no lower than fourth in the points, and you only had five first-round losses. Sometimes you look at a season, there’s ups and downs, testing parts. You guys were just solid all season long. Was that the game plan when you unloaded in Pomona in the first race of the year?
ANTRON BROWN: Absolutely. And the key was, you said five first-round losses only, right? The funny part is that in 2012, we won the championship, we only had two first-round losses, which was the last two races of the year. We came in with the same amount of points lead that we had this year and almost lost the championship to our teammate Tony Schumacher back then.
That’s the funny part. It shows you how much tougher this class is that we did have five first-round losses this year to very competitive teams. This whole year, I can honestly tell you that our team, we’re on pins and needles every race first round because we always had a tough first-round matchup. Even if we qualified No. 1, we lined up against Shawn Langdon or something like that. It didn’t make a difference where you qualified because that’s how tough the field was.
One car had a mishap, ended up being in the bottom half of the field, couldn’t bounce back up because of the weather conditions on Saturday, you had to race them first round. Vice versa, we were on the bottom half of the field where we went rounds and won, too. It just shows you how tough it is. Give you an example. What made it so crazy this year, we ran a .76. I believe that was in Dallas this year. It qualified as seventh in the field. No. 1 qualifier was .74 with a four. So 16-thousandths of a second was the difference between seventh to first. This class is at an all-time high. Lost this weekend to Kalitta by 5-thousandths of a second. We look at it now where you got to go out there and scrap. To get this championship done this year was very meaningful to our team. It’s almost like if you could just win a race, it’s nearly impossible. But to win the championship, you have done extremely a difficult feat in the class we have right now.
Q. When you look back at this season, what do you believe is the greatest thing you’ve learned that helped you get to the championship?
ANTRON BROWN: I think the greatest thing that we as a team learned honestly, I would have to say is we were focusing on our car not just to make it run quick and to set world records. I think the thing that we learned the most is we learned a formula that we applied to our racing. Literally it’s a formula to make our whole car more efficient, where we could produce the good numbers no matter what the track conditions are. For example, where you go out and the track could be 110 degrees, and before the best ET yielded on that was if you ran an 80 or 82 would be a phenomenal run, right? Now from a 110 to 120 degree track we can make our cars more efficient where we can run the 77, 78 time when the conditions get that hot. I think that’s been the biggest key to our success this year, to put out those phenomenal runs even as the track heats up and gets hotter.
Q. There are lots of drivers who win one championship. It seems like they don’t win again. When someone wins a second championship and looks competitive enough to win even more, there’s a difference in that person. You personally, what’s the greatest thing you think you learned about yourself and about your effort?
ANTRON BROWN: I think the thing I learned about myself is, for one, I’m not the type of individual that likes to settle, okay? I can see that amongst our whole team as a whole because it takes more than just what I do behind the wheel of that racecar. I think what it really shows is I surround myself by unique individuals with the same determination and passion. Not just that, but the work ethic, willing to do what it takes to get to that next level. For me personally, I don’t like losing. The thing about it is that I critique myself at a hard level each and every time. I break things down, I break the film down. I come watch races. I have a TiVo, DVR, watch it, break it down as a science so I can go back and work on things where I’m weak at, where I need to be stronger at. The thing about it is, I don’t want to be out there to be out there. Our careers are only so long in life. I don’t want to look back and say, Hey, I wish I could have did this or could have did that. I want to look back and say, We accomplished some great things. Right now the way I’ve raced my career, I can honestly tell you I can’t go back and change anything, because everything I did I put my all into everything. Every time I step into that racecar, I give my team my all, like they give me their all. That’s the reason why I think we have been so successful over all these years that we’ve been in Top Fuel so far.
Q. Antron, how do you stay hungry for Pomona? What is the team mindset going in? Is it a victory lap or put an exclamation on that and get that last win?
ANTRON BROWN: Let me tell you something. Right now, they were trying to crown us champs in Las Vegas. We got the championship. The thing about it is, we’re still in competition. I literally told them, Pictures, do you want to do them now? I’m like, We still got a race we’re racing. Our whole focus was still on Vegas. That’s the same thing for Pomona. We’re still trying to make a little bit more history before this year’s out. I mean, we would love to end the year on a win. Even though we have won the world championship, it’s all said and done, people may think that your work is done, but our work’s not done. It’s not complete yet. We have one more race on the table. The only difference of it is, there’s no strategy involved in this last race. There’s no going up there and saying, Okay, we’re racing first round, we know the track can go out and hold maybe a 74 or 73, but do you shoot yourself in the foot, try to run that, or do you go out there and try to run a solid lap like 76 to 78. Hopefully we have enough to get the round win. You got equation that gives you the higher probability to get the job done. Do you follow what I’m saying? We’re going to Pomona, going up there to qualify. We’re not worried about the qualifying points. We can go out there and have some fun with it, go, All right, in our gauge the track says it can hold a 71. Maybe we can go out there and say, Let’s see if we can run a 69. You get what I mean? Now we have the leeway to push it even harder, don’t have to worry about what happens afterwards. You know what I mean? That will make it. You don’t have to worry about tap dancing or doing strategy no more. Now we can go in there and let our hair down, but I don’t have no hair to let down, so we’ll give it all we got, have some fun with it, go out and be aggressive. The weather’s going to be right and it’s going to be fast enough to go out there and throw down.
Q. Antron, what’s been the biggest difference in this season compared to other seasons, including the title season? You guys are never lower than fourth all year long. Did that give you an added sense of confidence that you guys were going to do all right? In the past, you were up and down, you lose, drop in points. This year you’ve been right at the top all year long. Did you feel the pressure or did you welcome that pressure? How do you do that?
ANTRON BROWN: Well, I’ll be honest with you. The funny part is that honestly, I never even realized we stayed in the top four all season long. I knew we were first coming out of Pomona, like third or fourth after that race in Phoenix, I think we came back, I don’t know if we won Phoenix or not, something like that, we ended up going to No. 1 in points. I know we were back in fourth. But our whole goal was we didn’t focus on the whole season. I’m going to be honest with you. What we focused on, it’s something we just did, Brian, our crew chief, with Mark, they came into the shop, they said, You know what, guys, maybe we need to set up for the Countdown. No, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to make sure we have enough stuff we can go all year long on, get a combination we can run all year and tweak it. Our goal is we’re going to focus on each and every race, try to win each and every race. Some races we had to try some things because we couldn’t test in between races. We tried a few things here and there. They weren’t big things but little things that we thought could make us better. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t. We tried them in qualifying once we qualified in the top half of the field. That’s what we did through all the first races. When Indy came, we used all the stuff we ran so good with and refocused it. That got us to where we were at. We were focusing one run at a time instead of looking at the overall picture. Even when we got into the Countdown, we continued that mindset. It paid great dividends at the end. The pressure didn’t get to us because we didn’t look at the whole picture at stake because we’ve been in so many Countdowns now where we did that and messed up, the pressure, we left one thing unbuttoned, something like that, bam, then your pants fall down. This year we made sure we had everything zipped up, buckled on tight. We took it one round at a time. We focused on every little step and it paid off.
Q. One round at a time, that’s an awful lot of rounds for a whole year.
ANTRON BROWN: Yes, it is. At the end of the year you look back and say, Hey, we won close to over 50 rounds, because you focus on each round without forgetting the small details that win races. That’s what it boils down to.
Q. That’s a whole new concept, if you’re just looking at the immediate goal. Are you going to change this for next year? Have you hit a formula that you want to keep?
ANTRON BROWN: I think we have a good formula that we want to keep. When we focus on the task that’s right in front of us, you never miss the small details that will bite you. We’ve learned that. We learned that through experience through the other deals. Even when we won that championship in 2012, we should have sealed that deal up. All we had to do was win one round at Vegas. We had a deal that broke on us in that first round, something that never breaks, something that never goes wrong. We have a fuel line broke us on us at Pomona. We were out in front by a mile those first rounds. Something breaks on the track, don’t even make it to the finish line because the power chute deploys. There’s a million ways to lose, and there’s only a few ways to win. What we have to focus on is how to stop, go over the checklist, check things twice, have other people double-check each other, focus on all the small details we have to do before each round, not get consumed with all the other stuff that’s happening outside of us. We did that this year, and it showed us how great we can be in them circumstances where it looks like we were unbeatable. The thing about it was we were doing solid runs and producing them each and every lap. That’s what makes you contend and go for championships like we did this year.
Q. Does that put pressure on you as a driver, knowing you have to do this each and every round?
ANTRON BROWN: Well, the thing about it is you know the pressure involved. That’s the moment you live for. You live for these moments. The thing about it is, you don’t let them define you, you know what I mean, you let them build the person who you are. Each of us, we know what we have to do. Like you just don’t win the moment when it happens. It comes through preparation throughout the year. I look back and we prepared ourselves. You learn from your mistakes. We had some mistakes this year. We lost five first rounds this year. We lost some races that we should have won. You know what I mean? We won seven races, but I could sit here and tell you it’s probably 11 or 12 races we could have won this year. I made mistakes. We all made mistakes this year as a team collectively. The important part is that we learned from them and it helped us evolve into a team that came into the Countdown. Every time I came to the start line, especially since Indy, we could have won if we beat Dave Connolly. I messed up on the tree. I didn’t mess up by much, I cut a 70 light. Dave cut a 50 light. That team beat us by a hole shot. What it did was for me it was a wake-up call. The good Lord said, Hey, the Countdown is coming, you better be right. You can’t go up there a half step any time. When I went up there in the Countdown every round, I made sure I was ready before I turned that stage bulb on every time. The guys made sure that car was prepared flawlessly. Brian, Mark, all the Matco boys, gave me a dominant car all throughout this season, including the Countdown, where they didn’t skip a beat. We got down track first round, we improved every round of eliminations that we made it to. So with that being said, that’s what wins championships.
Q. With you winning the championship, Erica winning the championship, for the first time we have two racers of a diverse nature in the same season winning a championship. You’ve studied the sport. You know a lot about it. Having that distinction, is that a point of pride that shows how diverse and welcoming the NHRA is to all of our racers?
ANTRON BROWN: Yeah, well, the funny part is, like, we talk about this all the time, this ain’t nothing new for our sport. That’s the honest truth about it. It goes way back to Shirley back in the ’70s. You know what I mean? That’s what the sport of drag racing is. We all respect one another not for what gender or race we are. We’re racers. I was a kid walking around the local drag strips, my dad and uncle racing the sportsman wrecks. I’m sure Del grew up that way. Erica grew up in junior dragsters. It’s all we knew. We were working on cars and doing stuff. The thing about it is, what it gives me is a great sense of pride of our sport, NHRA racing, because it has so many openings, and it’s wide open for anybody to come out and race, whether it’s on a moped, a go-kart, a four-wheeler, junior dragsters now, any kind of fast vehicle, doing it in a controlled environment. I think that’s something that makes our sport so special. I was able to walk up as a kid and see my heroes and see how great this sport was. That gave me my sense of hope to becoming who I am today because I was able to see it, touch it, and say, Hey, I could be here one day. That’s something that’s so special about our sport. You’re able to come out and see the dream. When you’re able to see it, touch it, feel it, it’s very easy for you to become that dream. I’m living proof of it because I’m living the dream every day.
MODERATOR: Del is the 2011 Top Fuel world champion and is seeking his first Funny Car world championship when the season concludes in Pomona. He currently has a 38-point lead over Jack Beckman following the most recent event in Las Vegas. Del, how is this a little bit different maybe than your 2011 championship battle in Top Fuel?
DEL WORSHAM: The first thing that’s different about it, I’m coming into the finals with a lead. In 2011, I don’t believe I came into the race with a lead. There were four of us racing for the championship. It was kind of a matter of seeing who was left over in the end, who was left in the final round. That’s a little different coming into 2015. We’ve won several races, we’ve had a very strong car, probably pretty much the strongest car through the Countdown as opposed to 2011, we had the strongest car before the Countdown. A little different scenario. But a lot of similarities.
Q. Is it something you’re looking forward to, coming into Pomona with the proverbial target on your back?
DEL WORSHAM: Oh, yeah. Really all season long, we were building this combination, the team was getting together, we were making final rounds. I made the comment multiple times a real goal of ours, especially at the beginning of the season, was just to get to the finals with an opportunity to win the championship, the opportunity that if you win the race, you could be the Mello Yello NHRA champion. We accomplished that, got there. If we win the race, we will be the champions, I believe. It’s just kind of in our hands.
Q. During the middle part of the summer, Jack (Beckman) and Matt (Hagan) were putting up all these big numbers, a lot of attention was paid to those two cars. Did you guys just kind of sit back and go, We got this, we’re confident, we’re consistent, we’ll let that shake out? Was there any worry or did you pretty much have your game plan set during that timeframe?
DEL WORSHAM: Well, we kind of had a game plan. I felt pretty comfortable with it. Felt things were going pretty well up through Seattle. We got to Denver, we didn’t do real well there. We went to Sonoma, watched Jack win that race. We did okay there. I thought maybe the sea level, Jack and them are coming off of Denver, they have a little momentum. So kind of we’d be okay. We go to Seattle, he outruns us by a pretty good amount. By the time we got to the semifinals in Seattle, we were running close to where he was. I felt like things are okay here. Got to the final round and dropped the ball, lost that final round, which we definitely should have won, to Tommy Johnson. Left Seattle, felt like we closed the gap. Whatever happened with Jack, we were right there in the field and we were going to be okay. Then came Brainerd. We rolled in there and found out our car was not competitive with Jack or Tim Wilkinson or any of the Schumacher cars or Force cars. After Brainerd, a first-round loss, we had a meeting. We had a test day set up for Indy on Thursday. We were going to get everything dialed in for Indy, get ready for the Countdown. Leaving Brainerd, I went to our team manager, Jim Oberhofer, I said, We better get straight over to Indy and start testing because we don’t have a fast enough car here. I jumped in the hauler, drove with the guys. I was scheduled to go home. We started Wednesday morning and put together a pretty good little combination there and felt like we definitely closed the gap to a certain degree. Again, Jack still had a little bit of a performance advantage on us. Ran Indy. We had a couple decent runs. Went out in the semifinals, not by performance, probably more by luck, getting down the track. Took another hard look at the situation, our car, where we were, knew that some more changes had to be made. We’ve been missing one thing on the car. We knew a couple things they were doing over there. They made this huge exhaust header change on their car and we hadn’t done it. Didn’t think too much about it. Back in the past, ’95 through 2005, we kind of made those changes on and off, didn’t really see a big change in it. After reviewing some video of our car and Jack’s car, his car was definitely leaving the starting line different than ours. I believe Monday night of Indy, we got together at JR Todd’s house, called the header manufacturer, said, Hey, we’re missing something here. Our car is fast, but Jack has 500ths on us, we need to do something. He built us some headers. I’m not sure if he built Jack’s headers or not. But they were more of Jack’s design. We put them on in Charlotte and it definitely was the missing key. Instant results from that point forward.
Q. Del, when you look at your chance to win this championship, if you can achieve your goal, what will it mean to you when you look back at your entire career and see this championship?
DEL WORSHAM: It will definitely be pretty amazing. When I came into Funny Car racing, I was 20 years old, my goal was just to get a license and possibly qualify for an NHRA event. I didn’t really start off, let’s say like Antron Brown or Jack Beckman, in a professional race, in a car that could win races or a championship. I started off with my dad, one partner, little trailer, one car, one spare engine. We went race to race back in the early ’90s trying to get the NHRA money, collect it, go to the next race, just learn how to qualify and win rounds. My goals changed as the years went on. Finally 1997 came along. We had a little bit of money to play with. At that point the goal became not just qualifying for events but to make top 10 and make a run at the championship. It would be pretty special. From 1997 to today, when we finally have the funding to go out and race against John Force Racing for the championship, that has been going on pretty much the last 20 years of my life.
Q. Del, it probably seems like an eternity from Vegas to Pomona. What are you doing to control your anticipation and butterflies of getting back in the car?
DEL WORSHAM: You’re not going to believe what I’m doing right now. I’m still in Las Vegas right now. Anyway, in the middle of all this racing and everything else I do, I kind of started this kind of like drive this car, upgrading licensing processing for upcoming racers, or if you’re on alcohol racer, sportsman racer, you want to become a professional racer, I’ve been putting people in my personal Funny Car that my dad and I own, Top Fuel dragster, use it for the same thing. On Monday we had a client who ran well, a 4.16, towards his goal of becoming a professional racer at some time. I have another gentleman out here, Ray Martin, who is a sportsman racer, races pro modified. After I do this, we’re going straight to the starting line to make his first run for the day in the Funny Car. I have my Top Fuel dragster out here. Going to make a couple runs on it to get it prepared. I’m still in Las Vegas. I’m still drag racing. I’m still involved. My hands are dirty. I’ve been working on the car. It’s nice because I don’t have to sit around and worry about or think about what’s coming.
Q. Should you be the third person to ever win a championship in both Top Fuel and Funny Car, what would that mean to you?
DEL WORSHAM: It would definitely be really cool. Like I said, I didn’t start off drag racing or being a driver to win championships. I started off just to get to drive a cool car, a Funny Car, something I’d watched my whole life. So to win the championship in 2011 with Allen Johnson, Sheik Al-Anabi, was definitely very special, something that I could never describe or even tell you how special it was. But this chance now in a Funny Car, what I started in, being a part of this team, kind of being part of building this whole Funny Car with Nicky (Boninfante), Jon-o, Connie Kalitta, building this thing for Scott, it would mean a lot to win the championship. Icing on the cake and bonus is to get to win in both classes.
Q. You brought up Connie Kalitta’s name. What would it mean to bring another championship to that team and to be able to bring that home and present it, to be able to share that with Connie, who is obviously one of the legends out here?
DEL WORSHAM: It would mean more than I can describe. Connie, they paid the ultimate sacrifice there with his son Scott. For him to keep his car out here racing in his honor, his name, trying to finish what they started with Funny Car. They were very successful Top Fuel racers. So the Funny Car, it had some good days, bad days, kind of up and down, all over the place. He stuck with it, stuck with his people, stuck with his crew chiefs, Nicky and Jon-o, that entire team. Very little turnover since I got here in 2013 to drive this car. A very dedicated group of individuals starting from my DHL team to the entire Kalitta Motorsports. It would be, I would say, end up being the highlight of my career if we could bring this off and bring this to Connie Kalitta personally for what they’ve gone through, the grieving they’ve gone through, what they’ve put into drag racing, what they sacrificed for it.
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