Drag Racing Since 1967
By Tom Neal
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media
Drag racing is the hobby that keeps us busy, broke, frustrated, and happy all at the same time.
We race at tracks around the Pacific Northwest, with Woodburn Dragstrip being our home track. Bremerton Raceway and Pacific Raceways are regular stops, and we're always looking for another track to go screw around at.
We're living out of a motorhome, towing the race car and all the tools we think we're going to need. It's not a business, and it's not a career.
It's just what we do.
We spend weekends at the drag strip with family, break stuff, fix it, spend money we probably didn't have to begin with, and then do it all over again.
The funny thing is, this isn't something we started.
Drag racing has been part of this family for nearly sixty years.
My wife's father was introduced to drag racing in 1965, and it didn't take long for it to take hold. By 1967, he was racing at local tracks in a 1937 Ford Business Coupe.
He bought that car when he was twelve years old.
He still owns it today.
The racetrack is also where he met his future wife.
They eventually raised three kids — two sons and a daughter — and all three grew up around racing. Both sons still compete, and their daughter, my wife, was never really given much of a chance to escape it.
Racing didn't stop with them.
A cousin races. Both of his kids race. One of them went on to become the NHRA Sportsman World Champion in 2024.
Both of my wife's brothers now have kids of their own, and all six of those kids race.
My wife and I have two children. One races.
And now there are two grandchildren waiting in the wings, already being introduced to the Jr. Dragster class.
At this point, calling it a hobby almost seems like an understatement.
This is just what this family does.
And apparently, it gets passed down whether you want it to or not.
One of the things I find interesting about this family isn't just how long they've been racing. It's how long they've kept the cars.
My wife's father still races that 1937 Ford Business Coupe.
The oldest brother still runs his first car, a 1965 Ford Falcon Sedan Delivery.
A cousin still owns his first car, a 1957 Chevy two-door wagon.
These aren't cars that got sold off when something newer came along. They're part of the family history.
Then there's my wife's Mustang.
She was fourteen years old when she and her dad pulled a 1969 Ford Mustang out of a bunch of blackberry bushes.
It wasn't exactly a race car at the time.
They spent years bringing it back to life, putting the interior back in it, rebuilding the suspension and brakes, and getting the running gear sorted out. For the first few seasons, it ran a pretty humble 250 inline-six.
Then I came along.
Things changed.
The Mustang eventually got a 302 V8, a heavy-duty C4 transmission, a narrowed Maverick 8-inch rear end, Granada front spindles and brakes, and a conversion from four-lug to five-lug wheels.
Of course, that wasn't the end of it.
Hot rods are never done.
Today, the Mustang runs a 351 Windsor, a C4 transmission rebuilt by a fellow Woodburn racer, and a 9-inch rear end with 3.89 gears and a Detroit Locker.
And now we're doing it again.
The 351 Windsor is being rebuilt, because apparently we weren't quite busy enough.
After the top end work was completed, the test run felt like a low-12-second car from the seat of my pants.
I'm hoping for a 12.10 or better.
And if she manages to run 11.99 this year, we may both pee our pants.
That's racing.
You spend years building something, changing something, fixing something, testing something, and trying to make it just a little bit faster.
Then you get to the track and discover that the car has its own opinions.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes you break something before you even get a decent run.
And sometimes everything comes together for one pass that makes all the bullshit worth it.
That's part of why we keep doing it.
Because the racing isn't really just about the number on the scoreboard.
It's the family.
It's the cars.
It's the people we've met at the track.
It's loading everything into the trailer, towing it somewhere, setting up the motorhome, unloading the car, making a few passes, fixing whatever broke, and doing it all again the next weekend.
It's watching the next generation get interested in the same thing that grabbed their parents and grandparents decades earlier.
And eventually, if we're lucky, the same cars will still be sitting around for the next generation to mess with.
Drag racing has been part of this family since 1967.
Four generations later, we're still at it.
I don't see that changing anytime soon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Neal is the founder of Bigfoot Trails Basecamp, an independent adventure media project built around real experiences. He’s spent most of his life around vehicles, motorcycles, racing, travel, and projects that tend to take longer and cost more than originally planned.
After decades of doing all that stuff, he’s learned that the best stories usually aren’t the ones you planned. They’re the people you meet, the places you stumble across, the things that go wrong, and the moments you never expected.
That’s what he wants to capture with BTB.
He doesn’t want to write about adventure from the outside. He wants to go experience it, then tell you what happened.
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media
