STARCHER GOING FOR $101,000 AT HUNTSVILLE

Thanks to an associate sponsorship from Torco Racing Fuels, Josh Starcher, driving for team owner Virgil Hartman, will drive the team's second car at the $101,000-to-win Top Fuel "Rocket City Nationals" on July 1-3 at George Howard's Huntsville (AL) Dragway. Starcher and teammate John Smith will join IHRA World Champ Clay Millican in the hunt for the big winner's check, to be presented by "Big" himself.

With the unexplained withdrawal by Don Schumacher's U.S. Army-backed team, other teams have expressed interest in attending the unique eighth-mile Top Fuel event, which features a Top Fuel purse of over 190,000 bucks. Other teams pre-entered include the David Powers team with "Hot Rod" Fuller driving, Jack Ostrander's two-car team with drivers Louis Allison and Ron Bix, Jack White's team with driver Tim Gibson, IHRA star Bruce Litton, Galveston candy maker Mitch King, Missouri's own Scott Palmer, and Chicago's Zizzo family racing.

A $10,000-to-win invitational Pro Mod race will also be part of the event. (Jeff Burk photo) [5-25-2005]

NOW WATCH YOUR MOUTH

Agent 1320 was watching the "Top End" interviews during the ESPN broadcast of NHRA's POWERade Columbus event and it was very evident that, like NASCAR, the NHRA PC police have the power. They've basically neutered Whit Bazemore's post race interviews and now they're trying to make sure that fans hear nothing out of drivers mouth but a laundry list of their sponsors instead of some real emotion and excitement from a driver in the heat of battle.

Here are a couple of examples: An obviously excited Gary Scelzi uttered the word "hell" during his interview and you could hear someone off camera yelling to him, "Don't cuss!" Then in his Top End interview John Force said something to the effect of, "I don't know what to say since they won't let me cuss."

Please, someone save us! Have any of the people who've made the decision to sanitize the personality of racing's drivers (for our protection?) ever watched or listened to any of the dialog on primetime network TV or cable? Words like hell or damn don't have much shock value in today's world where they are showing people getting their heads cut off on television. Give the Agent a break, you guys, and please quit trying to turn the men and women who drive these cars into talking billboards with all of the humor and entertainment value of an IRS audit.  (Dianne Patrizzi cartoon)  [5-25-2005]

DEPT OF CORRECTIONS

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The Agent is either going to have to check into the Betty Ford clinic or get his medication adjusted 'cause he just can't seem to get the facts straight these days. In the note yesterday concerning Troy Coughlin's Pro Street debut at Bowling Green, KY, the Agent got the event and sanctioning body wrong. The race is a National Muscle Car Association sanctioned race not an NSCA event and it is part of the NMCA Pro Edelbrock Series.

Also, reader Chris Step emailed to let us know that Ron Fassl had actually run a 5.296/278.52 last year during the IHRA sanctioned Night under Fire at Tulsa Raceway Park, which is quicker than Fassl's 5.317/286.07 at Bandimere.  [5-25-2005]