Does it really take a $60,000 dragster to win the big money bracket bucks today?

Photos by Dale Wilson
8/8/03

Dale Wilson is a bracket racing "retiree" who was editor of Bracket Racing USA from 1991 to its demise in 1998. His latest dream is to return to racing in either a front-engine dragster, a slow motorcycle or the family Mazda wagon. Everything else he has is for sale.

'm always reminded of the comment that Super Pro Vega racer Kenny Brown's wife, Molly, made to a bunch of us one day several years ago when we were racing on a Sunday afternoon at Otto Timms' Paradise Drag Strip in Calhoun, Georgia. Molly was at the time a novice bracket spectator and husband-supporter.

"Why, shoot," she said when she figured out what Kenny was doing to win a round or two. "This stuff is easy. All you have to do is get a good reaction time and run close to what you dial in, and then you win." We all laughed. "That's true, Molly, but there's more to it than that."

Indeed there is. I can remember at a big five-day race at DeSoto Drag Strip in Florida years ago when good friend Ron Folk of Illinois scored a runner-up finish. His reaction time was in the .530 range, and the guy who beat him had something slightly better, like a .520 or so. Okay, so cool. That was the typical reaction time of 10 years ago. Now I'll fast-forward to the B&M Million Dollar race a couple of years ago at Atlanta Dragway, when Ed Richardson of Mullis Race Cars in Florida won the race with a .502 tree and a one-number-high run. Opponent Jeff O'Neill of Pennsylvania had a .516 and was a couple of numbers off on his dial and got runner-up.

Seems like the latter numbers are the ones flashing up on the scoreboards today; double-oh trees and dead-on-with-a-zero passes. Today's bracket racing is getting tighter than Dick's hat band.

Dale Wilson's wife, Fran, has a "new" dragster under the roof. It is not a high-dollar piece, but with luck, determination and the right combination, it could be a bracket winner.

But does it take a slick-painted, four-link/mono-shock/slip-joint/front shock vs. back shock dragster that costs as much as a two-bedroom house in lower Alabama to win the big dollars today?

Ray Miller of Ray Miller Race Cars in Brooksville, Florida builds those $60,000 (and up)(turn-key) dragsters, and races one too. His Miller Race Cars rear-engine dragster could win a World of Wheels car show anywhere in the country. Chrome is here, powder coating is there, and the paint job itself would put a California street rodder's House of Color sheen-shine to shame.

He has a single-word answer to my question -- "No."