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Jake began racing the Mustang at age 14, without a state
driver’s license but with a waiver from the NHRA Division
2 office, in Sportsman brackets. His granddaddy, Larry Goolsby,
of Tallapoosa, Georgia, owned the Mustang before him, and
he let Jake race it when he figured it was time to become
the ‘Stang’s crew chief. But long before then,
Jake Bonner had become well acquainted with Sportsman brackets.
“I had been coming to the track with him and my uncle,
Steve Cole [a famed Southern dragster racer, from Tallapoosa]
since I was seven,” Jake says.
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| Grandpa Larry Goolsby, who once owned
grandson Jake's Mustang, tries out the new Hedman headers
for a race fit. |
“Pe-Paw Goolsby taught me how to do it --- how to stage,
how to judge the far end, dialing in the car,” Jake
says. “I wanted to race. He hurt his back at work and
couldn’t race any more, so the car was just sitting
there.
“Since I was little, I had always backed the car off
the trailer, and (by 17) I wanted to drive it. We got the
waiver so I could race.” The car was his cousin Billy
Bridge’s car, who bought it new. Goolsby bought it from
him and sold it to Jake’s cousin, where it sat in a
barn for 12 years, then bought it back and had it painted,
and the family turned it into a race car after that. It has
always been footbrake-raced. Jake put a delay box in it this
year to go to the Super Pro Challenge at Montgomery, but found
he prefers footbrake action.
In the car, Bonner won several of local 7-oh and 7.50 races,
heads-up, off a 4-tenths tree. He won two in a row at Southeastern
International Dragway in Dallas, Georgia, last year. And in
bracket racing, he won once at Alabama International Dragwawy
in Steele, Alabama, when he was 15. He took runner-up at a
Hattisburg, Mississippi, B&M race on Sunday last year,
and was the Southeastern Dragway High School bracket champion
in 2004. Jake got down to six cars at the Division 2 bracket
race of champs, and finished 17 in class in 2004 B&M points,
racing from Memphis to Bristol to Hattisburg and tracks in
South Carolina, plus Alabama and Georgia in between. His crew
is “Pe-Paw” Goolsby and mom Wendy. Jake had never
met Dick Brannan before the Hedman meeting.
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| Dick Brannan shows Bonner his latest
model offering, Brannan's original maroon Thunderbolt. |
Having Dick Brannan help a fledging Footbraker is like having
heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield in your corner at the
Friday night fights. “I’m going to help him along
a little bit. I’m going to watch him race and try to
put the car together and make it more competitive. I think
after we go through this thing, he’s going to really
learn what this kind of racing is about and really enjoy it,”
Brannan says.
Brannan's job will be to get all into Jake's car and tell
him what they can do with it. It’ll take more than a
short interview to do it. “It will take time to spend
with him, to help him go." Brannan says. "Advice.
Coaching, you might say. We have to get his engine right.
How is it set up? We have to get the headers right, we have
to tune everything with everything involved in that car –
intake and exhaust have to be tuned to go with each other,
the rear end, the transmission gearing, everything has to
match. If it doesn’t, the car won’t work.”
Jake will also have to be dedicated to the sport. “That’s
what I was. Dedicated,” Brannan says. “Winning
may not be everything, but losing is nothing. Every time you
dedicate yourself thoroughly to some project like this …
I think he can win. It’s mental, but it’s also
paying attention to what you’ve done on the last run.
Getting a baseline is one of the hardest things in racing
to get. It was harder back then. We didn’t have computer
systems to read like some do now. We didn’t have 60-foot
times, 330-foot times, nothing."
“I guarantee you, if I get involved with it, he’ll
do better. Because I know what I’m doing. I don’t
get lost in the middle of a deal. He has a Mustang, for one,
and that fits in with what I like.” 
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