TAKING THE SPORT BY STEALTH

words by Chris Martin, photos by Jeff Burk

23-Year-old Peter Lehman And His Team Slip Up on the IHRA Top Fuel Dragsters

Drag racing, like any motorsport, can always use an infusion of youth, enthusiasm, and talent. Observers have long held that we straightliners are top heavy with old-timers and that there's not a lot of new blood coming in. However, a rebuttal to that feeling was made at the recent IHRA Amalie Oil Summer Nationals in Cordova, Ill.

Most know now about the impressive debut of 18-year-old Top Fuel racer J.R. Todd at the race, but they may not know the owner of one of the hottest new Top Fuel dragsters on the circuit hardly qualifies as Geritol fodder either. He is 23-year-old Chicagoan Peter Lehman and he's the guy where the buck stops on the stealthsponsor.com/ "Top Secret" dragster driven by 32-year-old Clay Millican and tuned by, how shall we say this, ever youthful veteran crew chief Mike Kloeber.

Kloeber, as most know, has crewed for some of the sport's most famous Top Fuel and Funny Car acts, including Don "the Snake" Prudhomme and the guy Lehman bought his rig from, Tommy Johnson Jr. Kloeber forever put himself in the record books in 1993 when he tuned Jim Epler's Rug Doctor Olds to the Funny Car class' first 300-mph run, a 300.40 at Heartland Park Topeka's NHRA Sears Craftsman Nationals.

Realistically, the team has been a functioning, up-on-the-chip unit for just four races. It's true that Lehman and Millican showed at the inaugural 1998 NHRA Route 66 Nationals in Joliet, Ill., with the Chicago White Sox emblazoned on their car, but that DNQ-ing experience was just a toe in the water compared to what they're doing now. At that event, Millican had only gotten his Top Fuel license a week earlier at Paul Smith's school in Florida, and they didn't have the big cannon in their artillery, Kloeber, until this year.

Since the beginning of the year, the stealthsponsor.com team has made rapid strides to where they are currently third in the IHRA Top Fuel standings. En route to that position, Millican has made two final rounds in three races, winning the Mopar Parts Canadian Nationals in Grand Bend, Canada and taking runner-up at the Holley Spring Nationals in Rockingham, N.C. In addition, Millican holds the IHRA Top Fuel elapsed time record at 4.725 seconds.

In drag racing, hot young teams have come and gone, but Lehman's unit looks like it might be here for the long haul. First of all, despite his youth, the Northwestern University grad is sharp beyond his years, focused, and wellspoken. The guy's been racing less than a year and already netted a major sponsor, one which he's built a clever launch around. The sponsor will not be revealed until the IHRA Mopar World Nationals at Norwalk Raceway Park in late August, but to heighten the suspense as to who it is, Lehman has put the "Top Secret" logo on the dragsters.

On top of all that, Lehman and company are promoting a drawing that will be made prior to the Norwalk event. Some fortunate fan will win $5,000 and be flown out to the race where the sponsor will be revealed.

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