Championship 101

by Dean George Papadeas

Imagine going to your first drag race and it's the US Nationals. Then imagine watching your first top fuel car make a stunning pass. And you say to yourself, this is what I want to do. So you enroll yourself into the drag racing school, graduate, and go right to top fuel. Easy. Right? Maybe. But how easy is it winning the IHRA Top Fuel Championship in your first full season at the digs?

In the span of two short years, from knowing nothing about drag racing to winning the title, Don Lampus has established himself as a force in Top Fuel. The spirited rookie (he did race part time one year earlier) is the only person in history to complete such a feat against some stellar competition from the likes of Doug Herbert and Paul Romine, to name just two.

A self-described shy guy, he is a Nittany Lion graduate engineer who makes his home in Texas, where, partnered up with his best friends, he runs a paint company. Of course, if he had his way, he would race full time all the time as most pilots would. But money, or rather the lack thereof, precludes it, although he has picked up a major sponsor in expressautoparts.com and will campaign their colors on the IHRA circuit for 2000.

Lampus is a very congenial, good-natured fellow with a strong sense of family. His racing camp includes mom, who acts as pit boss and cares for his crew members as any mom would her own children. His father does all the worrying. "Dad panics a lot." Don admits. "He gets nervous for me." Surrounding himself with some old pros wrenching his fueler led by crew chief Mike McLaughlin, Lampus truly enjoys bench racing between rounds with fans, especially kids.

A great admirer of John Force, he is living out his dreams largely and it shows, even though he confesses that the champion part "hasn't sunk in yet." An integral part of the IHRA family, he looks upon Bill Bader as an endearing uncle and does all he can to promote the sport. Lampus is quite enthusiastic about the way he sees Bader has transformed the IHRA, once the joke in drag racing, now becoming a force to be reckoned with. And Lampus fits perfectly within the reborn sanctioning body-or should we say sanctioning family.

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Photos by Jeff Burk