Championship Drag Racing

Checker-Schuck's
Kragen Nationals
Phoenix, Ariz.
(Feb. 21-24)

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Gary Densham Force Racing Mustang Funny Car

Reports: Pre-race

Phoenix, pre-race: Gary Densham once was touted as the "World's Fastest Schoolteacher," a somewhat dubious distinction considering the number of educators who actually spend their weekends driving 7,000 horsepower race cars capable of 300 mph performance.

However, when the former auto shop teacher rolls to the starting line for this week's (Feb. 22-24) 18th annual Checker Schuck's Kragen Nationals at Charlie Allen's Firebird International Raceway, he needn't qualify nor quantify his status.

Not just the "World Fastest Schoolteacher" or the "Fastest Man to Have Toured Australia 11 Times" or the "World's Fastest Follicularly-Challenged Native Californian." The World's Fastest. Period.

No one ever has driven a full-bodied race car faster than Densham did two weeks ago when he coaxed his Team Castrol/Auto Club of Southern California Ford Mustang to an NHRA national-record 326.87 mph in qualifying for the season-opening K&N Filters Winternationals at Pomona, Calif.

Now, the 55-year-old resident of Bellflower, Calif., is being touted as the Funny Car driver most likely to become the first to break the 330 mph barrier. That's pretty heady stuff for a guy who, until last season, hadn't won an NHRA national event (although he'd been trying for 20 years), had never started a race from the No. 1 qualifying position and had never finished higher than ninth in driver points.

As a Funny Car independent, Densham never was considered a contender although he did appear in six final rounds, each of which ended in disappointment. His status changed just weeks after last year's CSK Nationals when, faced with the loss of one of his biggest backers, he parked his own car and agreed to drive a third Ford for Team Castrol and John Force Racing. For one of the most vocal critics of Force's multiple-car team, it was a difficult decision. Now, though, it's one about which he has no regrets.

"Once I got over here and got to see the other side, I understood things a little better," Densham said. "John's real advantage is that he's thinking four or five years down the road. Everyone else is just racing in the moment. He had the first two-car team. Now everyone has one because it's become clear that you get twice as much data from two cars.

"Judging from the quality of the competition, I guess you'd have to say that multi-car teams haven't exactly killed the class. If anything, it's more competitive now than ever."

With veteran Jimmy Prock turning the wrenches on the high-tech Mustang, Densham's transformation into legitimate contender was almost immediate. In only his fourth race in the Auto Club Ford, he qualified No. 1 at the Mac Tools Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol, Tenn. Six months later, he beat his boss and benefactor, John Force, in the final round of the Mid-South Nationals at Memphis, Tenn., thereby ending a drought that had extended through 245 NHRA national events.

After beating Force by .045 of a second at Memphis, Densham repeated the feat a month later when he won by just .006 of a second in the final round of the O'Reilly Fall Nationals at Dallas. Now, he hopes to mount a serious challenge for the first Funny Car championship in the new NHRA POWERade Series.

"It's great to win," Densham said, "especially against John. He told me before the finals (at Memphis), and it's an agreement we've had from the start, that we would just go up there and race the best we could and may the best car win (and) when you beat John, you beat the best there is."