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Four decades later, Manzo's getting stronger
Contributed by Jeff Romack
5/29/2003
 "I'm always striving to be better. At the same time, I try to stay humble and remember where I came from." – Frank Manzo |
When an expert panel of drag racing writers and commentators sat down in 2001 to pick the top 50 drivers in the 50-year history of the NHRA, Frank Manzo's selection at No. 40 came as no surprise to anyone. From his earliest days competing as a young racer in the late 1960s, to his most recent national-event victory at the NHRA SuperNationals in Englishtown, N.J., the 50-year-old Manzo has amassed a fortune in drag racing accomplishments.
As a Top Alcohol Funny Car driver, the New Jersey native has collected 53 national-event wins, won eight NHRA national championships and captured an additional 12 Northeast Division titles. Two weeks ago at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, Manzo drove his Pontiac Firebird to a national record top speed of 262.33 mph en route to his second national-event win of the season. It was the third time this year that the Kendall Motor Oil/Super Winch Pontiac Firebird driver had raced in a final round in 2003, and the kind of performance Manzo will need throughout the year in order to win a ninth Lucas Oil title.
Q: How did you get your start?
Manzo: I was 15 and like a lot of young kids I hung around a gas station that had a racecar, a B/Modified Camaro, I think it was. When I was 17, I went to (Old Bridge Township) Raceway Park, 10 miles from my house, and I kind of got hooked. When I was 18, I was there in a little B/Altered small-block Chevy, a 23-T Bucket, and I used to race for trophies every weekend. In 1972 I started to run a Double B/Altered, so beginning around '72, I was driving a Funny Car, and an alcohol Funny Car since 1974 when they made the class. When you're making between 110 and 120 runs a years, that's a lot of runs in a lifetime.
Q: What does it take to win eight NHRA championships?
Manzo: I feel that I have the best team out there. I have a group of guys that work on my car, and you have to remember, there are no full-time people on this team. We all work other jobs during the day, and then we all meet at the shop at around 5 o'clock, or 6 o'clock, or whatever it takes. Then we'll work to around 8:30, or not too much past that because we're not 30 years old anymore. We all have families, we're all married and we're at a point in our lives where we have other obligations in addition to racing.
But I have a team that's been with me for a very long time, and they're a bunch of guys that want to win as badly as I want to win, if not more. Every individual on the team feels a responsibility and commitment to everybody else. My obligation to them is that when I get up there, I do the best that I can because they're working their tails off to make sure the car's right. They don't need a driver going up there with an attitude that's not committed to winning.
Q: Who is your biggest competition?
Manzo: I never like to start naming drivers because I'll leave somebody out, but we've got some outstanding teams in Alcohol Funny Car. Even at the divisional level with Paul Gill, Bob Newberry, the Terrenzio and Ferro car, just to name a few, you have to be ready. I have to say that this year it's going to be harder than ever to win another championship, but at the same time the high level of competition has me enthused. I know that there will be some big challenges. Every race is going to be a challenge.
Look at what we had at Houston, the four cars that went to the semifinals were just two-hundredths of a second apart. Bucky (Austin) went 5.59, I went 5.60, Newberry went 5.60, and Gasparelli went 5.61. Then in Atlanta, even though there were only eight cars, we had eight solid cars. At Englishtown it was more of the great racing that you've come to expect in this category.
Q: How would you rate yourself as a driver?
Manzo: I never thought about it because I'm always striving to be better. At the same time, I try to stay humble and remember where I came from – a young kid that year's ago couldn't even qualify for a race. When I see a young racer coming into the sport, I like to try and help them. When we win, my crew doesn't jump around, or make a big deal of it, especially when that other team can come back the very next week and take you out. I don't talk trash, but this year I'm fired up – I'm really excited about racing. We've got this new Pontiac, and we have Kendall and SuperWinch and a lot of other sponsors who are behind us. If it's in the cards, then we'll be successful, and if it's not, then it doesn't matter how hard we try. In our division right now, Bob Newberry looks real good, he's got a fast race car and a real good team, and I'm here to tell you, we've got our work cut out for us.
Q: Was the win at Englishtown made more gratifying with the national speed record?
Manzo: We never expected to do anything like that, but it's pretty hard to ignore when you're looking at the gauges, the air, the racetrack, and we had a heck of a racetrack there. In your heart you know you can run fast, but we wrote it down on the board – 'No records. The trophy!' That's what we were there for. At Englishtown we were racing to keep ourselves in a position where at the end of the night we had the trophy. The record came by itself. We never once went up there looking for the speed record, but we'll take it. The air we had in Englishtown was very difficult to tune for. I've been in that kind of air maybe one other time in my whole life and we really don't have a lot experience racing in those kind of conditions.
Q: Was your 53rd victory as memorable as your first?
Manzo: If you were to walk up to me on the street and ask me how many wins I had, I probably couldn't tell you. I just kind of go and do what I have to do. You never know when a certain win is going to be your last. Right now, I'm pretty excited with what we've been able to accomplish, and thank the good Lord, I've been doing the right things and getting the right breaks. I could go down the list of every race I've won and give you a number of reasons why I shouldn't have. When I won my second national event in Atlanta in 1981, there were only eight cars in the field and I got qualified in the last session. I then won the race beating some great drivers, Bob Gottschalk for one, and I beat Jerry Gwynn in the finals. But none of those cars got past the 300-foot mark under power. I was three-tenths (of a second) behind every one of them and still won. Now you understand what kind of day you can have.
In the semis at Englishtown, I missed the track, shook and went 5.67. Jay Payne shook harder. If Jay Payne goes 5.59, I'm out of there. We work hard at it, go up there and run our car the best we can.
Q: Do you still enjoy racing as much as you did 20 years ago?
Manzo: I can't describe how great it felt to win that first championship. To win my second title was a dream come true. Then to come back and run like we've been running since '97, that's something you never imagine can happen. For three years there between '97-'99, I was really excited about racing. Then in 2000 and 2001, I got really flat. I wasn't as aggressive as I should have been and I don't know why. Maybe too much racing, maybe I was burned out. I wanted to win for my sponsors and my team, but I wasn't enjoying it as much. It's kind of funny, we'll come home after a weekend and if we're runner-up to Bob Newberry or someone else, my friends ask what happened. I tell them I got my butt kicked. They don't realize just how difficult it is to win and how tough the competition is out here.
We go to the racetrack with every intention of being successful, that's our goal, but sometimes the good Lord picks somebody else. This year though, I'm more fired up and more enthused about racing than I've ever been. I'm having more fun, and not necessarily because we've been running well. I probably care more than ever about winning but I'm also enjoying it more than ever. I don't really do anything else. I like the sport, the competitiveness, meeting new friends and seeing old acquaintances, all the Alcohol guys I've been going to the races with since 1970, and have been racing national events since 1975 or '76. I get to see my friends on the weekend, we have a lot of laughs, we have good days, we have bad days. I just enjoy it very much. We work hard at it because that's what it takes. But right now, we're riding on a high and we're going to take it as far as we can.
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