He's won NHRA season championships in three classes. He's tied for 10th among NHRA's all-time national event winners. He's one of a handful of drivers to win in two different classes at the same event. He's also the all-time NHRA leader in humbleness.

The most telling tale about David Rampy may well be contained in the questionnaire he filled out for National DRAGSTER in 1991. Hot off of unprecedented back-to-back Winston championships in Super Gas and Comp and already a three-time IHRA series champion, Rampy answered the question "I knew I'd made it when …" with a humble, "Have I made it yet?"

The fact is that he had made it, and that he was far from through making it. And he's still not done yet.

The guy who admitted to the world that he liked soft rock, pizza, and basketball, and that his favorite television show was the Beverly Hillbillies came, just like ol' Jed Clampett, from humble beginnings. The next thing you know the guy's a millionaire, at least in terms of round wins.

Rampy emerged literally from nowhere, from a family with no previous racing interest. Early on while street and bracket racing, and even for a short time aboard horses, he discovered an ability to win races.

After conquering the world of IHRA drag racing, scoring a pair of championships in the 10.90-indexed Hot Rod class and another in 9.90 Super Rod competition, Rampy began racing in Super Gas in NHRA competition in 1986.

Rampy never won an NHRA national event in Super Gas in those early years and didn't even make it to a final round until 1989. He began 1989 not knowing he would win his first NHRA championship, and, in fact, trying to sell his winning "Sky High" Opel.

When no takers emerged, he went racing, and though he later reluctantly sold the Opel, he finished the year in a Monza. He won only one race, the Division 2 event at Moroso Motorsports Park, but went enough rounds to win the Winston championship.

"When I first went to NHRA, the Super Gas guys all looked at me like, 'Who's this guy? I know he won over there, but can he do that over here?' It was a big relief to win the [Super Gas] championship and prove I could win anywhere."

After locking up the championship early in 1989, Rampy jumped at the chance to drive the Comp eliminator entry of Indiana RV dealer Harold Stout, a longtime sponsor of his. He made his debut in Stout's C/EA Firebird at the Heartland Nationals in Topeka in September and promptly won the event.

"That was really something for this ol' country boy," he said. "Harold flew me to the race, and that was the first time I'd ever been on a jet, let alone flown to an event.

(The victory, however, was not Rampy's first in NHRA competition. After a brief stint in Super Stock in 1981, he ran just one race in the class in 1983, at the Cajun Nationals, where he walked away with the victory at the wheel of the car owned by his future father-in-law, Sonny Ray.)

In 1990, instead of defending his Super Gas title, Rampy concentrated on Comp and won four more national events and four divisional events to clinch the championship, becoming the first driver in NHRA history to win back-to-back championships in different classes.

He added four more wins in 1991 and two in 1992 before finally losing a final round, but closed out the year with his 13th title.

Rampy added Pro Stock to his driving résumé, wheeling Stout's entry for the 1993 and 1994 campaigns, during which he recorded a runner-up at the 1993 Sears Craftsman Nationals. While racing in Pro Stock, he showed his versatility by simultaneously competing in Super Stock (one runner-up in 1993) and Super Comp (a win and a runner-up in 1994). Before long, Rampy would be known as one of the premier two-class threats.

The team competed in Pro Stock for just the two seasons, and Rampy competed in Super Gas and Super Comp in 1995 and 1996 and won his third career championship, in Super Comp, in 1995, then returned to Comp in 1997. During 1997, he competed in both Comp and Super Comp and, after winning one race in each class early in the year, made it to the final round in both classes at the event in Seattle, where he won Comp and was runner-up in Super Comp. He added three more wins that year for a total of six, but, amazingly, his greatest year was still ahead.

Less than a year (and two more Comp wins) later, Rampy made good on his second double final-round appearance, scoring in Comp and Super Comp at the 1998 Autolite Nationals, joining a short list of drivers to accomplish the feat. Incredibly, he would put two cars into a final round just two races later, in Brainerd, Minn., where he won Super Comp and was runner-up in Comp and at the next race after that, at the prestigious U.S. Nationals, where he repeated the Brainerd outcome.

Four races later, in Dallas, Rampy again scored a Super Comp win and a Comp runner-up. All told, in 1998 he scored seven wins and six runner-ups, one of the finest seasons in NHRA Sportsman racing annals.

On the anniversary of his first double win, Rampy made yet another two-final appearance at the 1999 Autolite Nationals, where he again cashed in with his comp entry and was runner-up in Super Comp during a season in which he scored four wins and four more runner-ups.

His 2000 campaign netted him five more victories. Rampy's victory at the Matco Tools SuperNationals presented by

Racing Champions was a milestone accomplishment. It was his 38th career title, moving him, finally, into the hallowed top 10 of NHRA's all-time winners, tied with fellow Sportsman-racing great Edmond Richardson.

The victory was his 29th in Comp, tying him with the great David Nickens for all-time class honors. And his fifth trip to the winner's circle that year also tied the single-season class-victory record, which he already shared with Nickens.

Rampy undoubtedly will break that tie and become the Comp class' all-time winningest driver and continue his ascension up the ladder of NHRA's career-win list. Still, the humble Alabaman, who likes to run his bracket racing cars on off weekends from the tour, wonders still if he's made it and never stops trying to improve his driving.

"If you're in a race car every weekend, it's got to help you -- it darned sure can't hurt you," he said. "I owe it all to bracket racing. I feel like I'm still just a bracket racer, and proud of it.

"God has blessed me in so many ways, to come from my background and to be associated with a lot of the right people each step along the way. It's just been a career beyond my wildest dreams." -- Phil Burgess