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"As I held on for dear life, I recall thinking, this is definitely the thing for me." -- Jeff Lane

As a teenager, it didn't take Jeff Lane very long to discover his love for the sport of drag racing. The year was 1974; and riding shotgun in a friend's SS/GA '63 Plymouth Belvedere, Lane, then 13 years old, took the ride of his life and has never turned back.

Clocking an 11.02-second elapsed time at 117 mph, the ride hardly seems thrilling when compared to the low eight-second time slips that Lane now collects behind the wheel of the roadster he and partner Jerry Hancock campaign in Competition Eliminator. Or even when compared to the Grand Am Lane also pilots in Super Stock.

"I used to kind of hang around Jerry and his friends, begging them to let me help work on their cars. They probably thought I was a pest, but one day Jerry actually convinced one of his friends to give me a ride in the passenger seat of his Super Stock car. At the time, it felt like I was riding in a rocket ship. I wasn't necessarily scared, but the noise and excitement were pretty overwhelming. As I held on for dear life, I recall thinking, this is definitely the thing for me," remembers the North Bend, Wash., resident.

Still too young to hold a state driver's license, it would be a few years before Lane could hop behind the wheel of a Super Stock car of his own. But that didn't stop the teen-ager from going to the races with his new friend, Jerry.

"If Jerry and I hadn't become friends I'm not really sure whether my parents would have allowed me to go to the races as much as they did. I don't think they were crazy about the whole drag racing idea, but since Jerry was older than me they trusted him," explained Lane.

For the next several years, Hancock drove his '68 Camaro in Super Stock competition, while Lane earned his keep by turning wrenches and acting as the crew. Then, in 1985, the pair decided to swap seats. In just his first race behind the wheel of the '68, Lane took runner-up, securing his seat in the Camaro.

"After I took runner-up in my first race, Jerry looked at me and said, 'Maybe we should let you drive.' He got no argument from me," joked Lane.

Since then, the pair has fielded half a dozen cars in the Super Stock category, yielding a handful of divisional and national event wins, as well as a NHRA Northwest Division championship along the way.

These days the team fields a 2001 Pontiac Grand Am in Super Stock and, more recently, a Dick Sherman-backed roadster in Competition Eliminator. Though they have only been racing the roadster since last year, Hancock and Lane have already collected a pair of divisional wins and several runner-ups on both the divisional and national level.

Jeff Lane will be at his next race Aug. 24-25, at Renegade Raceways, when NHRA's Federal-Mogul Drag Racing Series comes to Yakima Wash. The race is the fifth of six events in the NHRA's Northwest division.