Last Monday, the fifth, was James' and my birthday, so of course I decided the best place to go would be a place that James would have liked. I took Jessie to a place called Hickory Dickory Dock. It’s kind of like Chuck E Cheese on steroids! They have a million games, go-karts, laser tag, and a bunch of other fun stuff. We had a great time having a birthday celebration together.

One bad thing that happened on my birthday was my good friend Bill Gillissie passed away. I have been friends with Bill and his family for years. Bill was known simply as "T Shirt" to most of his friends. I could write an entire book about Bill, but the best way to sum up Bill's attitude is with one of his favorite things to say, "We are not here for a long time, we are just here for a good time." I can tell you that Bill did not miss a lot of fun things, and anytime there was something fun going on, Bill would do his best to be there. Last year, I was lucky enough to be invited by Bill to fish in the Roosterfish Tournament in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Don Schumacher let me fly down to the tournament with him, and we had a great time with Bill, Tony, Roger, and a great group of friends.

My son Jon used to call Bill "Fisherman Bill" due to the fact that Bill was always wearing shirts that had pictures of fish on them! My thoughts and prayers are with Bill’s family, especially Karen, Heather, and Ken. Rest in peace my friend.

On Saturday, my friends over at Carolina Harley Davidson had a Harley ride called "A ride to Victory in memory of Click Baldwin." It was awesome! A couple hundred Harley riders got together for a ride from Click’s Harley dealership in Gastonia and rode up to Kyle Petty’s Victory Junction Gang Camp. We stopped at the brand new NASCAR Hall of Fame in downtown Charlotte for a sneak peak and a tour of the facility from Winston Kelly, the project coordinator for NASCAR. I must say, it is one incredible facility. Click started this ride a few years ago when Kyle and Patty Petty opened Victory Junction Gang Camp in memory of their son Adam. Last year, my friend Click was killed in a motorcycle accident while he was on his way riding to Sturgis. For the last two years, Click’s wife, Dianne, and their daughter, Chelsea, have carried on Click’s tradition and continued to support the Victory Junction Gang Camp.

This ride was incredible. We had about 50 police escorts, and they actually closed down Interstate 85 for all the riders! Jessie rode with me, and neither one of us could believe that they actually closed down the interstate while we rode. We made another stop at a gas station for a refill; it was great, we just pulled up to the pump and they filled up the bike with free gas!

Once we were at the camp, Jessie and I walked around and took a tour of the great facility. The most fun thing to see was the horse barn since it was called "Jessie's Horsepower Garage." Jessie thought that was great. The mission of Victory Junction is a lot the same as B.R.A.K.E.S. We are out to help kids and teens.

Until next time…Doug

First of all, Ginger and I finally got married! We had planned on tying the knot last year but then the boys’ accident changed everything. Then we were going to get married earlier this year and my Dad was coming to visit and then he got sick. We finally had everyone together on July 4 down at Oak Island beach, here in North Carolina, and everything worked out great. We got married in shorts and sandals!

Now that the NFL season is kicking into gear I got to go to a Panthers game last week with Ginger and my buddy Mike Ege. That was really fun and I’m looking forward to a few other home games this season. A former Panther, Mike Minter, will be the keynote speaker at the B.R.A.K.E.S. dinner this year so that’s awesome, I love supporting those guys.

Another thing that’s really exciting is that I’ll be out racing at zMax in Charlotte next weekend! We have secured sponsorship support for the Charlotte race! We’ll make an announcement and get all the details out about that next week.

We also have some fun stuff coming up for B.R.A.K.E.S. and I would like to ask everyone to come out and join us! Next Thursday, Sept. 17, B.R.A.K.E.S. (www.putonthebrakes.org ) is having our Second Annual Benefit Dinner presented by tiwi at the Speedway Club, located at the Lowe’s Motor Speedway directly across the street from the zMax Dragway here in the Charlotte area. Earlier that day we are having the PPG Paintball Tournament to have a lot of fun and raise some money for a great cause.

I would like to invite everyone to come out and have some fun with us and hang out with some of the drivers and teams. For more information please visit the website www.putonthebrakes.org

Take care and I am looking forward to seeing everyone in Charlotte!

Until next time! Doug
 

One of the coolest things that happened since the last time I wrote is that we had the opportunity to race at the Thunder Valley Nationals!  It was awesome to get back out to the race track for a weekend.  I got to see a lot of people that I hadn’t seen in awhile and it was fun catching up with everyone, I sure miss being out there!  The weekend went really well, even though we went out in the first round.  The loss to Doug Kalitta was so close!  It is one of the closest races in NHRA history!  Actually Doug and I were joking during driver introductions and he told me we had to make a deal – whichever one of us won in the first round against each other, had to go on to win the event – and he about did it to!

We had put that crew together only a few days before the event b/c we didn’t really know we were going until that week.  I pulled two of the guys from Doug Herbert Performance to help out for the weekend and they had never worked on a race car really.  Then we enlisted the help of two other guys who had worked on Funny Cars but not Top Fuel dragsters and none of the guys had worked together before.  But those guys worked their butts of that weekend, they did a great job, they didn’t make any mistakes all weekend!  I was really happy with how well we ran considering it was the first race we have been to all season.  I just hope it isn’t the last.  We had some folks help us out for Bristol and I owe a big thank you to Food City, zMAX and Bristol Dragway.  We hope we can work something out for a few more races this year.  I feel like things with the economy might be turning around soon.  I have had some conversations with a few companies but I really hope somebody steps up soon so we can get back out there racing full time!

We’re still moving forward with the land speed car; there has been a lot of stuff added over the past month or so.  If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure you check out the website for the project, www.lsrproject.com.  There is a whole section where you can see a ton of pictures of the car and the progress.  The car will be leaving my race shop in Lincolnton soon and will be taken over to Ray Evernham’s shop so we can get to work on the body.  Speaking of my shop, we had our annual May Open House and Car Show.  We always have a lot of gearheads come out for that, we started the dragster for the crowd and there were a lot of nice cars brought out for it.

May is always a really exciting month here in my hometown of Charlotte because of the All-Star Race and the Coke 600.  The whole town is pretty much consumed with racing for 2-3 weeks and although we don’t make left hand turns, us straight line guys end up getting to do a lot of fun stuff with all the NASCAR stars.  B.R.A.K.E.S. was set up at Speed Street, a huge fan event in downtown Charlotte.  We had guitar hero at the booth and that drew in a big crowd, and I got to hang out with some fans and sign autographs.

Jessie went to the Coke 600 with her friend Ally and they got to meet Shawn Johnson from Dancing with the Stars.  They thought that was pretty neat.  Jessie is out for the summer now so she’s excited about that.  It has been really nice here for the past week, in the 80s mostly, so it finally feels like summer is setting in.  The other morning Jessie and I went with Ginger to tape her segment on FOX Charlotte’s “Fox News Rising”.  Jessie had a good time meeting everyone and hanging out on the set.

A few weeks ago I got to film a show with SPEED, the drag racing game show, Pass Time.  It was really cool.  They were set up at zMax Dragway filming for two days.  I was up against Ken Herring and Kelvin Locklear, from CMT’s Trick My Truck.  It was a lot of fun and I won’t reveal who won – you’ll have to watch to find out!

We have another B.R.A.K.E.S. Driving School coming up this weekend and, something really neat that happened recently, we’re holding our first schools in South Carolina this summer.  On July 25 we’re holding a school near Spartanburg at the BMW Performance Center and then on August 8 we’re holding one in Columbia at the National Guard Armory.  We’re pretty excited because we’ve only been holding schools for less than a year and we already have the opportunity to hold some schools in South Carolina.  We want to keep spreading out; we’d like to find a location to hold a school down in Georgia, probably in Atlanta.  If you, or someone you know, could help us out with a location, check out the B.R.A.K.E.S. website (www.putonthebrakes.org) and help us get the word out about safe driving!

I’ll check in soon.
 

I do not like to write blog entries like this but I know there are a lot of people that want to know about my dad, Chet Herbert. My dad was 81 years old when he passed away last week.
 
My dad was a real innovator. He always liked to think of new ideas and better ways to build things. One of my favorite stories about him is one that my Grandma told me. My dad traded his trumpet for an old broke-own Cushman scooter.

My Grandma told him that she couldn't believe he traded a nice trumpet for an old box of parts that he would never be able to put together. The next day she came home from work and my dad was riding the Cushman! He later sold the Cushman and bought a Harley. He said his Harley, nicknamed "The Beast," s the fastest thing on the road in Southern California in the mid-'40s after the war.

In 1949 his buddy had a roadster that he wanted to race and my dad had heard about a Wayne head GMC six-cylinder that was overhead valve and wanted my dad to help him build the engine to go to Bonneville with the roadster. I think it was Ed Pink. My dad agreed to build an engine. When he started working on it he did not understand why the race car engines did not have a roller cam in them like his Harley did. So he decided that he would make a roller cam and lifters to run in this engine.

The car went out and set records and, kind of by accident, my dad had people that wanted to buy cams from him in 1949. So he decided to go into the cam business and he was the only person that made roller cams for many years. All of his ads just said, "Roller cams are better than flat tappet cams." Well... duh! It took almost 10 years before anyone else even caught on and started to make roller cams. Every top race engine still runs roller cams today.

He was also the first to run "Zoomie" headers on his Top Fuel dragsters in the late 1950s with Lefty Mudersbach, Zane Shubert, Gary Cagle, and others at the wheel. Everyone still runs zoomie headers today.

"The Beast" won most of the drag races at Santa Ana drag strip during the first three years of organized drag races. The Beast was billed as the "Drag King of them all" and "the fastest accelerating vehicle devised to ever carry a man."

He was a mechanic for several cars at the Indy 500 in the late 1950s. They allowed engines to run nitro methane at Indy and in the 1950s my dad was considered to be one of the biggest authorities on how to run an engine on nitromethane.

He held several records at the Bonneville Salt Flats, including the fastest single engine car. He also had two and three engine cars that held several records.

He won many drag races. I don't know this for a fact but he told me that his cars won more Top Eliminator races at Lions Dragstrip than any other cars during the '60s. He was inducted into the Drag Racing Hall of Fame with his sister, Doris, in 1993.
 
My dad was my hero. He was put in a wheelchair from polio when he was 20 years old but he never let that slow him down. He told me that he did not want to sit around and feel sorry for himself so he got out and went to work.

When I was about 11 years old he decided that I was big enough to lift him up and carry him around. He was a big guy, about 6’4” and 200 pounds, pretty big for an 11-year-old to carry. I guess I am lucky that I was big, too. I have so many great stories with my dad; it’s hard to nail them all down.

One of the best is from a fishing trip that we took about 10 years ago to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with my dad and my boy Jon. We went out deep-sea fishing and the seas were really rough. By the time we barely got out of the marina Jon (who was only about 10 years old) got sick and started to toss his cookies. So I tried to help him and make sure that he didn't fall overboard. During this, Jon threw up all over me and that made me sick, so then I started to throw up, too. We went ahead and decided to stay out fishing all day and ended up catching a few good fish.

On the way back in, Jon was still holding his stomach and feeling pretty weak and he asked my dad, "Grandpa, how come my dad and I both got sick and threw up on this boat, and you didn't get sick?" My dad said, "Well Jon, I guess it’s just because I have been fishing for so long and been on so many boats in rough water that it really doesn’t bother me anymore". Jon replied, "Grandpa, you are one tough hombre." I laughed so hard that it just about made me throw up again! I’m really not sure where he came up with that but it sure was funny.

Jon and James went and spent time with my dad in the summer of 2007. They all had a great time. My dad took off work to be able to spend time with them. He took them to Disney, Sea World, Vans skateboard park, and even set up Jon to drive a friend’s nine-second drag race Mustang. They all had a great time. I think that last year, when James and Jon got in the accident, part of my dad died, too. He couldn't get himself to get out of bed for a week from being so depressed.

I thought that doing a race project with my dad would be fun and I tried to talk him into going to some drag races with me last year, but he said that didn't really interest him anymore because all the modern Top Fuel cars look the same. So after some thought, I asked him if he would be interested in helping design a Bonneville streamliner that could set the world land speed record in the Unlimited Streamliner class for a wheel-driven car. This lit him up and gave him a new lease on life, and he actually drew up all of the original diagrams for the car.

Ray Evernham and his engineers were amazed when they saw the plans and asked, "Who did you have draw these up?" When I told Ray that my dad did them, he said, "I can’t wait to meet your dad." My mom said that as soon as we started working on this LSR project that my dad went from being an 80-year-old man in a wheel chair to a 40-year-old man with a purpose and a vision.

My mom, Leanne Herbert, thinks that this LSR project may have saved his life. My mom told me that all he has talked about for the past year was going to Bonneville with this new car and setting the record. We are still working on the car and a bunch of my friends are helping to make sure we accomplish the record that we set out to.

A memorial celebration of my Dad's life will be held at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, May 2, at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 1855 Orange Olive Road, Orange, CA 92865.

Our family has asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to B.R.A.K.E.S. (501-c3). Please mail to: B.R.A.K.E.S., In Memory of Chet Herbert, 1443 East Gaston St, Lincolnton, NC 28092 or visit www.putonthebrakes.org.

He got pneumonia, and it has been tough on him. He has been in and out of the ICU over the past week, and he’s in there now. He hasn’t been making big improvements but he hasn’t been getting worse either. He’s just having a tough time.

For those of you who don’t know about my dad, he was involved with the first organized drag races in Santa Ana back in the late ’40s and early ’50s. He has made a lot of contributions to the sport of drag racing over the years, including roller cams and zoomie headers. He was also one of the first guys to use nitro. He has always had a passion for the sport, and he’s just an awesome guy.

Please keep him in your thoughts and thanks for all the kind messages everyone has already sent.

I’ll be back with an update soon,
Doug

I have been taking Jessie to ride her horse a lot lately, and she has really been doing well. She’ll be ready to go to a horse show soon. The horse she has been riding for the past couple months is named Dicy. A few weeks back, Ginger and I took a fun day trip to Boone, N.C., and visited Blowing Rock and Mystery Hill. That was a lot of fun! Something else cool that happened recently is that the city of Lincolnton gave me a Milestone Achievement Award. I moved my Doug Herbert Performance and race shop to Lincolnton in 1991 then went to Cherryville for 12 years before moving back to Lincolnton, so the city gave me an award for five years in our new location.

Two weekends ago, I was up in Bristol for the NASCAR races. The team took the car up on Friday and had it on display in the hospitality area for all of the fans to check it out. We also had a table set up for B.R.A.K.E.S. so we could talk with fans about the organization and the importance of safe driving. On Saturday, I was supposed to race in a late model car for a celebrity amateur race at the speedway. When we were practicing on Saturday afternoon, Greg Anderson hit the wall right in front of me, and when I swerved to miss him, I went into the wall. I think I was doing pretty good until then. So the late model car I was driving was messed up pretty bad, and I had to miss the heat race later in the day. I was looking forward to racing my buddy and land speed partner Ray Evernham, but we still had a lot of fun.

On Sunday morning, we took the dragster inside the track to the frontstretch, and during the pre-race ceremony, right before driver introductions, we started it up in front of 160,000 screaming NASCAR fans. I asked my buddy Michael Waltrip to sit in the car while we started it, and he thought that was pretty exciting. We hit the throttle a few times, and the crowd went crazy! They loved it. Many of them said they are now fans and will be at the Bristol NHRA race in May.

As usual, we have a lot of awesome stuff going on with B.R.A.K.E.S. right now. We held a driving school last Saturday at zMax Dragway. Even though it was raining, we still had a great turn out. What usually happens with our driving schools is that the parents drag their teen to the track in the morning, but by the end of the four-hour session, the teen doesn’t want to leave. We’ve had a lot of teens send us e-mails telling us how much the school helped them or send in stories about how they avoided an accident because of the school. That makes it all worthwhile. We definitely feel like we’re making a difference by putting these teens behind the wheel and giving them the hands-on experience they need. The seven Charlotte dates for the school are nearly sold out! We’re hoping to announce more locations soon, check out www.putonthebrakes.org for more information.

On Monday night we had a B.R.A.K.E.S. Comedy Night. It was a great night because we were able to raise a lot of money for B.R.A.K.E.S. NASCAR driver Ricky Rudd came out to support us, and my buddy Andre Bauer, the Lt. Gov. of South Carolina, was there. He is a good friend of B.R.A.K.E.S. Killer Beaz, who you may recognize from the John Boy and Billy Show, was the featured comedian, and he was hilarious. He lost both of his parents in a car accident in 2005. He is close to our cause and what we’re trying to achieve so he donated his time to be there Monday for the show. It was a great night, and all the proceeds will go straight towards our driving schools!

I have been working on trying to get back out to the races. I think we have found some support for Atlanta and possibly a few other races, but we still want to put together something for the rest of the season. It will be nice to be back at the dragstrip. I’ve been staying really busy with B.R.A.K.E.S., my parts business, and the land speed car, but I still love drag racing, and I can’t wait to get back out there.

Always a lot of stuff going on with us, so I’ll be back soon with another update!

Until then,
Doug

At the end of January I went to a Charlotte Checkers hockey game for Race Night. They do the event every year, they have a bunch of drivers from the area come out and a lot of fans come for the autograph session. Jessie brought her friend Olivia and one of James’ friends, Chris, came with us too. We got the full hockey experience! We got to ride on the zamboni and go out on the ice for the puck drop. Every Race Night the Checkers pick some local charities and part of the proceeds from the night are split amongst the charities, so this year they chose B.R.A.K.E.S., which was really cool.

Everybody is a few races into the season and it’s a bummer that we’re not out at the track. I’ve had a lot of fans email in and ask what’s going on with the team and whether we’ll be back out this year. Things are tough right now, there are a lot of good drivers that have been doing this for a long time that are out of a ride. It stinks but with the economy the way it is, that’s just how things are right now. We’re all hoping it will improve soon. I think we might have some sponsorship support for a race soon. We’ve been talking to a new company about doing something with us for Atlanta. It’s really exciting and we’re hoping to have an announcement about that soon.

We’re making a lot of progress with the Bonneville car. We’ve got a website that will be live soon that will be updated weekly with new pictures and descriptions of what we’re working on each week. The guys have been doing a lot of welding, trying to get the thing together. We’re getting the ProCharger, supercharged Dodge Viper Engines built up now. They should make a total of about 4,000 horsepower. Ray Evernham has really jumped on board and has been helping the project out a lot. One of his engineers, Dr. Eric Warren, is an aerodynamic expert and he really knows his stuff. He’s been out at the shop working with the guys a lot too. We’ll be going to test within the next few months and then we’ll be out in Bonneville Aug. 7-15 for Speedweeks, where we’ll try to set the new land speed record at hopefully around 500 mph.

Next week I’ll be on the nationally syndicated John Boy and Billy radio show to talk about the land speed car and all of the cool stuff we have going on with B.R.A.K.E.S. so make sure you tune-in for that! Also, check out the B.R.A.K.E.S. website, especially if you’re in the Charlotte area, because we’ve added the dates for the driving schools that we’re going to have in Charlotte this year. We’ve also added the safe driving PSAs that we produced for B.R.A.K.E.S. if you want to check those out. The NHRA has agreed to play those on the jumbotron at all of the races for us, so if you’re at the track you’ll be seeing them!

Until next time.

These are links to our new BRAKES public service videos. These videos will be playing on several of the major networks.

I am just continuing to work hard and get the message of BRAKES out.  Everyone needs to know that the deadly accidents happen every day. I would like to ask that the teen drivers take a look at these videos and think about the consequences that you face everyday. I would also like to ask parents to look at the videos and talk to your teens about the consequences of not driving safe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGM2sqCcIqc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiXXlHTxFI0

Hi blog readers!

Pomona is coming up fast and even though I do not yet know if I will be racing at the 2009 Winternationals I sure do have some great memories of some past Winternationals that make me for sure not want to ever miss a Pomona race!

I think my favorite Winternationals is about a tie between 1992 and 1993. In 1992 I went to Pomona with a new car, a new team and my buddy Jim Brissette as a crew chief. On Saturday I made my first ever four-second run and qualified for the first time ever in the quick half of a NHRA field but then it just got better as on Sunday racing Ed McCulloch in the first round we made what was then the quickest run ever in the history of drag racing, a 4.880! And wow was that exciting? You bet!

How could that ever be improved upon? Well in 1993 I became only the second driver to ever break the 300-mph barrier during the first round of eliminations, racing Mike Dunn! It was the first run over 300 mph in eliminations, the first over 300 at Pomona, and the first over 300 east of the Mississippi River for that matter! This was huge but one of the highlights of my day came when Wally Parks came over to talk to me. He told me that was the first 300-mph run that he had ever seen! That was an exciting day and something that I will never forget.

I actually have several other great memories of Pomona but these two are far and away the best.

One thing I am very sure of is that there won’t be any disappointed fans at Pomona. The Winternationals is the place where all the teams bring out new cars, new technology, new uniforms and great new ideas. I remember in 1986 when Gary Ormsby brought out his streamliner; wow, that was one really cool car.

I hope to be racing at Pomona but even if I am not racing I plan on being there because Pomona is the race to be at, the place where all the new cars come out, everyone will have clean uniforms and everyone will be tied for first place in the NHRA points!

If anyone knows a person or a company that would like to have their name on my Top Fuel car at Pomona, give me a call or shoot me an email and we will be there!

Until next time. Hope to see everyone at Pomona.