Top Alcohol Funny Car great Frank Manzo is the all-time Sportsman leader with 83 national event wins, 101 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series event wins, 12 season titles, and 18 division championships, and he is four round-wins from accomplishing another unparalleled feat: a decade-long run of national event victories at a single event.

Manzo has been an unstoppable force at Maple Grove Raceway since the turn of the century. His Lucas Oil Chevy Monte Carlo has tallied a perfect mark of nine consecutive victories and 36 consecutive round-wins at the Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals in Reading. Manzo will try to complete the sweep and make the event’s silver anniversary all the more memorable.

“I’m the guy who’s been carrying the horseshoe for the last nine years,” Manzo said modestly. “Winning all those races in a row is an unbelievable thing that I could have never dreamt of happening as a young kid. I would love to do it this year and say that I won every race in the decade, but I know I’m going to have to be even better and work harder for it this year. The other racers are going to work a little bit harder because I’m sure they’re tired of hearing about me.”

Hearing about Manzo is something his competitors have had to put up with due to an outstanding career that hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down, even as Manzo approaches 57 years of age. Maple Grove Raceway is a special place for Manzo. The driver from Morganville, N.J., has raced there frequently since his career behind the wheel of blown, alcohol-powered floppers began in the mid-‘70s.

Frank Manzo has a chance to win the Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals for the 10th consecutive year, which no driver in any class has accomplished at any event.

“I have a lot of runs down that track,” said Manzo. “Mike Lewis from Maple Grove always booked my car into match races going back to ’74, ’75, ’76. We had points races and the Super Stock Nationals at Maple Grove. Even though [Old Bridge Township] Raceway Park is my home track, I have probably made more runs down the track at Maple Grove. I would even go testing at Maple Grove when I needed to at one time because Englishtown had noise restrictions.”

Manzo won the inaugural national event in Reading in 1985 but never made another final-round appearance until his win in 1997. Second-round and semifinal losses bridged the gap between his second Reading win and the nine consecutive that began in 2000.
 
His lack of fruitfulness at the Reading event during most of the 1980s and 1990s didn’t translate to a lack of success on the same racing surface at NHRA Division 1 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series events. Manzo’s first final-round appearance occurred against Joe Amato in Pro Comp at the 1979 event. Since 1987, Manzo has won a divisional event at Maple Grove 16 times. Seven of those wins occurred during his remarkable ongoing streak of nine national event wins.

Manzo’s Lucas Oil-sponsored Top Alcohol Funny Car team has already scored five national event wins this season heading into the Reading event, including at last weekend’s Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd.

“My car always ran pretty nice there at the divisional level, and I was always confident in what I had to do,” recalled Manzo. “I always had trouble at the national level. I pulled in there one year, looked at my records, and decided to go a different direction with my car than I did during all those years before. My car spoke back to me.

“I don’t know why the good Lord chose me to do those nine years at Maple Grove. I’m talking about it, but I usually try not to talk about it or think about it. If you think about it, you put added pressure on it and try to do something you shouldn’t do. In football, you might have two guys covering your receiver. You think you can fit the ball in there, but really, you can’t. I’m just not going to worry about it and treat it like just another race.”

Manzo might find it difficult to treat it like any other race. In addition to people talking about the potential of a 10th consecutive victory, something that no driver in any class has ever achieved, Manzo will be inducted into Maple Grove Raceway’s Walk of Fame in a class of six that also includes John Force, Kenny Bernstein, NHRA announcer Bob Frey, former Funny Car driver Joe Jacono, and engine builder Lee Crupi. It’s going to be a challenge for Manzo, but being challenged is what got him to this level of racing.

Manzo, far lane, reached his first NHRA final of any kind at the divisional event at Maple Grove Raceway in 1979, in which his altered-bodied entry fell short against Joe Amato in the Pro Comp final. Manzo has 16 divisional wins to complement his 11 national event scores in Reading.

“When I was growing up, I raced guys like Ken Veney and Jerry Gwynn every week; it seemed like every time I turned my helmet left or right, Joe Amato was in the other lane; Dale Armstrong was in my class,” Manzo explained. “As they moved on to the fuel classes and I finally started to get my way a little bit on the East Coast, Bob Newberry shows up. He’s a great racer, and he started whipping my ass big-time for years. From day one, I raced people that said, ‘This is not going to be easy if you want to win.’

“I’ve always had to work at my business during the week, and guys like Pat Austin who raced for a living would show up out here. They were a little bit better prepared to race than me, so I had to work a little harder to try to be better than them. It all comes down to how bad you want it.”

Manzo began his string of success at the Reading event with a final-round victory against Tony Bartone in 2000 and won each of the eight races since.

As far as how bad Manzo wants it, his fear of never adding to his tally of 83 wins pushes him to stay up late tending to his race car during the week along with his crew of John Glade, Fred Bauer, Ed Hofmann, and Scott Siesing, all with the wholehearted support of his wife, Michele.

“I try to never, ever forget where I came from,” said Manzo. “I was a little kid who had trouble adjusting valves on a Hemi and didn’t know anything about a blower. I was fortunate enough that people taught me. I try not to forget that. As many races as we’ve been winning, I can go the next two years without getting past the semifinal round. It can happen.

“It’s kind of like when you get nervous that you might lose your job and not have enough to live on. The fear is in me that when I got that last trophy in Brainerd, that it might be the last time I ever got that trophy and got my picture taken. When I come home, that fear of never being in the winner’s circle again creeps in me. I just reach back and work a little harder to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

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