Thu, 9 Oct 2003, 06:03 PM What’s A Guy Got To Do?

By Bob Frey Photo by:Auto Imagery, Inc.

Gunderson is the first over 280.

Michael Gunderson is the first and only driver ever to take a fuel injected dragster on a run over 280 miles per hour in the quarter mile. In 1999 he was the first driver ever to take a blown alcohol-powered dragster on a run over 260 miles per hour. He has seven national event wins, twelve final rounds, twenty divisional wins, five divisional titles and he’s finished in the top ten in points five times and yet for all that he has accomplished he still can’t seem to get his picture on the cover of National Dragster. “I keep thinking, what’s a guy got to do get on the cover?” Well, maybe now, after breaking the 280 barrier, setting the record and winning the race in Maple Grove he’ll get the prime spot on NHRA’s main paper. “I’ll never forget the ’ 98 race at Maple Grove,” Mike said. “I won the race and figured that it was my turn to get the cover shot and then some Super Stock guy who hadn’t won in twenty-five years won the race and he got the cover.” That Super Stock guy was Maple Grove’s own Ken Montgomery and he deserved the cover, but then again, so does Mike.

Mike Gunderson, like so many other racers, actually began racing right out of high school. “It’s funny, I went out and bought this ’67 Camaro, took it home to put an engine in it and my nephew, Bryan, noticed that it had the words ‘Under The Gun’ written on the deck lid. We didn’t come up with that name, it was already on my first car.” The name has remained, however, and since he first began racing in the alcohol ranks at the end of 1994 all of the other competitors have been under the gun. “I built my first car at the end of the ’94 season, took it down to Gainesville to test, got some help and advice from Frank Hawley and then went out and went 6.13 on my first full pass, and that was with a roots blower,” Mike said. At the beginning of 1995 Mike and his crew started racing on the Division 2 level and at their second race they beat Jay Payne and Jeremy Torstveit, two of the best racers in the division and won their first race. “Jay couldn’t have been nicer to us right from the beginning and he remains one of my best friends to this day.” Jay is also one of the reasons why Mike runs all of Brad Anderson’s components in his engines today. “I watched guys race for a while and it looked like all of the cars with Brad’s stuff in them were running really well, so I figured that I wanted the best and that’s the way I went.” Mike speaks very highly of Brad, his products and his service. “I couldn ’t ask for more than what we get from Brad and his people. They’re the best.”

Gunderson does smokey burnout.

The 2003 season got off to a rather shaky start for Mike, who was part of a two-car accident at the first divisional race in Gainesville. “John Haley had problems and he crashed into us and it caused a lot of damage to the car,” Mike said. The team suffered damage to the canard wings on the car, the main wing, the body panels and the tires. Fortunately Mike was unhurt and he was the first one to get to John to make sure that he was OK. “I have to laugh because I carry my Nextel phone with me in my fire suit when I run and after checking with John and once the medical crew got there I pulled out my cell phone, hit the walkie-talkie feature and told Nancy (his wife) that I was OK.” God bless technology.

Mike almost didn’t get the national record after coming so close at a couple of races in the last four weeks. “We were lost at Indy, and I had put a new engine in and we smoked the tires and since I was twenty-ninth out of twenty nine in the field before the last run I figured that I needed some help so I went to Jerry Darien and asked him to look at my car. When he did, he took a look at it and just shook his head and said ‘I couldn’t run my car that way.’ And then he showed us some things to do and it made all the difference in the world,” Mike said. When a car makes that big a jump in performance you would think that they made a lot of changes to the car and the engine, but that wasn’t the case with Mike. “Jerry told us that we were messed up in the clutch department and he just suggested that we move some weight around and that’s what we did and the results were amazing.” Indeed they were. At Indy Mike recorded top speed at a sizzling 278.35 and he followed that up with a 277.89 blast in Chicago. “After running the big speed at Indy, and then going 280 at Maple Grove the first week, and then running over the record in Chicago and not backing it up for the record we were beginning to think that we’d never set the record,” Mike said. But he did when he backed that 280.84 mph run up in Maple Grove. “It was funny,” Mike said, “after the race I got a call from Jerry Darien who said that he was going to bill me for the advice. The bill would say ‘Qualifying at Indy, $1500. Low qualifier at Maple Grove, $1200. Being the first guy to go over 280, priceless.’ And you know what, if he sent me that bill I’d have gladly paid it.”

Gunderson with his Wally.

Mike’s journey to the winner’s circle at Maple Grove was a rather circuitous one. After winning the first two rounds he was beaten by Richard Bourke in the semi-finals, but Richard was disqualified for being under weight. “We didn’t know that Richard had been DQ’d until we heard you announce it on the P.A.,” Mike said. “Rob Wendland (Mike’s crew chief) said it must be a joke but I knew you wouldn’t joke about something like that, so we took the car out and started working on it for the final.” Working on it may be an understatement since the team had blown an engine in the semis and needed to put a new one in for the final round. “If we hadn’t had the help from Rich McPhillips’ crew and the guys with Jeff McGaffick’s team we never would have been able to make the final round. I can’t thank those two teams and their crew enough.” After the race Mike said that when he returned to his pit area it looked like a bomb had gone off and it took them two hours to get it all back together, but at least they had won the race thanks to s a little help from some new friends.

When he’s not racing Mike runs Gunderson Plumbing, a company that he started in 1983. “We do mostly residential installation and we work with the top builder in the country, D. R. Horton Homes,” Mike said. And he is quick to add that he couldn’t go racing and run the business without the support of some great people. “My two sisters-in-law, Linda Coffey and Jennifer Vander Voort do a great job running the business while Nancy and I are away. We honestly couldn’ t do it without them,” Mike said. The other family members, Bryan Coffey and Jeff Vander Voort also both work in the plumbing business and then go help Mike with the race car on the weekends. Mike is also quick to thank Nancy for all of her support. “We’ll be married twenty-five years next week and she goes everywhere I go, and lately, since we’ve been a little down on crew members, she’s actually been mixing the fuel, packing the chutes and more. In fact she told me that the nitro has been playing havoc with her nails,” he added with a smile.

While Mike’s main racing season is over, he did say that he will participate is some of the winter series events in Florida and then prepare for the 2004 season. Even with the new changes in the weight breaks for the fuel cars (or whatever the changes will be for next year) Mike still says that he’ll run his A/Fuel car because he loves the competition, the challenge and the class, besides, he still has some goals that he hopes to achieve, like winning the national championship and getting his picture on the cover of National Dragster. Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?