Thu, 16 Oct 2008, 06:50 PM Dad, I Blew Up the Lawn Mower...Again!!

By Bob Frey Photo copyright 2008 Auto Imagery, Inc.

Don Nase Jr.

With all of the excitement surrounding the pro classes at the Virginia Nationals last weekend, some fans may have missed the tremendous racing that we saw in Competition Eliminator. First of all, it took a solid .553 under the index just to make the field. Three drivers, Bill Scott, Kevin Houghtaling and Ray Bamond ran "fifty under" and didn't even make the show. To get in the top half of the field you had to be a lofty .66 under your index and, if you wanted to be number one, you had to run better than Bob Book who went .725 under his A/D index in what may have been the run of the year. Bob ran a staggering 6.315 in his car and that was just enough to edge out Rodger Brogdon for the top spot. Then, in eliminations, you got to see Arnie Martel and Anthony Bertozzi, in Vinny Barone's car, slug it out in the semi-finals in what was, basically, a run to see who had the best B/SR in the country. On this day, Arnie did and he went on to win the race. If that wasn't enough excitement for you, you also got to see one of the slickest cars in the country compete on the NHRA national level for the first time. It was the I/D, that's right, an I/D, that was being driven by Don Nase Jr. Don, who may be familiar to folks who followed the sport compact series, was new to Comp Eliminator, and the addition of his car is just one more reason why Comp is one of the best eliminators to watch at any national event.

Don Nase Jr.

Don got his start in racing the unconventional way. "I started out by blowing up my father's lawn mower," he said. "I was the only kid on the block who could do a wheel stand on a Simplicity fourteen horsepower lawn mower. And that's how I learned to fix things, too, because after I blew it up dad made me fix it." Gee, that sounds like the way almost every other drag racer got started, doesn't it? OK, so maybe not every other one. From there he progressed to a more conventional form of racing by racing his five liter Ford at the race track and, as he got quicker and faster, he really got the bug. "Actually, drag racing is in my blood," he said. "My father was the original Castrol race rep back in the mid 1970's." Like most kids who didn't listen to their dad (and that's probably why he blew up the lawn mower), Don used to raise an eyebrow when his father would tell him stories about the "good old days." "I didn't believe the stories that dad used to tell me about all the people he knew in the sport, but one day, years ago, we were in North Jersey and we ran into Sammy Miller and Sammy came over and said, 'Hey, Don, it's been a long time since I've seen you. How you doing?' And they talked for a while and then dad told me he knew Ed McCulloch and guys like that. I was impressed." To further illustrate his point about his past, Don said that when he was racing at Englishtown at the points meet a few weeks ago, his dad was there and he ran into Jake Crimmins and they began to talk about when Jake used to drive for 'Jungle Jim.' So, Don admits, his dad did know a lot of people and he knows a lot about the sport, so, he said, "I guess drag racing is in my blood. It's genetic."

Back to his career, Don said that after racing his Mustang he progressed to nitrous power and he saw that the import racing was starting to take off a little bit. "It's kind of expensive to get into the sport in a Pro Stock car or a Funny Car, but I knew that I wanted to race and go faster, so I sat down and mapped out a business plan for the future. I felt that racing in the sport compact class was the future and that it could give me a nice entree to the sport at a higher level than where I was competing." Don began in the Pro Compact class with a tube chassis vehicle. He bought a Ford Ranger truck that had been built for the old Pro Stock Truck class and he went from there. The truck was brand new and, since Don had seen the possibility of what the turbo engines could do, and since there were no classes for lawn mowers, he decided to build a turbocharged car of his own. "I saw what Jack Roush had done with a turbo motor years ago, making about a thousand horsepower with half of the technology that was available today, so that's the way we went." Don made about 1,100 horsepower with the combination he had in the truck and he ran that for a couple of years. "When we decided to build the truck the class was about a 7.60 or a 7.50 class and that was considered a great run. But since it took me about two years to finish the truck, by the time we got it on the track the class was going 6.90's and we were playing catch up." About that time the NDRA created a new extreme dragster class and Don thought that was right where he wanted to be. He got together with famous chassis builder Mike Spitzer and, together, they built a Ford-powered dragster. The car went in the low 7.20's and it got Don some notoriety, and when he found out the General Motors was looking to be the first company in the six-second zone with their new ECOtec engine, he decided to give that a try. "We put another business plan together and took it to General Motors for them to look at. Andrew Christopher and Brent Schultz from Roush Industries saw the potential of the car and they helped us sell the program to GM. It's been a great success so far. I know that Fred Simmonds and Dan Engle from GM both like it and that's a good thing."

Unlike the Ford program, which took years to come to fruition, the GM car hit the track relatively soon after conception. In the initial tests it went faster than any four cylinder car had ever gone. The team was at South Georgia Motorsports Park for their very first race and they recorded an elapsed time of 6.80 at over 200 miles per hour which is very impressive for a four-cylinder car. Heck, that's very impressive for any number of cylinders, I think! Since then the team has progressed and has recorded a best of 6.41 at 212 miles per hour and they currently hold the NHRA I/D national record 6.81 and 190.48 mph which they set at the Division 1 race at Cecil County, Maryland. "It may be cliche, but we are the world record holder, and for a four-cylinder car, we are the quickest. We're not the fastest, but we're working on that. And even if nothing else happens from here we can always say that we were the best when we ran."

The car that Don has accomplished this with is a four-cylinder, ECOtec-powered car that rides on a 255 inch wheelbase dragster built by Mike Spitzer. He runs a Powerglide transmission and admits that may be his biggest performance drawback. "We only have one acceleration gear and that hurts us. These cars like to rev and they like to stay up in the rpm band. We feel that if you put a slipper clutch and a five-speed transmission with it the car could go as quick as 5.80 at over 230 miles per hour. That was actually our ultimate goal," he said. "To be the first to go in the five-second range with a four-cylinder car. Six and eight cylinder cars have done it but never a four. It's nice to have goals, isn't it?" Other items on the car include a Borg Warner turbo-charger making sixty pounds of boost and with the big turbo in I/D trim it makes about fifty pounds of boost. "We run VP Racing fuels and Roush Industries does the engines for GM in this program. We also have Pro Torque doing our torque converters and Sid Neal out of Neal's Racing Transmissions in Snellville, Georgia does our trans and gets us going in the right direction and we use Mobil 1 oil to keep it running smoothly and I'm the lucky guy who gets to drive it every weekend." In the ultra-competitive Comp Eliminator in Virginia, Don ran 6.725 to qualify thirtieth in the field and lost in round one to the reigning world champion Frank Aragona. His car did receive the coveted "Best Engineered" award for the event.

Don, who is in the commercial flooring business when he's not racing, says that he has thoroughly enjoyed his time with this car and the project, and, strangely enough, he said that, in the future, he would love to drive a fuel funny car. "There's just something about a big, fuel motor that really excites me," he said. Maybe it's all those stories from his dad about "Jungle Jim." And after reflecting on what he and his team have accomplished with this car, Don said that he's glad they make digital cameras now so he can record his runs for posterity, so that when he talks to his son about drag racing he'll have proof of what he accomplished. I just hope his son never asks him if he can borrow the lawn mower.