A cool slick track and a hot car with too much horsepower coming out of that 601 cubic-inch big block Chevy engine was all it took to launch Greg Feal of Kamloops into an out-of-control fishtail.
It happened Saturday morning after a rainy night on Feal’s second pass of the day, right at the quarter-mile mark at Rolling Mix Concrete Raceway just as his twin-turbo 1969 Opel GT was maxing out at 181 miles per hour – the worst possible time to be spinning his tires on the pavement.
Thankfully for Feal and everybody gathered at the track for the first day of the North vs. South All Door Car Shootout he had a built-in safety feature – his parachute – and he used it to straighten out his car and avert disaster.
“The tires broke loose in high gear and it was just one of those things – the worst ride I’ve ever had,” said the 68-year-old Feal, a veteran of nearly four decades of drag racing.
“I had to back off the pedal twice because the car wasn’t going straight and the second time I hit the throttle and when the boost (of methanol) came back on it spun the tires and the car went completely sideways. It is kind of bumpier at the other end and I was expecting it a little, but not like that.”
The nose of the white car was streaked red with remnants of a plastic cone lane divider Feal hit and dragged along the shutdown lane. It took some convincing words with his wife in the pits before she finally gave him the OK to continue. Feal turned down the boost on his turbocharger and took on Dale Phillips of Chetwynd in the first round of eliminations and lost when he broke out. Feal got to the finish one-tenth of a second quicker than his 6.75-second dial-in time.
The two-day shootout drew 11 of the fastest door cars from northern B.C. and nine from the Mission-based West Coast Doorslammers club.
For 50-year-old Rod LeClaire of Victoria it was a long-delayed homecoming, 30 years after he moved away. He grew up in Prince George and raced a few times on the track in its early days in the 1980s but was more a street racer back than, illegally racing his 1970 Chevy Chevelle on North Kelly Road, not far from the high school he attended. LeClaire returned to sanctioned drag racing when he was 30 and raced for five years but got out of it for 15 years to concentrate on his housing development business in Victoria.
Three years ago he jumped from the super gas class to the pro stock door car he now drives.
“We used to run 10.90 seconds and that felt like a rocket, now I’m going 6.60 at 215 – it’s just insane, but it’s fun,” he said. “It’s like taking off in an airplane times three. It throws you back in the seat and you’re along for the ride but you do have to steer these cars to get them down to the end. You have to be pretty on top of it.”
LeClaire came up with the idea of the North-South shootout and convinced a quarter of the 40-strong West Coast Doorslammers club to come north with him. But he says it’s the local club, Northern Interior Timed Racing Organization (NITRO) under president Foji Dhansaw that deserves all the credit for making it happen.
“It’s a good feeling coming back out here, it’s a great turnout so hopefully next year we can get something together so we can come back here and do a good show for you guys,” he said. “To get a group of 25 cars together and keep everybody happy is not easy. It’s lot of work for these guys here and I have to hand it to them, they’ve got it going on. We’re trying to keep it fun, it’s not a points race.
“I’m all about filling the stands, getting people interested in drag racing, bringing young guys into it and getting the kids into the junior drag racing stuff to keep it alive. It’s not always about the fast guys but that’s what brings the crowds.”
LeClaire beat Dave Kowalski of Fort St. John in the first round Saturday but red-lighted in Round 2 against Phillips. LeClaire ran a 6.68 at 215 mph in Mission but the higher altitude and less grippy track in Prince George kept him well below his personal bests on the weekend. He regularly loads his motorhome and hauls his car to the big tracks – Mission, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas – but there’s nothing like returning to his P.G. roots.
“I like the track here, it’s a little rocky here and there but it’s pretty safe,” he said. “In Mission we’re spoiled. We’ve got a full quarter-mile of concrete and here there’s 1,000 feet of concrete and the rest is asphalt so there quite a few humps and bumps and you can feel it in the car but it’s not bad.
“Everyone’s pretty happy and I think these guys will come back. They see the potential here. There were some close calls this morning but we’re getting down the track now. Nobody’s crashing, we’re going straight, we’re knocking some good ETs out the back door, some good mile-an-hour runs are being made now and that brings guys back.”
Andy LeClaire, Rod’s dad, ran an appliance business in Prince George and knew Gordon Schade and Ernie Schultz in 1978 when they built the drag strip, then known as North Central Motorsport Park. Andy raced cars there a few times but had nothing that came close to the raw power of his son’s nitrous-inhaling beast. He has no desire to slip behind the wheel as a guest driver.
“I’m too old for that,” he said.
Rod Belsham, the only Prince George driver in the shootout, lost an all-north duel in his Cavalier in the first round Saturday to Paul Soarse of Terrace. Belsham, 50, knows a lot of the West Coast racers from when they used to meet at the now-defunct Ashcroft drag strip.
“In Mission they always used to be a lot quicker than us and we had options to go other places but we’d always meet in Ashcroft and we’d get to race these guys until Ashcroft closed down three years ago, so we all started doing the Edmonton thing.”
Belsham said the West Coast guys at first asked for concessions to help offset the cost of travel but Dhansaw stuck to his guns and made every driver buck up for their own entry fees. As it turned out, the drivers pooled their money and raised about $5,000, a winner-take-all pot that went to each day’s winner.
“We’d like to have another event like this every year, this thing could grow lots and it would be nice to get 30 door cars here,” said Belsham. “It’s good stuff. Lots of times we end up racing lots of dragsters. In top-eliminator in Edmonton, lots of times there’s like 50 dragsters and maybe five or six door cars. The dragsters are usually quicker, so you’re kind of the duck all the time. It’s nice to be fender racing instead of having a dragster duck in from behind you.”
Belsham started his season in March with two weeks of racing in Las Vegas and had his car running in the low-sevens at 189 mph.
“Now that it’s set up and going straight it’s good,” said Belsham, a native of Fort Fraser. “The first couple hits in Vegas, trying to stay off the wall was tougher. (On Saturday), the track wasn’t hot so I got a little squirrely off the line.”
Some of the racing teams, with their motorhomes and trailers, are half-million dollar operations but Belsham said it doesn’t have to be that pricey to compete in the door car pro stock class.
“Drag racing, you buy everything for lots and sell it cheap,” he said. “Lots of guys here have less into it than if they were hill-climbing in a snowmobile. It’s a good family deal here, there are kids running around and everyone looks after each other. I’ve met more friends in five years racing here and in Edmonton and Fort St. John than anywhere else in 50 years.”
In Saturday’s final, Otto Schulte, of Black Creek on Vancouver Island, driving an 2005 Cavalier, clocked 7.78 at 175 mph to beat Rick Limb of Hope and his ’67 Chevy Nova. On Sunday, they got through to the quarterfinals before the skies opened up, drenching the track, and race organizers called it a day. All eight remaining drivers were from the north and rather than divide the prize money they all decided to donate their share of the pot back to the non-profit club.
In the NITRO classes, Saturday’s winners were: Sportsman – Justin Brewer, Prince George, ’73 AMC Gremlin, 12.18 ET @ 103 mph; No box – Bruce Backx, Prince George, ’65 Chevelle, 9.84 ET @121 mph; Box – Daylen Miller, Fort St. James, ’05 Chevy 565, 8.057 ET @ 143 mph; Junior – Lincoln Rutherford, Wembley, Alta., 9.062 ET (one-eighth mile) @70.72 mph; Teen – Mya Dawson, Quesnel, 10.875 ET (one-eighth mile) @ 12.51 mph. Sunday’s finals eliminations were postponed and will resume on Saturday, June 16.
