How did your son Del get involved in your racing operation?
Chuck: That evolved into a couple of years later when Art’s life was changing a lot and we just decided to split up. We took the car to Dallas, rented the track two weekends in a row and Del got his license.
Del, did you always plan to be a drag racer?
Del: I definitely wanted to be a drag racer. My earliest memories of drag racing were at Orange County Raceway back when we lived in Laguna Hills and I could hear the drag races when I was a kid. Dad had taken me out there (Orange County) multiple times by the time I was five years old. I basically grew up around the drag races. When he teamed up with Richard Day I was just six years old. I’d say by the time I was eight or nine years old I was pretty sure I wanted to be a Funny Car racer, but everybody says that as a kid and everybody wants to be an astronaut or this or that. I was just fortunate that it worked that I could do what I always wanted to do.
Del, is there anything else that you would have done if the opportunity to drive a Funny Car had not been available?
Del: No, there never really was any other option. Like I said, we had Funny Cars and that’s what I wanted to do. I can’t think of anything else I would have done. There are other things I could do to make a living, but I really hadn’t put my heart into or thought that much about doing anything but drag racing. After high school I really didn’t see any real big reason or need to go on (to college) from there because this (drag racing) is what I going to do. I just kind of jumped in that path.
Chuck, how did the Checkers Schuck’s and Kragen sponsorship come about with your team?
Chuck: The CSK sponsorship came about when they decided to go Funny Car racing in 1997. Actually, Jim Epler had the sponsorship and didn’t have any cars or any equipment anymore to do it; he worked on the deal but it wasn’t signed. They (CSK) decided he just didn’t have the backing to do the deal. We finished seventh in NHRA points the year before, running with help just from John Fink, Cory Lee and me. The top six cars had sponsors and we were the seventh car, so CSK called us. That’s pretty much how it happened.
How important are associate sponsors to funding your racing operation? You’ve got Pepsi, K&N Filters and Chevron on the sides of your cars. How do they fit into your sponsorship deal?
Del: Well, I think the majority of those you see on there are all working with CSK. They are all vendors of CSK and they work out that deal out with Checker Schuck’s and Kragen to help fund our program. There’s really no incremental funding to us from those sponsors. The associate sponsorships that pay off directly for us are Mac Tools, Wible Associates, a realtor out of Indiana, Walery’s Pizza, and T-Shirts Unlimited. Mac has been with us for 10 years, and have really supported us completely. Wible and Walery's may sound like little local things, but they help us out tremendously and do a lot for us over the years. T-Shirts Unlimited has been with us for about 10 years too, and that's been a great partnership, in that we've really helped each other grow.
With all the work that’s required to field a competitive multi-car Funny Car operation today, why did you also decide to build a Nostalgia Funny Car? Who’s idea was it and why build a replica of the Blue Max?
Chuck: That was just Del’s passion. He decided he wanted to build one and he always liked the Blue Max. It was our favorite car at all times out there when he was growing up.
Del: That’s kind of how it went down. Back in the Orange County Raceway days we lived off of El Toro Road, which was one exit down from OCIR, so every Saturday night they had different Funny Car events and the Blue Max would come to town maybe four or five times a year. Those guys (Blue Max crew) were aggressive, had fun and could actually beat Don Prudhomme, and not that many people could do that at the time.
Chuck: When we were running our Alcohol Funny Car and we’d go to a 32 or 64 Funny Car show in Seattle, in those days we’d get one room for the crew at the Red Lion instead of three rooms at the Motel 6 and we’d go to the bar (at the Red Lion) just to watch the guys from the Blue Max partying.
(Chuck and Del both laugh.)
Del: It was a lot of fun! At every event we’d buy one (event) sticker. Dad still has the refrigerator in his garage with Blue Max and Budweiser stickers all over it. It was just a lot of fun growing up watching those guys and that car. Then Dad was helping the guys with the Lil’ Nate Nostalgia Funny Car and it seemed like those guys were having a pretty good time out there kind of working on the cars a lot like we used to – hands-on. They build it, work it and all that. So I thought if we build a Blue Max car maybe it would be like our hobby, we really don’t have any hobbies, or at the time we didn’t, so we decided to build the Blue Max. I was talking to Howard Bugg from the Lil’ Nate car and said if I could ever find a ’75 Mustang II body I’d build a replica of the Blue Max and Bugsy said, “You’re never going to believe this, but I have one in our back yard.” Well, Howard and Ray gave it to us and that’s what started the project.