The Sportsman Drag Racing Podcast w/ Luke & Jed

2018 NHRA Top Sportsman Champion Ronnie Proctor has won just about everything that one can win in a Top Sportsman car. A Ford guy through and through, Ronnie currently is running a Jerry Haas built Mustang in the 6 second zone at 200+ MPH. Ronnie gets the opportunity to tell his story on this weeks episode.

2018 IHRA Top Summit Super Series Champion Dale Scates, 25, East Texas resident travelled to Memphis to compete for his National Championship. Dale has been racing since he was 10 years old, starting in a Jr dragster at Pine Valley, and hasn’t taken a break since. Listen to his story, winning his championship in a borrowed car after finding a bad lifter in his own!

2018 NHRA Top Dragster Champion Paul Nero, a perennial top finisher in Top Dragster joins us in this installment of our championship coverage. Paul has multiple national event wins in multiple classes, has qualified for the NHRA All-Stars, and also competes in big money bracket races. Paul, an Oregon resident, finds himself behind the windshield putting in a lot of travel time to reach races all over the country with his closest national event over 4 hours from home and others being 17-21 hours from home or more!

2018 NHRA Sportsman Motorcycle champion John Markham is a 49-year-old from Bowling Green, KY, and has a storied history drag racing motorcycles. John has 10 National Championships in various motorcycle racing associations and over 30 national wins Listen as John details his championship season with Jed.

This week’s champion guest, Frank Aragona is a perennial top 10 Competition Eliminator National points finisher. He has stood at the top twice now, once in 2007 and of course this season. Nearly a dozen national event wins to his credit, Frank has seen a lot of success in Competition Eliminator, but has also dabbled in nearly all of the NHRA sportsman categories with success. Frank is a huge proponent for Competition Eliminator and you can hear the true passion in his words about the class! 

Kyla is 14 yrs old Jr Dragster racer from Wisconsin Rapids, WI She’s a freshman At Lincoln High school in Wisconsin Rapids. WI where she’s a High Honor Roll student. She started racing when she was 10 & won her first race the following year. She won two races & was X number points Champion this year at Great Lakes Dragaway, which led her to be invited to Memphis for World Finals. There she was runner up in the gambler race & then won the World Finals. Outside of racing, Kyla enjoys dancing. Which she’s been doing since the age of 3. She’s in ballet, pointe, tap, jazz, & modern. She’s also won 2 scholarships for her dancing.

Devin Isenhower is just 21 years old, our youngest 2018 NHRA Sportsman Champ.  Devin competes not only in his championship winning Camaro bodied Roadster SG machine, but also an American Race Cars dragster in the 8.90 category.  Not only did Devin win the  2018 Super Gas national title, he also finished 10th in Super Comp points.  In addition to his world championship, Devin won the Division 3 Super Gas championship (for a second consecutive season) in 2018.  

In this BONUS episode, Luke and Kevin Brannon discuss racing strategy, philosophy, and execution (at both ends of the track).  Luke and KB are the lead instructors within ThisIsBracketRacing ELITE, an exclusive online membership community.  Within the group, they hold regular live chats in which they discuss topics and field a variety of questions presented by group members.  This bonus episode is essentially a public version of that; and a bit of a glimpse inside ThisIsBracketRacing ELITE.

2018 IHRA Modified Champion Toby Daniels, 44, from Barbourville Kentucky began his drag racing journey tagging along to the track with family. Going to the track with his father and brother got Toby hooked on drag racing, just like so many of us.  After battling some nerves in the first few rounds, Toby tells Jed about his trip to the final, and the people that helped make it possible!

Justin Lamb recently won his 5th NHRA World Championship, which puts him in rare air within the sportsman drag racing community.  His 2018 Super Stock crown, in addition to his 5th title total, was his 3rd in Super Stock and his third in the last two calendar years.  In 2017, Justin became just the 3rd driver in NHRA history (joining Scotty Richardson and Jeff Strickland) to win two championships in the same season when he won the Super Stock and Stock titles.  In 2018, he came painfully close to duplicating the feat.  Justin won the Super Stock title for a second consecutive season.