Columnist Larry Dixon: No extra pressure defending title

Larry Dixon

Thursday, April 3, 2003 | 10:17 a.m.

Editor's note: Larry Dixon, driver of Don Prudhomme's Miller Lite Top Fuel dragster and the 2002 NHRA Top Fuel champion, is writing a daily column exclusively for the Las Vegas Sun in conjunction with the fourth annual NHRA SummitRacing .com Nationals at The Strip at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

A lot of NHRA Powerade Drag Racing fans have asked me if I have any added pressure this season to repeat our championship season of 2002. To be honest, I haven't tried to prepare myself any differently than I did last year.

What we did last year worked, so our Miller Lite Team is not going to try and re-invent the wheel. Things worked pretty well last year, so why change it?

Coming into 2003, we didn't feel like we needed to re-engineer the car. Last year's new motor and engine combination is still what's in the car this season; we're just working on fine-tuning it. We did pretty well last season with that tune-up, so we felt like we didn't need to change too many things.

Speaking of last year, I'm certainly proud to have won a championship. When I think of all the heroes I looked up to when I was growing up, like Don "Snake" Prudhomme, Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney, they've all won championships so to have my name in the record books next to them, at least once, is an incredible feeling.

So far, this year has started off pretty well -- in fact, almost exactly the same as 2002. Pomona was the first race of the season, which couldn't have gone any better than it did. We went into that race with a game plan, everything went according to plan and it was a phenomenal weekend.

We qualified well and won the Shootout, which paid $100,000. We then came back and won the race the next day for another $50,000, plus an additional $50,000 bonus for winning both the Shootout and the race.

Looking back on it now, the Pomona weekend reminded me a lot of the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis during Snake's last year with the Funny Car, where we swept both the Shootout and the race. It was a great weekend and probably one of the best race wins of any team I've ever been a part of.

To sweep both again was so incredibly hard. In fact, no one in Top Fuel had won the race and the Shootout in the same weekend since 1990, so that tells you how hard it is to pull it off. Plus, in the Top Fuel class, there had never been a repeat winner at the Winternationals -- ever. My dad won that race back in 1970, so the Winternationals means a tremendous amount to me and my family. If I could pick five races that I would want to win during the season, the Winternationals would definitely be one of them.

With a solid weekend in Phoenix, we were able to gather some important points with our runner-up finish. While we would have liked to have won the race, we knew there was plenty of racing left and next up was the Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.

I like to refer to the Gators as one of the "majors" in drag racing. You have Pomona, Gainesville, Columbus, Indy, and Englishtown; they're the oldest, most prestigious races on the tour, so I've always wanted to do well at Gainesville. We had a great car and it ran phenomenal that weekend, it's just that we were outrun in the semifinals. There's only one way to win and many ways to lose in this sport. In Phoenix, we didn't win because of me. In Gainesville, we didn't win because of the car. It takes the whole package to win races and we all need to be on our game every weekend.

As for the remainder of the season, while it is still too early to make any predictions, it looks as though it'll be another showdown with the Bernsteins. Brandon has two wins and we have one. We're off to a great start so far, have won a race, and are leading the points coming into this weekend's race at The Strip.

I am excited coming into this weekend's race in Las Vegas. We swept both races here last year and every time we've come to the desert, we've done well. We've always had a car that was capable of winning, but whether it all comes together for us or not is what dictates whether we will win or lose.

Last year it did come together and we were able to clinch our first championship here at the race last October. Now we just need to keep focused on the task at hand, continue to have lady luck in our pits, and hopefully we'll be able to go some rounds this weekend.