BG: Well, I’m going to tell you the exact truth about this deal. Exactly what happened, so that if there are any friggin’ questions on anyone’s mind, this is the way all that came down. My two sons banged on me for two years that another race team was cheating us … more than two years, maybe three or four world championships, and tons of races. Finally, I got so tired of listening to thim, that one night as we were leaving the shop, I turned to thim and said, “If you think it’s so easy, you do it.” So they did. When I came in the next morning to work, he had a Pro Stock car sitting there with nitrous in it and I couldn’t find it.

So we put an old junk engine in that car and took it to Topeka, and Rusty qualified number four in it. I mean this engine is one you wouldn’t put it in your pickup truck to get it down the road. Look, it wasn’t right, but there had to be a point proven to them.  So I told the NHRA, and I had never gone to them directly and said, “People here are using nitrous, destroying our livelihood.” And they (NHRA) just went on and on. The boys thought they should just race that, but I couldn’t let that happen. And time went on, and finally, I showed NHRA that the car had nitrous on it. That’s when I got on the blacklist.

Shortly after that, the race team we thought was doing it said that they had a (shop) break in, someone chipped a couple of pieces off some engines and that put them out of business. It all got covered up and blown over, outside of the fact that, I guess, in many people’s minds we ended up being the bad guys for proving it (nitrous usage) was going on. In the end, for a long period of time it tore my family apart, it destroyed me financially to deal with it, and that’s the story. So if anyone wants to know, that’s the friggin’ story, that’s what happened.

: The day that Bill Kuhlmann made his first 200 mph pass at the IHRA Winternationals at Darlington, you made 199 mph in an IHRA Pro Stocker. Would you tell us something about that day and the T-Bird you drove to 199 mph?

BG: That was then, this is now. It was a long time ago, man, and it doesn’t even matter.

: Do you think a lot of NHRA Pro Stockers were using nitrous oxide in the nineties, and do you care to name them?

BG: No, I don’t think there were. I think that there are some Pro Stock guys that go outside the envelope for sure, but… It would be hard to prove it without going through another ordeal like I went through to prove it. I don’t think about it, and I don’t worry about it, and I don’t even give a shit.

: And you don’t have to run against them.

BG: And I don’t have to run against them, unless they come though my house.

: What’s your opinion of the NHRA today versus what it was maybe twenty years ago?

BG: I love NHRA. Nearly all my life has been involved with NHRA. My life’s been like a fairy tale. In fact, if it had been written before it happened, it wouldn’t have turned out nearly as good as it happened. We had our spats over the years, mainly with that nitrous deal, but I certainly have a lot of friends in NHRA, and, God, I hope this screwed up economy doesn’t affect too many racers and the sanctioning body.