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Sunday, June 18, 2000
Don Lampus is a quick learner. Good thing, too, because being behind the wheel of an NHRA Top Fuel dragster can be a little wild.
"The only thing I can really equate it to is put your car in neutral at a red light and have a tractor trailer come up from behind you and hit you at about 80 mph," said Lampus, a Fox Chapel native who lives in Dallas. "Without the car crushing, that's what it feels like because the car instantly goes 60. It goes 0-60 so fast you can't calculate it."
Lampus, who will turn 36 June 28, was ninth in points headed into today's event at National Trail Raceway in Kirkersville, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, where he qualified 10th yesterday.
And while he competes on quarter-mile straightaways, Lampus' route to being the top rookie in NHRA Top Fuel competition was rather circuitous.
After graduating from Fox Chapel High School in 1982, Lampus earned an Industrial Engineering degree from Penn State in 1986 and went to work for McDonnell Douglas in Southern California. And even though he went to races at Lernerville Speedway and Keytone Raceway as a kid, Lampus didn't think about racing himself until he was in California.
"The story goes, on one sunny Saturday afternoon I was sitting down watching TV and I called my dad," said Lampus, whose parents still live in Fox Chapel. "As we were talking I could here him flipping through the channels. We wound up flipping through the channels together and came across the Baja 1000 on TV at the same time. He made the comment, 'You know I've always wanted to do that.' One thing led to another and I said, 'Well it's just down the road here.' He said, 'Why don't you see what it would take to do that.' I was thrilled to death with racing at that time, too, so I said, 'All right.' About two weeks later, we had a race car and there we went. Simple as that."
After winning a SCORE off-road racing championship in 1996, Lampus looked at moving on, especially after one of his competitors was attacked at gunpoint by "banditos" while practicing in the Mexican desert.
"We decided we should look into some other form of motorsports," he said.
All it took was one trip to the IHRA's U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis to convince Lampus to get behind the wheel of a dragster.
"We sat in the grandstands near the finish line and saw the first cars come down the track and the decision was made at that point, we're going Top Fuel racing. As soon as we left the U.S. Nationals, we called Frank Hawley and scheduled a class." Hawley runs an NHRA drag racing school in California.
Apparently Lampus paid attention, too, because he has been burning it up since then.
"Stuff's going by you like a picket fence -- it's just ripping. I'll never forget my first pass in competition was against Tommy Johnson Jr. I went 295 mph and I know that I was watching his car. I was not even looking in my lane, I was watching his car. When I got out of the car, it just freaked me out. How in the world did I just go almost 300 mph and not pay attention to where I was going?"
Hickory Speedway update
When owner Tom Mayerchak's wife became overly stressed at New Castle's Hickory Speedway last Sunday because of the death of driver Danny Burns, Mayerchak said enough was enough. He decided last week his family was better off without racing.
"It is part of the deal," Mayerchak said of the crash May 28. Burns of Imperial died June 3 from injuries sustained in the crash.
"You got to be different people to handle that part of the deal. Maybe in time, but right now is not the time. It's a lot of pressure to start with and it just overwhelmed us."
Mayerchak, who has owned the track for three years, said he has had offers to buy it.
"We just want to take a week off, but already we've had four people calling about it. We told them next week we'll discuss it," Mayerchak said.
Chris Dolack can be reached at cdolack@post-gazette.com.
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