Victory Lane: Pressure with the pinstripes for Yankee Dragster team

Sunday, June 17, 2001

By Chris Dolack, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

KIRKERSVILLE, Ohio -- As his team prepared the Yankee Dragster for its final qualifying run yesterday, co-owner Darrel Gwynn positioned his wheelchair about 30 feet behind the left rear tire. He watched his crew crawl around the engine, making sure it was ready for Mike Dunn to blast down the left lane at National Trail Raceway.

Early qualifying rounds for the Pontiac Excitement Nationals resulted in subpar results -- at least for Gwynn's team, which is third in points with two victories. With the temperature on the rise and both lanes getting slick, Gwynn watched as Dunn blazed down the quarter-mile strip in 4.84 seconds at 297.02 mph. The run was the 10th-fastest yesterday, but it easily was his best of the weekend heading into the eliminations today.

For Dunn of Wrightsville, which is located between York and Lancaster, and the Yankee Dragster, it was well off the 330.55 mph record they set two weeks ago in Joliet, Ill.

Gwynn won't get discouraged if his team has a couple of rough rounds. He has been through a much tougher ordeal than simply hoping his car has the fastest elapsed time each round. Gwynn, who had followed his father into the sport, was an alcohol dragster champion in the sportsman class in 1983. He shifted into NHRA Top Fuel in 1985, where he won 18 national events and raced against legends such as Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme and Shirley Muldowney. By 1990, Gwynn was the driver to beat when he raced in an exhibition in England April 15, 1990.

"I was only supposed to make one or two runs, but the car broke about three-quarters of the way down the racetrack and I broke my neck and lost my left arm," Gwynn said without a hint of anger. "I had a really good race team at the time and they were all back in the United States waiting for me to fly in for the next race."

Not willing to give up the sport, Gwynn, who once was the fastest in drag racing, put together a sponsorship deal with Mopar. That ended in 1999 when the company was convinced to spend its money in NASCAR.

"We had nobody to take over the primary sponsorship," Gwynn said. "We had such a good race team that nobody wanted to see it fall apart. [The crew] elected to take part-time jobs or do whatever they could to keep this team together so if we found a sponsor they could go racing."

As it turned out, Gwynn didn't have to do much selling. Hank and George Steinbrenner, who owns the New York Yankees, had been looking to get involved in drag racing, and Gwynn's team was a perfect fit for the Yankees' pinstripes.

"When they called us into their office in the middle of 2000, they had known about our whole story," Gwynn said. "It stems from Hank Steinbrenner's interest in racing. He has a strong interest in this sport, and he loves Top Fuel. He had been keeping track of us for the past several years. It was pretty cool that those people had their eye on us.

"When you put the pinstripes on the side of that car, what comes with it is a lot of pressure. But also what comes with it is a lot of magic ... the whole persona that comes with the Yankees. It's a lot of pressure on each team member. Everybody out here expects us to be on top all the time."

For Gwynn, a Top Fuel championship would ease the pain of not being able to race. If Dunn is to climb back atop the standings, he must go through Kenny Bernstein and Larry Dixon, who qualified first and second heading into the eliminations today.