LA GRANDE DRIVER TAKES BOISE TITLE

Published 12:00 am Thursday, October 10, 2002

By Pierre LaBossire

Observer Staff Writer

Dennis Fuller had the chance years ago to win a Super Pro Track championship at the Firebird Raceway in Boise.

Fuller, who owns and operates Fuller Automotive in La Grande along with his wife, Sandy, walked away from that opportunity, skipping the final race day of the season at Firebird to collect World Super Gas points at another drag racing venue.

"I just had to show up at the gate (at the Firebird Raceway) to win," said Fuller. He ended up coming in second place.

At the time, he took a potential first-place title at the Firebird Raceway for granted, but then he discovered just how hard it is to win a track title.

"It was a whole lot harder than I realized," he said. "Over the years, I thought ‘Wow, maybe it’s more special than I thought.’ "

Drag racing is in Fuller’s blood, and has been for some time now. He’s been popping the clutch at Christmas trees at tracks around the Pacific Northwest and Canada for 18 years. He’s a two-time Super Gas Division champion and finished fourth in the World Super Gas standings years ago.

This season, Fuller committed to the Firebird Raceway Super Pro Championship. Super Pro is a faster classification than Super Gas. Super Pro consists of cars with track times between 7.5 and 12.99 seconds.

After a fast start in his ’97 Ford Mustang no pun intended he held on to win the 2002 Super Pro title at the Firebird Raceway.

Fuller got four straight track firsts to start the season, then held off his competition for the rest of the summer to take the title.

"The way we started out the season was pretty darn exciting," said Sandy Fuller. "Dennis is pretty good, but four in a row!"

Fuller came in second during another day and made the semifinals two other weekends to collect seasonal points.

Sandy said Dennis held the lead most of the season, but lost it for a little while. He ended up winning the title with 1,254 points, 160 points ahead of second place.

The Fullers did have a slight handicap. They had to make the five-hour round-trip to Boise and back 19 times this season (which runs from the end of March to the end of September) to rack up enough points to win. Fuller was competing against 40 to 80 drag racers each weekend, many of them from the Boise area.

The Fullers will be traveling back to Boise in January for an awards banquet to collect their trophies and prize money.

Not only did they have to overcome the distance they had to travel, Sandy said a bigger hurdle was a major equipment problem suffered near the end of the season.

Fuller and his crew discovered a cracked engine block in his car in August. This is typical of the kind of "think fast" challenges faced by drag racers, according to Sandy.

"You get a lot of curve balls thrown at you in drag racing," she said.

On a Saturday, they had to replace the engine block with a block Sandy called, "Old Reliable." It had been sitting unused in the garage for three-and-a-half years.

They installed the old engine, which was not quite as fast as the damaged engine, and were able to race hours later on Sunday. Dennis had to quickly adjust to the slower engine, which usually takes a driver a few races, according to Sandy.

"(But) we got got runner-up (that Sunday)," she said.

Sandy said most of the drivers at the Firebird Raceway don’t race full-time, but that doesn’t detract from their no-nonsense approach to drag racing.

"Most everyone has a real job, but most of them are real serious about racing," she said.

Other locals also competed at the Firebird Raceway this year. Pat Bruce of La Grande finished 23rd out of 38 Super Pro drivers, while Judy Radford of Baker City finished 24th.