Matt Bynum is a great guys who lives, eats, sleeps, and breathes drag racing. A member of the “Yella Fellas” that keep Del Worsham’s car running in tip-top championship form, Bynum spends his weekends lying under a molten hot nitro burning hemi servicing the lower end of the engine. During the few times of the year that he is off, Bynum can normally be found behind the wheel of a nostalgia nitro burning funny car at races like the March Meet and others on the west coast.
The bearded, floppy-haired Bynum can normally be found with a smile on his face, like most of the Kalitta racing crew guys. They all love this stuff and as a team they have a different approach than the Force or Schumacher camps. That’s not to say they are any less successful as the team Matt works with happen to be the defending funny car world champions, they just come at the whole program from a slightly different angle. Perhaps you have seen their mosh pit victory celebrations on the starting line? That’s just a little window into the way these guys roll.
We dig the fact that NHRA is shedding some light onto the world of the crewmen and woman that service these cars and live the nomadic life that the job calls for. We also dig the fact that they are highlighting the fact that most of those same crew are hardcore drag racers when not at work on there respective cars.
Meet Matt. He’s our pal and 100% BangShift Approved!
Matt Bynum looked familiar to me. Then I remembered, Saturday Night Nitro. One year ago to the day he walked past me heading towards the tower at Famoso. He was in his driving suit. His Nitro-Nick Vega was still parked at the top end following the collision with Roger Garten. At that moment Roger was in bad shape but still alive, soon to be transported to the hospital. As Matt walked past, I’m sure he had no idea how bad it really was. I was shocked to learn he’d passed away.