We’ve long been Jason Rupert fans here at BangShift.com. During our years of streaming events like the March Meet, California Hot Rod Reunion, and others, we saw a lot of him. Typically we saw him bossing his race car around and later in the day, standing in the winner’s circle with the hardware. The guy has definitely brought the thunder in alcohol funny cars, nostalgia nitro cars, and now officially in the NHRA nitro funny car category. But even he had to “level up” on his license to make it happen.
The process for licensing is not difficult to comprehend, especially if you are like Rupert and already have a license for another class. Effectively you have to make a handful of runs to a minimum spec of elapsed time to qualify and you have to do it in a safe and controlled manner. For a guy like Rupert, this needs to be accomplished quickly because of the massive expense of running the car.
A small, dedicated, volunteer team works on this car and you will hear them and their excitement as Jason reels off his necessary runs. They are all bad asses, Jason chief among them and this Les Mayhew produced video of their day is a great inside look.
Jason has since run his car at Sonoma and then last weekend at Pomona. They’ve had their setbacks and their learning lessons but we’ll see them back again. Their incremental progress has been fun to watch and it’s been amazing to see them master this bad ass car, step by step.
That’s AWESOME. Its a great day when someone gets their license in racing or most any vehicle for that matter. So cool when a Drag Racer gets to upgrade their competition license at any level and especially the few that get to do so in any Nitro Class. There is camera footage somewhere the day I Stood beside a nitro funny car as a young kid at Bristol’s Thunder Valley Dragway and you probably could not get the smile off my face if you tried. I wish everyone could experience drag racing at all levels, especially people who have never been. It never gets old watching how people react to their first time of being near a drag car, especially the nitro classes, to me that’s so cool. I have been fortunate enough to be around or to take friends, family and people of different ages to their first drag race or “National Event” drag race and that feeling you get when they get it or even if they don’t still makes my day. I have been a fan and/or participant since three Weeks of age because of family. It’s similar to when a person or group of people get to go watch a live band performing and experiencing that too for their first time. Congratulations to Mr. Jason Rupert and Crew, now go get some quick, fast and safe runs.