With a heavy heart it is our duty to report that Bobby Lagana Sr. the patriarch of the Lagana family and one of the great grassroots fuel racers of his generation has passed away. Lagana was stricken with heart issues recently and we had heard he was in recovery mode, but this evening we learned of his passing. Outside of his drag racing accomplishments and his pure love for the sport, Lagana will be most proudly remembered as a devoted dad. It was but a few years ago that his sons Dom and Bobby declared that their season of top fuel racing would be known as the, “Our dad’s the best tour” to honor their pop. Up until very recently with his health issues, the boys and their dad were very rarely, if ever, seen apart on or off the track. If there is one mark a good dad can make in our opinion, it is to encourage his sons to follow their personal passions. Bobby’s love of the sport of drag racing was so strong and pure his kids literally caught the fever as deeply as their dad had caught it. We think that says all that you need to know about the bond the Lagana family shared with their head honcho and it carries though to today. Dom and Bobby continue to run a modern top fuel car as hard as anyone in the nation with a budget that the biggest teams in the sport couldn’t feed their employees lunch on.

It has not been all wine and roses for the family through the years. Making your way on the road match racing and scraping by with whatever you earn with your race car is not for the faint of heart or weak of spirit. There were no deluxe accommodations, no hospitality trailer, lots of bologna sandwiches, and plenty of taking orders from the guy who had been there and done that 100 times. Situations like this have one of two effects. They can drive a family apart and there are dozens of cases of this happening in drag racing. The other thing that can happen is that a family binds so close together that they become determined, driven, and motivated to succeed as a unit and stories like that of the Lagana family are born.

We were lucky enough to bear witness to one of the proudest moments in Bobby Sr’s life when his sons ran the first side by side 300mph lap by brothers in drag racing history a few years back in Epping, NH. To say that the man was walking on air that night would be a gross understatement. That’s how we’re going to remember Bobby. We’re going to remember the man who drag raced his heart out but we’re going to remember him more as a loving dad whose sons absorbed the knowledge he passed to them and have used it to become one of the most well loved and hard running privateer nitro teams in the world.

Bobby Lagana Sr joins a host of legends at the big strip in the sky and we’re sure they all welcomed him with open arms. Chances are he’s whipping their asses as you read this.

Our thoughts are with the Lagana family during this trying time.

(Photos from Bobby Lagana Jrs FB page)