NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Former NHRA rookie of the year Spencer Massey will make his return to Top Fuel racing at the NGK Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals this weekend after a near-four-year absence, driving Pat Dakin’s Commercial Metal Fabrication dragster.

Massey, who won the 2009 Auto Club Road to the Future award in 2009 while driving in Top Fuel for NHRA legend Don Prudhomme, went on to win 18 Top races while driving for “the Snake” and, later, Don Schumacher Racing before leaving the class after the Brainerd event in 2015, when he was released from the DSR team.

Dakin, who has been racing Top Fuel since the 1970s and was recently inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, has been friends with Massey for a long time, and each year since 2015 Massey had climbed into Dakin’s competitive dragster at least once a year to keep his license current. And because Massey, who has turned his considerable driving skills to bracket racing lately, is scheduled to race next weekend at the big-dollar Spring Fling at GALOT Motorsports Park in Benson, N.C., he was available to drive for Dakin, whose dragster was already entered in the event.

“Why not?” said Dakin, who will return to the cockpit next weekend in Atlanta. “I love driving these cars, but so does he. He was here so it just made sense. I couldn’t pick a better driver.”

Massey, who also earned three wins in Alcohol Dragster before launching his meteoric rise in the Pro ranks, is happy to be back driving a Top Fuel car, but still content to stay out of the spotlight that followed his short-lived and sometimes controversial pro career.

“I’m having fun driving my bracket dragster and my Alcohol Dragster and running the oil and gas business in Texas,” he said. “Although Pat says he’d love me to drive his car at all the races, I’m happy doing what I’m doing. I’ve had other people offer me rides, but that’s not what I want right now. I’m living a happy life right now, driving around in my motorhome and hitting all of the big-dollar bracket races. Every weekend I’m racing somewhere. I have a Super Comp-style dragster and a ’71 Nova and get maybe 30-40 runs a weekend between the two. I made more than 600 runs in the Nova last year. It’s great.”

Massey remembers well and painfully his last string of NHRA races, as he lost in the first round nine straight races leading up to Brainerd, so he’d love to put a least one win light on the board this weekend, and the four-wide event gives him a great opportunity.

Fans might remember that it was Massey who won the four-wide exhibition race here at the fall race at zMAX Dragway in 2009 the year before it became a fixture on the NHRA tour the following spring, and then he went on to win this four-wide back-to-back in 2012 and ’13.