Grumpy the Drag King

Professional drag racing doesn't offer much in the way of fringe benefits or job security, but at least the hourly pay is difficult to beat. Last year, for exactly 46 minutes of racing, Bill ("Grumpy") Jenkins got $260,000 (including $110,000 for commercial endorsements). Barring an accident, his wage rate this year --roughly $5,650 a minute--will be about the same.

A small (5 ft. 4 in.), balding troll of a man with a porcupine persona, Jenkins, 42, dominates a sport usually associated with big bruisers in black leather. Last year he won ten of the eleven major national drag races in the pro-stock class. At the American Hot Rod Association meet in St. Louis two months ago, he thundered down the quarter-mile strip in 8.97 sec., an all-time record. Ten days later in Epping, N.H., he clocked 8.93 sec. He only placed second last week at the N.H.R.A. world-championship meet in Amarillo, Texas, but Jenkins is still on his way to another winning season.

Big Business. Neither the pursuit of records nor the fact that he is the most successful driver in the 22-year his tory of organized drag racing seems to elate him. "It's really a business," Jenkins snarls from behind his cigar. "I enjoy the development work on the cars as much as the actual racing."

Once a semilicit pastime for thrill-seeking high school kids, drag racing has become big business since 1951, when Wally Parks, a former racing driver, founded the N.H.R.A. and held its first meet on an abandoned airstrip in Madera, Calif. Last year the organization sanctioned 2,930 races at 150 tracks, drawing more than 4,000,000 paying spectators.

To the uninitiated, drag racing may be easily confused with the rival sport of stock-car racing. In both, the cars sometimes bear a superficial resemblance. But in stocks, the autos career around oval tracks for as many as 500 miles before crossing the finish line; dragsters hurtle down a 1,320-ft. asphalt strip under the watchful electronic eye of an automatic timer. The cars usually race in pairs, but drivers are out to beat the clock as much as each other.

Acid Bath. Technological superiority is as important in drag racing as it is in the nuclear arms race. In fact, Bill Jenkins' success results less from his skill as a driver ("A monkey can drive one of these things down a straight track," he says) than from his knack as an engineer. A farm boy from Downingtown, Pa., he dropped out of Cornell University's engineering school in 1953 after his father died. He made his living for several years building engines and preparing race cars for competition, before deciding in 1965 to drive them himself in order to earn more money.

Jenkins' 1973 Chevrolet Vega does not look much different from the one that Mom drives to the supermarket, except for the hood-mounted air scoop and an outrigger in back to keep the front of the car from rising too high on takeoff. But Jenkins and his crew of six mechanics make sure that the resemblance is only paint-deep. To prepare the car for its ordeals, the team marinates its body in an acid bath to eat away 120 Ibs. of excess weight. The hood and rear deck are replaced with lightweight Fiberglas panels. His $70,000 engine produces nearly 650 h.p. against a normal 150 h.p.

Jenkins' car, known as Grumpy's Toy, is a rolling billboard for automotive-parts companies. In addition to his track earnings, he commands $1,500 a night, win or lose, for helping dragstrip owners fill the stands for exhibition matches. He employs a public relations consultant to help spread his fame--and perhaps counteract the effect of his personality. Though he can be amiable off the track, fans know him as a dour churl who snarls at well-wishers and even puts up barriers to keep spectators away from his pit. Readers of Hot Rod magazine, however, were able to see as much of Grumpy as anyone would wish. Clad in skivvies and sprawled on a bearskin rug, he posed for this month's centerfold.

As he approaches middle age, married and with a five-year-old daughter, the drag king confesses to occasional doubts about spending his life at a teenager's pastime while his Cornell classmates are building bridges, designing spacecraft or helping run the automobile industry. "Then," he says, "I ask myself, 'What else can I do to make so much money?' The answer is 'nothing.' '

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