Introducing the ITA "HOT SEAT"

At the recently completed US Nationals, Blown Alcohol racer Kenny Buzdas told me, the difference between Nitro guys and Alcohol guys is at the end of the day, Alcohol Guys BBQ!

These personality-driven teams are often the attraction of die hard drag racing fans. Have you often wondered, what flavor of gum a Top Alcohol driver chews? How about their shoe size, or if they have any quirks which make their team interesting? Well, Insidetopalcohol.com has the section for you.

Starting today, October 1, 2009 we will debut a new monthly feature called, “Getting to Know You”; an inside interview with some of the personalities which make up the Top Alcohol divisions in drag racing.

Our first victim on the ITA HOT SEAT, is Division 7 A/Fuel Dragster driver Johnny Ahten.

ITA: Johnny, thank you for taking the time to talk to the loyal readership of Will Hanna’s Insidetopalchol.com. I’d like to begin this interview by asking a simple question. Where and how did you get your start in drag racing?

JA: Well, I pretty much owe that to my dad. Like so many people in drag racing my family introduced me to the sport. I grew up not playing little league or soccer but spending the weekends at the drags. Famoso, Terminal Islands, Freemont, Sacto, and especially OCIR were the tracks my brother and I grew up at. Many of my childhood memories are from being at OCIR. My dad went to high school in Eagle Rock, a suburb in So. Cal. Cruising and drag racing was the happening thing to do. I remember my mom talking about cruising the local Bob’s Big Boys back in the day. So to get back the original question, Drag Racing is all I’ve ever known.

ITA: When did your family decide to jump up from the Top Eliminator West ranks to your current A/Fuel ride?

JA: I remember we had a new rear engine dragster built by Norm Porter for TEW in about 1995. My dad was driving then and I was still trying to work my way into the seat. We used to run a big block Chevy with two and three stage nitrous systems on the car. My Dad is talking about all this stuff we had to have on the car and the weight to horsepower ratio, solenoids, regulators, nitrous bottles, batteries, etc. At the same time we had been watching the Junkyard Ed Vickroy’s, Chess Bushey’s and some other A/Fuel guys which were starting to gain ground. So we came to a fork in the road, nitrous or just put Nitro in the tank. Now, my dad is a retired L.A.County Fire Captain and he used to work at old fire station 27 and spent about 15 years on the same shift as Big Jim Dunn. Dunn had been telling my dad to dump that gasoline and go fuel racing for years, so we had a good reference for some guidance. In fact, I remember one time we had a race at LACR and Dunn showed up to help us out and the other teams thought we had hired him in as a crew chief. It was pretty funny. My dad drove the car with a few different engine combinations until 1999 when I finally got my chance, the same time we first put an injected nitro motor in the car.

So, like they say once you run Nitro it’ll ruin it for you because you can’t run anything else. I remember when I upgraded my license to Advanced ET we went to LACR for three weekends in a row. The first two were on injected alcohol and the third was a TEW race and we put 75% in the tank. I had become pretty comfortable with the procedure of starting the car, doing a burnout and staging on alcohol. I will never forget the first time I went to fuel. The cackle was totally awesome, and the throttle response on the burnout caught me off guard. So there I am, backing up after my first nitro burnout and my eyes are watering. One of those memories I have filed away forever I hope.

After that, we pretty much became big followers of A/Fuel. We slowly started to assemble parts to switch over and in 2004 we qualified our first time out at the Division 7 race in Sacramento. I licensed on Thursday and qualified Friday with a 5.84 I think. Morgan Lucas and Larry Miersch signed my License, how cool is that? I know we were pretty intimidated in the staging lanes, here’s all these guys we’d been reading about and watching from the grandstands for the past few years and now were paired with Duane Shields in qualifying? Wow!

ITA: Your current A/Fuel car looks familiar to me. It wouldn’t happen to be Shelly Anderson’s former Western Auto Top Fuel car would it?

JA: It sure is. I bought it from Rick Henkelman who got two from Brad Anderson. Rick used one for his son and sold the twin to us. It actually sat in our loft for awhile because we were still running the NSP chassis. Shelly’s old car actually is a 1996 Uyehara and it sure does draw a lot of attention. We couldn’t really afford to paint the car, and the paint it has was really nice so we decided to just peel off all of the Western Auto Parts decals and put on our own. I had no idea that the response would be as big as it is. Not one race goes by without at least one fan asking about it. The other neat thing is a lot of the crew guys who worked on the car back then have come by and talked about it. Dave Leahy of Electrimotion told us when he was there they named the car “Flipper” from when it did a back flip. I was thinking, great, this thing had a blow over? But it’s been front and back-halved since, I think……J/K

ITA: You have been racing in this class for a few years now, what do you like and dislike about racing an A/fuel dragster in Division 7?

JA: I like to end things on a positive note so we’ll start with dislikes. Rule changes probably ranks at the top, please, leave us alone. Every year we work our tail off and spend the first half of the next year trying to figure out what to do. Div 7 is pretty much a blown division because of the track’s altitude and it seems like it’s always hot. Even Shields recognized that and went all the way across the country to run Div2.
What I do like is just plain being able to race. I love racing and I love A/Fuel. It’s as close to a Top Fuel Car without being in a Top Fuel Car. I also love racing at Pomona, I sat in those bleachers so many times that I realize how blessed I am to be able to be belted in and round the turn from the staging lanes behind the burnout boxes. It was pretty cool to be the number one qualifier at the Finals for one session, until a guy named Reichert bumped me to number 2.

ITA: You are from Saugus, Calif. correct?

JA: I’m actually from Burbank and La Crescenta. I went to Crescenta Valley High and my Dad still lives in LaCrescenta, That’s where we keep the car. I moved to Saugus which is a section of Santa Clarita in 2000.

ITA: Are you the quickest and fastest guy in your home town?

JA: There are some other fast racers in this town, Bryan Herta lives a few miles from me but I don’t think he’s gone over 260! (Editor’s Note – Former Fuel Funny Car Driver Tim Grose also lived in Saugus, Calif. So you gotta eclipse 280 and change Johnny..!)

ITA: Growing up did you have any hero’s you looked up to?

JA: You bet. I remember bragging on the playground that my Dad drives a Fire Truck and a racecar! I have always looked up to him. I’m pretty lucky that I have an opportunity to race with him and the rest of my team. Other than that I had a few that I really looked up to, Jim Dunn was my other hero. I guess because he was a big funny car driver which I would see outside the track. My brother and I had all our Hero Cards plastering the walls of our room The Snake, Pulde, Shirley, Big Daddy, Candies and Hughes.

A quick story from OCIR, I don’t remember what year it was but my brother and I are walking along behind the grandstands when The Snake blows up his Pepsi Challenger. We run as fast as we could all the way down to the shut off area and there were smoldering pieces of the fiberglass body lying around. My brother and I thought how cool would it be if we had a piece of the Pepsi Challenger on our bedroom wall! We picked it up and ran back to my dad’s trailer where we hid it inside. I don’t need to tell anybody how bad burnt fiberglass smells! That trailer wreaked and my dad was pissed because everybody was getting sick! Needless to say it didn’t make it on our wall. Sorry Snake we tried.

ITA: Outside of drag racing, what is your profession?

JA: I’m a Firefighter Specialist for the Los Angeles County Fire Department. That’s the guy who drives and pumps the Fire Engines. So, Ya, I get to drive through red lights. I love my job, and that I followed in my Dad’s footsteps. My younger brother also is a fireman for the same department, you’d see him more at the track but he married into horses.
The last four and half years I’ve been at the busiest Fire stations in the fire dept. Station 131 and now I’m at Station 33 on the ladder truck.

ITA: Can you compare the dangers of driving a 270 mile per hour dragster to battling a fire?

JA: Actually there are many similarities. You have to be surrounded by good people, people that work well together. Each person has a specific job to do to achieve the common goal. Whether it’s top side ventilation working with interior fire attack or the diver working with the guys on the top of the motor, everyone must communicate and do their part.

I get nervous sometimes like anybody, but I know that having dealt with many of the situations battling fires and running trauma calls helps me to stay focused and concentrate inside the car.

We all know it’s hard to go home after getting beat first round or worse yet not qualifying, but one thing about my job is we see a lot of bad things happen to people just trying to go to work. It helps keep things in perspective.

ITA: What is your favorite activity to do outside of the track?

JA: Spend time with my wife and boys. I have two sons, Owen 4 ½ and Eli 2 ½. We have season passes to Disneyland so we take a lot of trips there. We also like to take our motor home and camp at the beach.

ITA: Have you won any NHRA events? What is your best performance and event finish?

JA: Not yet. We have two final round appearances and a number one qualifier so far. I feel we have improved dramatically in the past year. My goal is no longer just to qualify, but in the top half and I believe we have a shot at winning every time out. Our weakest link right now is having enough resources sometimes. Our best E.T. so far is a 5.270 and best mph is 267.

ITA: There has got to be a great story you will always remember from your days at the track. Does one in particular strike you as memorable?

JA: Wow, I know I’ve covered a few already. I have so many childhood memories, sleeping in our station wagon, the smell of Bakersfield in the morning, climbing the backside of the bleachers at OCIR. Then all of the memories of us riding in our 75 crew cab, then when we moved up to a 79 dually. All the old trailers, an old flatbed, the little skinny dragster ones which were just large enough to fit the dragster in to the one which was Dunn’s old Mitchell trailer which my dad totally overhauled and is still in our driveway, to the current 89 Chaparral which we use today. It’s pretty hard to narrow down to one, But I think 2004 our first year in A/Fuel was a very memorable year.

At my first Division race we qualified but hurt our only set of heads, so we had to sit out first round. I was supposed to race Fast Jack Beckman but was a no show. I sat in the stands totally excited that I even qualified. I wasn’t upset at all, just loving life. Morgan Lucas, who also qualified for that race came over and asked me “What happened?” I told him, “We hurt our heads in qualifying.” And he replies with, “why didn’t you come borrow a set from me?” I was like, “borrow a set of heads?” I was thinking, wow, I could have borrowed Morgan Lucas’ heads, how cool is that. Later, we took a picture with our tiny check because we were so proud of our accomplishment that weekend.

ITA: Who is your toughest competitor?

JA: It seems like Chris Demke and the Maddern Racing team is always foiling our plans. We have raced the Peen-Rite car all the way back to our Top Gas West days.

ITA: How do you feel about the way NHRA treats the racers in the quickest sportsman category?

JA: That’s a tough question to answer. They provide a place and a forum to race. The infrastructure involved is pretty big. What we have in TAD has become quite a mess and I don’t see it getting any better anytime soon. Where we’re at now in the class I don’t know what the answer is.

ITA: If you could change one thing with NHRA what would it be?

JA: Increase payouts for TAD!

ITA: Curve ball for ya Johnny. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

JA: That depends, is the woodchuck the same age as my boys? They’re pretty good at chucking things.

ITA: Do you have any family who are racing?

JA: I mentioned my dad, but that’s not it. My Uncle Bob Ahten is a part of the team also. The rest of the crew is absolutely like family. We have a great chemistry and it really makes racing enjoyable. Howard Katano flies in from the Island of Oahu each race! Todd “Rocky” Rockwell drives down from Medford, Oregon. Kevin “Shark” Colvell comes up from Fallbrook; those are my brothers from some other mothers.

ITA: Johnny Ahten, you just won the 56th Running of the US NATIONALS!!!! What would say to Alan Reinhart on stage?

JA: I’m going to Disneyland!

ITA: Johnny, thank you very much for taking the time to answer a few questions for us. You are now off the hot seat! See ya at Vegas.

JA: Thank you Will, and thank you Tim!

 

Great job!

 

We havent gotten to see much of Johnny this year, but I recall our very first trip out to Sonoma and we broke our fuel pump before we ever got to the first qual round. Johnny and his team tried everythig to get theirs to fit our ride. It didnt work out, but I can say that Johnny and his team are definitely some of the nicest people in the sport, and always a pleasure to see around!

Great choice for the first interview, Will.

 

I enjoyed this first article very much and look forward to future interviews of the not so little guys. TAD and TAFC belong in the "big show" as much as the pros and I am glad to see forums such as these that highlight "Pro Comp"!

 

Hey great interview Johnny,

But you forgot to mention the newest member of out team, well recently rejoined; and that is the part time worker looking to go full time; Alissa Barnard from Bakersfield.

 

Johnny Ahten

These guys are first class. Some of the nicest people you could ever meet. They offered me some parts in Bakersfield to get my aa/fa running for the first time. A moment I'll never forget. I would like to say thanks to the whole Ahten team for helping me out. Gook luck guys. Dan Hix (medford)