JEFF VERDI
Ever since Biondo and Seipel announced the
creation of the race, Verdi knew he had to be a
part of the action. He actually wanted to make
the trek out to The Strip the year before, purely because he enjoyed the Spring Fling races at
Bristol Dragway so much. So, it wasn’t all of the
zeroes that attracted Verdi this year, but they certainly didn’t dissuade him from taking two weeks
off of work to make the trip. After receiving the
three-day entry to the race from his wife, Susan,
for his birthday, Verdi plunked down the first
half of the $2,000 Spring Fling
Million entry fee in December.
He was locked in.
Before Verdi could compete
on bracket racing’s most rewarding stage, he needed to
make sure man and machine
were running without flaws.
Verdi started with himself, but
it took a little nudging from his
father, Buddy.
“I was racing at the Million
down in Alabama and every
time I lost it was because I had
a bad light,” says Verdi, laughing.
“My dad said, ‘Man, you need a
practice tree. I’m gonna’ get you
one for your birthday.’ I’m 44
years old turning 45 and I’m
getting a practice tree for my
birthday. Kinda’ different for
a dad to get his son a practice
tree for his birthday at that age,
but hey, he wanted me to get
better on it.”
A full practice tree set-up
arrived on Jeff ’s front doorstep and he immediately went
to work, first hooking it up to
the Firebird in his garage, then
spending hours honing his
skill as the chilly winter wind
whipped at the garage door.
The practice paid off for Verdi,
who admits his reaction time
had slowed since he started racing in 1989.
“The practice tree gave me a
lot more confidence, a lot more
hand-eye focus or memory.
When I went to the line in real races, I didn’t
have that out-of-focus worrying that I used to
have. Practicing definitely helped over the winter.”
With the human part of the equation sharpened up, Verdi shifted his focus to his equipment.
He elected to take his trusty ’68 Firebird, the
one that helped him earn six of his seven track
championships. The duo made thousands of runs
together, so Verdi knew what it needed after winning three consecutive Richmond Dragway track
championships.
“I took the engine out over the winter, put new
valve springs in it, a new cam, and kinda’ made
sure the motor was one hundred percent,” says
Verdi. “I’ve raced a long time with the same car so
I know what it needs; when it’s time to put new
lifters in it and different things like most racers
who race a lot know what their car is needing.”
The last thing Verdi had to do before pulling
out of his driveway was load everything up. This
process was more streamlined than his competitors, seeing as there is only so much equipment
you can pack into a pickup truck and open trailer.
Regardless, Verdi filled the bed with a spare motor
and transmission from his GTO, his daughter’s
four-wheeler, a drum of fuel, and any spare Pontiac parts that he owned.
“I had that thing packed. It
was unreal how much stuff I
had in there. I had to take everything. My wife was like, ‘You
better take everything you got.
Twenty-three hundred miles
away, if you have to change a
motor you have to change a motor. What are you going to do if
you don’t have it with you, turn
around and come back home?’
Fortunately I didn’t need any of
it. The one thing we did need I
didn’t have, which was a crankshaft sensor for the truck,” Verdi said, alluding to his biggest
roadblock.
“[Dragsters]
are going
so fast that
it’ll look
like they’re
gonna’ catch
me no matter
what. They
will catch me,
but maybe a
foot after the
finish line.”
80 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
J
eff Verdi’s 2016
Spring Fling Las
Vegas Million experience started 2,300
miles away from the
debauchery of Vegas
in the quaint town of
Glen Allen, a suburb of Richmond, Virginia. Along with
longtime friend and engine
builder Jerry Loan, Verdi and
his ’99 Chevrolet hit the open
highway with little expectations
of what would stand between
them and their destination.
“We left on Friday, April 8th
at 9 AM and I drove until about
1 AM. We got to Oklahoma and
then Jerry drove until 5 in the
morning, so we basically drove
for about 20 hours straight and
got a lot of mileage down. The GPS showed like
a thousand miles to go and we’d be in Vegas Saturday night. I was like, “Man, we left Virginia on
Friday morning and we’ll be in Vegas Saturday
night. That’s pretty good.’”
Shortly after that realization is when the progress slowed down considerably. Due to the notorious unreliability of the fuel gauges in late 90s
GM trucks, Verdi was playing it safe and stopping
for fuel about every 250 miles. The strategy was
working well until one ill-timed pit stop sent
Verdi and Loan on a wild gremlin chase across
the sparse Texas plains.
“When we come by Amarillo, Texas, I should’ve
stopped there, but I didn’t,” recalls Verdi, the
memory, obviously, still very fresh in his mind.
“I kept going and put about 31 gallons of gas in
the truck at a little mom-and-pop Phillips 66
station up on a hill. I really didn’t like the looks
of it. I was worried about bad gas going in the
truck. About 15 minutes later is when the truck
started cutting off.”
Verdi brought the truck to a stop on an off ramp
to diagnose the situation. The engine would start,
but went silent again seconds later, one attempt
after another. Loan suggested the fuel pump
might be the issue, so Verdi limped the dually
to a gas station where he and Loan could make
their repairs.
“We ended up in this little town called Vega,
Texas, like 30 miles west of Amarillo,” says Verdi.
“Like 900 people live there. There was a little service station about a half-mile from the gas s tation
where we stopped, so I walked down there and
the guy had the fuel pump we needed. Went back
to the truck and Jerry was already trying to take
the tank out. One of the bolts spun off in it so we
couldn’t drop the tank down. I had to walk back
to the dude’s place to get a hacksaw to cut the bolt
off. The guy gave me a new bolt and hacksaw to
use. Once we get the tank off you need certain
tools to take the lines off, so I had to walk back to
the guy’s place to get the correct tools to take the
lines off. The guy, Larry – a super nice guy – let
me use anything we needed.”
Three hours later, the Virginia duo were back
on the road with a brand-new fuel pump. Problem solved. Well, not exactly. The engine started
cutting off again just a few minutes down the
freeway. Verdi tried to burn off as much of the
potentially bad fuel as possible, but the situation
didn’t improve. It actually worsened as Verdi
began rolling through the hills of Albuquerque,
New Mexico, with tractor-trailers and local traffic
weaving around the struggling dually. A query
of the symptoms on Google attributed the issue
to a bad crankshaft sensor, so Verdi pulled into
a NAPA store. He swapped in a new sensor and
Loan installed a fresh fuel filter. Once back on Interstate 40, the truck ran flawlessly until it finally
pulled into its pit space at The Strip the next day.
With one part of their trip in the books, Verdi
and Loan headed into town for a night on the
world-famous Las Vegas strip. Big-money bracket
racers are known to be equally as skilled at the
tables as they are on the track, but Verdi saved
his luck for race day.
“I had never been in a casino in my life so we
met up with Anthony Bertozzi and Johnny Labbous when we got into town,” says Verdi. “We
ended up hanging out with them and eating dinner and watching them gamble. I ain’t like they
are. Those guys can throw some money around
at the casinos. I had never been in an atmosphere
like that, so that was pretty neat to have a little
fun doing that.”
Verdi’s first stroke of luck came before he even
fired up his Pontiac-powered Firebird. During
the week’s smaller races, Loan purchased a raffle
ticket for a free entry into the Million. It ended
up being a winner, though Verdi already had his
Issue 110