Emporia drag racer Gary Stinnett finished yet another season with division championship titles, and came within one race of winning his third world championship.
Stinnett ended up last month winning division championship titles in both super stock and super comp categories.
“It’s rare for a driver to win two division titles in the same year, but it’s the fourth time I’ve done it,” Stinnett said.
Since 1995, Stinnett has won a total of 14 division championships.
In the world championship rankings, he ended up in third place in the super comp category, and 16th place in super stock.
The world championship title is calculated by combining the points a racer wins from the two types of races: divisionals and nationals.
Stinnett has two world championship titles in super comp; his first was in 1998 and his second in 2005. Last year, he came in fourth place in the world championship rankings for super comp. Stinnett has consistently placed among the top racers in that category.
“Last year I was fourth, this year I was third, in 2003 I was second and in 2005 I was first, so in four of the last five years I’ve placed in the top four,” he said. “So we have a pretty good super comp program going there.”
In the super stock category, Stinnett’s rankings have remained in the mid-teens.
“I’ve never been out of the top twenty, but I’ve never cracked that top ten,” he said.
Stinnett said he would like to win a world championship in super stock to go with his two super comp titles. “I have two world championships in super comp, and I would like to be a three-time world champ and I would like for it to be in a different category.”
Stinnett races three different cars: a rear-engine dragster for super comp, a 1992 Camaro for super stock and a 1969 Camaro SS for stock eliminator.
Overall, Stinnett said he is pleased with how the season went.
“I started out the year right with a big victory at Great Bend,” he said of his first division race of the year. “I won that in super comp and semi-finaled in super stock.”
He then went to a divisional in Brainerd, Minn., where he semi-finaled in both super comp and super stock. At the divisional race in Denver, he won the super stock category. He won a national event in St. Louis for the second year in a row in the stock eliminator category.
In August, he won the divisional at Topeka Heartland Park in the super comp category, and in September he won the super comp in Atlanta, which put him in the lead for the world championship title and the divisional title.
“So then I had one more division race to go to in Noble, Okla., and I needed to win the second round to continue earning points and keep the lead in the world, and I lost that round,” he said. “At the same moment, the guy that was behind me, second in points, he won that round and eventually ended up winning the world championship by only eleven points. So that race was pivotal. If I win that round, and he loses, I’m the world champ for the third time, and instead he won it for his second time.”
After national events in Dallas and Pomona, Calif., Shawn Langdon ended up claiming the title of super comp world champion. Stinnett tied for second place with Steve Cohen, but the tiebreaker goes to the racer with the most national points on the combination score. Stinnett had more divisional points but fewer national points than Cohen.
Stinnett said he plans to race the exact same schedule next year, from April through November, but because of a special honor, his season might start in February.
“Yesterday morning, Ford Motorsports started on a brand new Mustang,” he said. “It’s called the Cobra Jet. They made these in 1968, and they are going to make 50 of them as full-on race cars from the factory. ... I’ve been selected to drive the first one off the assembly line in February at the Winter Nationals in Pomona, Calif. They’re going to fly me to California to drive this thing, so my season may start a little early as far as that.”