Chasing Wally

Five years ago, Josh McLaughlin agreed to let a group of buddies help him remodel a 1978 Chevrolet Malibu that was sitting idle in his back yard, slowly disappearing among the weeds. Fast forward – literally – to today and McLaughlin has brought home the most prestigious trophy in drag racing for the third time.

“This Wally trophy is the most prestigious – it’s what everybody looks to get in drag racing,” he says.

McLaughlin races at Sturgis Dragway, where he must fulfill certain conditions to compete for the Wally.

“It’s offered for one weekend a year at each track. You have to be able to be there to get it and then you have to get first or second place Saturday or Sunday just to qualify to race for it,” he explains.

“It’s really tough to even get a first or second place, let alone qualify to make it and then beat everyone at the end of the weekend.”

The trophy honors Wally Parks, founder of the National Hot Rod Association, and is described as the ultimate quest for every drag racer. The same trophy is awarded to amateur competitors as to the professional NHRA dragsters.

“It would be like the high school hockey team getting to win the Stanley Cup, it’s essentially the same trophy, so it means a lot to us drag racers that can’t race professionally,” McLaughlin says.

Of the five years McLaughlin has been racing, he has so far only missed one Wally weekend because the Longhorn Saloon and Grill, which he owns and operates with wife Charity, was particularly busy. Of his four attempts to win it, he has been successful three times.

“It’s just a blessing. Everything happened to work out perfectly, this weekend in particular,” he says.

But while things did work out exactly as he hoped, the opposite was very nearly true. McLaughlin narrowly sidestepped disaster on his weekend of triumph.

“I made it down Saturday and I was racing to go into the finals Saturday, which would have guaranteed me to race for this Wally trophy, but my transmission broke. I coasted about the last 40 feet across the finish line and my opponent passed me and beat me by two thousands of a second,” he recalls.

“Now I have a broken car and I got beat – I got third place. I thought my chances were over and you only get to try for this once a year.”

McLaughlin’s friends from his racing team rallied around and helped him pull the transmission, which he took to a buddy in Rapid City who could help him replace it.

“We stayed up until past midnight tearing it apart and putting it back together, borrowed parts from another buddy’s transmission that was there. I went back to the track and slept for about three hours,” he says.

“I couldn’t stand it because it wasn’t fixed yet so I got up and didn’t want to wake anyone up, so I started putting it back together. Everyone else starts waking up just in time for me to fire it up and test it before we start racing – and it worked.”

Last minute repairs aside, and despite falling asleep in his car during the drivers’ meeting (to the great amusement of onlookers), he says, “It held together and I never lost a race all day and ended up getting first in Super Pro and winning the Wally that night. It was a crazy weekend and it was awesome.”

The competition for Wally is through a bracket race, McLaughlin explains.

“It’s kind of like a handicap, like a golfer would have, so if you have a little bit slower car but you love drag racing, they have a handicap-type set-up so it’s not just the fastest,” he says.

“I’m definitely not the fastest guy out there, for sure, but with bracket racing it’s all about accuracy and consistency and this car does really good, those guys built a really good car. I’m happy.”

Wally is not McLaughlin’s only achievement during his half-decade on the track. He’s also won season trophies; Pro Champion and Super Pro runner up in 2017 and runner up in both categories in 2015 and 2016.

His success this year also included a “perfect light”, which means he crossed the starting line without even a delay in the thousandths of a second. His reaction time was therefore instant.

“I have been lucky enough to get six perfect lights in the last five years and that means I left exactly 0.0000 seconds – I broke the laser the exact second that the light turned green,” he says.

McLaughlin is now sponsored by a number of local businesses, including Blakeman Propane, Longhorn Saloon & Grill, Fiesters Performance Repair & Design, Fuchs Performance & Machine, Quality Roofing of Wyoming and 2 Kwik 4 U Photography.

All this from an old stock-bodied car that had sat in his back yard untouched for seven years.

“I had a buddy who knew I had that car in the yard. He wouldn’t stop bugging me,” he laughs. Every weekend, the friend would ask if McLaughlin had done anything with the car and, every weekend, McLaughlin would say no.

“I’d say, I haven’t touched it – there are seven-foot weeds around it,” he remembers. “I said I didn’t have the time, the money or the knowledge to do it.”

The friend offered to help put the vehicle together if McLaughlin paid for the parts.

“I talked to the wife and we went for it. We got it put together and the first year I raced, it did very well,” he says.

McLaughlin then replaced the motor with the bigger version that’s still in the car today.

“I had to do a lot of work to it because the tires were too small and it wouldn’t hook up any more, so we made it a full drag car and since then it’s been a lot of luck involved, but we’ve done very well,” he says.

Friends and family were thus instrumental in introducing McLaughlin to the track – and have been just as important in keeping him there.

“This is prestigious and awesome, but what’s really fun about it is that drag racing is a lot like the rodeo family. It’s like getting to hold that title buckle and a paycheck at the end of the deal, but it’s the friends that you make,” he says.

“The car was built by a bunch of friends and I’ve only made more friends drag racing. We started a team with the people who wanted to help me build the car. There were three of us and their families would come over and eat supper and we’d finish the car.”

Realizing what a close-knit group had developed, McLaughlin figured they should call themselves something and came up with Heavy Pedal Racing. The group now has team trophies for a little more competition, an active website at heavypedalracing.net and around one dozen active members.

“We really just represent family and the good people at the track,” he says. “That’s what we’re trying to make it, so that it’s a fun place to be where everybody helps each other out.”

Relationships are important, McLaughlin says. Without the trailer loaned by sponsor Blakeman Propane, the friend who was able to provide a new transmission and the people who worked on the vehicle until gone midnight, he would never have had the opportunity to win the Wally this year.

“It’s just a lot of people working together to make things happen,” he says.

Heavy Pedal Racing has become a family of its own, so it’s perhaps no surprise that McLaughlin’s own son just bought himself a 1998 Camaro and looks set to follow in his old man’s footsteps.

Next time you’re at the Longhorn, says McLaughlin, take a peek at the fridge behind the bar to see the Wally trophies on display. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a new weekend activity, he heartily recommends heading to Sturgis Dragway to see Heavy Pedal Racing in action.