: Your son pilots the Nova now. Has it been a bonding experience or is he just better than you on the lights?
TP: Well, I handed the Nova to Junior when he turned 16 but we bonded as far as drag racing early on. He was very young but took to it as second nature. He’s 19 now.
: What’s the 1/8-mile, radial tire philosophy?
TP: Eighth-mile racing has always been big in the south. That’s where it originated. It didn’t have anything to do with the radial tire. There are a lot of eighth-mile tracks in the southeast and it makes for closer racing.
: How high do you rev that triple-stage nitrous 632?
TP: About 8,000 rpm.
: Do you build your own motors?
TP: That would be Cooter’s Racing Engines--which is yours truly.
: What do you like most and the least about radial tire racing?
TP: I like the challenge and the unpredictability of the radial tire, you know, but the thing I don’t like about it is how good the tires have become. They’ve taken a lot of the strategizing out of the racing and I thrive on that kind of stuff.
: Speak to the evolution of drag radial Vs the old radial tires.
TP: When this class first started, we were running on the BF Goodrich tires and it took a lot of hard work and they were very, very unpredictable. You really had to strategize with that tire and you didn’t have to spend a ton of money on all-aluminum, big-inch motors with three and four nitrous stages and twin turbos and such because you could only do so much with that tire. The Mickey Thompsons are so good, you can basically buy your way into being competitive.
: Are the tires you run the biggest ones they make?
TP: Yes, they’re 315/60s. They are tall and they have a 30-inch installed height on a 10-inch wheel and are just about 13 inches wide.
: Talk a little about a real stock suspension car vs. back-halved ones that don’t run as good as yours.
TP: Really, that all boils down to how hard you work on your program. Generally, the stock suspension guys are some of the hardest workin’ guys out there.