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Preparing for end of an era, Worsham looks back fondly on family race team

The Worsham team began its 12-year association with Checker Schuck’s Kragen with the debut of the sponsorship at the 1997 Winternationals.

Del Worsham did, of course, have a life and a racing career prior to the arrival of CSK Auto as a sponsor in 1997. He won the NHRA Rookie of the Year award in 1991, claiming two stunning Funny Car victories in his first season driving a race car of any sort, after having made the move from crewmember to driver in one large step. He spent a couple of early seasons dabbling with both a Funny Car and a Top Fuel dragster, piloting his Worsham Racing flopper and Roger Primm’s casino-backed Top Fueler from 1993 to 1995. And, unfortunately, he spent a great deal of his 1994 summer convalescing in a

New Jersey hospital after suffering serious burns in a massive fire in Englishtown. Through all of those early independent years, though, one thing was missing in Worsham’s career, and he wanted it badly. That one thing was a primary sponsor for his family-owned team.During the short off-season after the 1996 campaign, a year in which Worsham rebounded to finish seventh in points as the only unsponsored driver in the top 10, a small deal was put together with auto-parts retailer CSK Auto, and Worsham was on his way to what he knew would be a more rewarding future, even if the initial improvements were of the baby-steps variety.

“The guys at CSK had an interest in the sport, but they hadn’t blocked out the large sort of budget you need to come in with all your guns blazing,” Worsham recalled. “To be honest, I think we landed the deal because we were going to run unsponsored again anyway, and the money was too small for other teams to consider. It really wasn’t much, but it was more than we had, and it got us in the door. Once we painted the car and bought some uniforms, a lot of it was gone, but it was still an honor to be out there with a company’s name on the car rather than my own.

Del Worsham, wife Connie, and daughters Kate and Madelyn in the winner’s circle in Denver at the 2002 Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals.

“That first year, and maybe even the first two or three, was really a time where we were learning how to be successfully sponsored, and they were figuring out how to make the deal work for them in a business sense. We cut every corner, watched every penny, and spent a lot of time on relationships and trust. I think they knew we didn’t have the resources to come in and dominate John Force, but we showed them how much we cared and how dedicated we were. We did an awful lot of car displays and autograph sessions back then and did our best to make a small deal look like a big one.”Appearances are one thing, but the real goal at Worsham Racing in those early CSK days was to turn a small deal into a big one. The best way to do that was to continue to invest every penny into new technology, new parts, and new crewmembers. By 1999, the funding had increased a bit, but the leverage of having a parts retailer as the primary sponsor was paying additional dividends.

“If we would’ve had a restaurant chain or a beer company as our first sponsor, I guess our deal would’ve consisted of some money and some free stuff,” Worsham said. “I’m all for free food and free beer, but neither one of those things would’ve helped the car. With CSK, those early checks weren’t very big, but guys like Joe Spica and Ron Chisler immediately went to work with the CSK buyers, getting us help from a long list of manufacturers who sold parts in their Checker, Schuck’s, or Kragen stores. When you can start getting free product or deep discounts from the guys you had been spending a lot of money with, that goes right to the bottom line. All of a sudden, spark plugs, filters, drums of oil, and even new tow vehicles were showing up. It all helped a lot.

An emotional win at the 1999 event in Seattle boosted not just the team’s spirits but also its profile with its marketing partner.

“Along the way, as we got smarter and kept growing those associate-sponsor deals, the car started to run better, and we could invest more back into it. At that point, the snowball was starting to roll downhill, and things started to get better, and get bigger, in a hurry.”An emotional victory in

Seattle, during the 1999 season, was a huge boost to the team and to CSK, and that win was enough to convince the executives at the top of the CSK organizational chart to take a serious look at moving the marketing partnership to a new level. Exactly two months after the

Seattle win, a top-of-the-page story in USA Today announced the expansion of the Worsham/CSK Funny Car team for 2000. With Frankie Pedregon joining the operation to drive the new blue car, Worsham’s world had doubled.

The hits just kept on coming for Team CSK as the red and blue teams combined to earn 23 victories and two Skoal Showdown wins between 2001 and 2005. Worsham took home 19 of the precious Wally trophies and one of the Skoal briefcases, Pedregon grabbed one of each, and Phil Burkart Jr. added three more race wins. The times were good, the sponsorship was strong, and the sky seemed the limit.

2006 was a year of enormous frustration for Team CSK, however, as race after race seemed to be decided by the narrowest of margins. Whatever magic had allowed Worsham and his various teammates to grab upset wins by a fender length had seemingly vanished, and the results were now going the other way. By 2007, the flood of race wins in the middle of the decade seemed like ancient history, but even worse was the situation in the auto-parts world.

“Just as we went from winning everything to losing all those ridiculously close races, CSK was starting to go through some challenging times right along with us,” Worsham said. “People we had worked with, and who really had been the backbone of our program over there, were leaving the company, and the holes never really got filled from our perspective. Joe Spica and Jim Schoenberger, who had returned to the company and really understood how the program benefited their business, were working hard for us, but things were changing, and it didn’t look good.

“We knew they were a takeover target, but as ‘07 wound down, we weren’t sure yet how it would all go down. They did a really honorable and classy thing, though, by extending our contract through 2008 to give us and any new buyer a chance to take a look and sort things out. They could only re-up one car, but they didn’t have to even do that. I’ll always appreciate what they did at the end of ‘07. They gave us a chance.”

(Above) The Worshams scored early in 2008 with a win in Houston, and with Pomona still looming, they hope that victory isn’t their last together. (Below) Del scored his first win in Atlanta in 1991.
The Worshams have won the Finals before, in 2001, where they got to celebrate with Grandma Worsham.

Once the 2008 season kicked off, the CSK suitor was identified, and in terms of a race car sponsorship, the signs weren’t positive. Though O’Reilly Auto Parts has been an important backer and key proponent of NHRA Drag Racing, it had always followed a business approach that placed the majority of its weight behind event and venue sponsorships, and it had never fully funded a Professional team. By late summer, the word came down, and Worsham knew the era was about to end.“They evaluated our deal pretty hard, I think, and they were very professional and engaged, but in the end, they decided to stick with what has always worked for them, and you can’t hold that against them. We were disappointed, of course, but we understood where they were coming from. From that point forward, we knew the end was pretty near, and we were working hard to find a solution.”

Working around the clock to secure new sponsorship, the Worsham Racing marketing team was making headway despite the very difficult economic landscape, but when Alan Johnson offered Worsham a spot as the driver of his new Funny Car, timelines shifted, and decisions had to be made. Worsham could risk it all and hold out hope that his team could land a new marketing partner, or he could take the bird in the hand, which just happened to be a rare bird indeed. After conferring with his closest associates, his father, and his family, he made the call to make the move, and the die was cast. Although Worsham Racing as a company will continue to exist, the group’s last dance as a race team will happen next weekend, at the Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals in

Pomona.

“Just losing CSK was pretty hard on all of us, and I don’t mean just us over here on the race team,” Worsham said. “We didn’t just lose a sponsor deal, we lost the company, too. So many people, who we have worked with on a daily basis for 12 years, have had to move on. Relationships you build for a decade are all of a sudden gone. We’ve been through a lot with so many people there; it’s tough for everyone to see it end.

“Then Alan made me the offer to drive his car, and it was just too perfect to pass up. I’ve been the guy in charge of this business for a long time, and it can really get overwhelming when you’re trying to lead people, pay the bills, keep your sponsor happy, and then during the weekend, you have to tune the car and drive it. The chance to just be the driver of a very good car with some of the best talent in the world working on it has me very excited, and I know my family feels the same way. I’ll be able to spend a lot more time with my girls and my wife, and that’s really important to me. It’s just going to be very different.”

Looking back on the 12 years with CSK and his 18 years as the driver of the Worsham Racing Funny Car with his father, Chuck, always by his side, Worsham can’t help but feel the deep emotions that come with long-standing relationships even while he looks forward to a new and exciting chapter in his life. The memories are too vivid and the accomplishments too great for him to simply walk away without giving it all a lot of thought.

“Going back to 1991, so much of it seems like yesterday while it also feels like a million years ago,” he said. “We worked so hard to get a sponsor and then got a small one we built into one of the top programs in the sport. We educated whole groups of CSK people, getting them involved and invested in what we were doing. We grew the program from nothing, really, and made our mark in the sport with them. We went from working out of my dad’s garage, literally, to this huge shop we now own, and we went from T-shirts and blue jeans to looking like all the other top teams out here. It was a lot of hard work, and I’ll never forget any of it.

“In

Pomona, we’ll do what we always do. We’ll focus on each lap, and we’ll give it everything we have, hoping we can end this year with a good weekend. I think most of us have done a really good job of just staying in the moment rather than looking too much at our history or too far ahead. Maybe on Sunday night in

Pomona it will all sink in, but right now, I’m just getting ready for the next race.”

It is, in reality, just the next race for Worsham and his team. But there’s no denying it is the last dance and the last chance for his crew, his sponsors, and Worsham himself to talk in the present tense about that Checker Schuck’s Kragen Impala. Once the lights go out on Sunday night, it will all be nothing more than memories.