Mike Mantel – Little Red Fire Truck Driver: Mike Mantel has racing in his blood and has been going around to race tracks for a long time. He can remember the early days of drag racing and wanted to be involved since he was a young man. Mike has had a hand in driving, building, and fixing wheel stander vehicles for many years. Scott found Mike “relaxing” at his motorhome alongside The Little Red Fire Truck andshowing people all about the vehicles that fuel his passion for drag racing. He loves to talk to people about his profession and Scott could not get the microphone out fast enough to start recording before Mike was fully into the conversation. He talked about how he got into drag racing and the various vehicles he has helmed over the years. Famous vehicles like the Hemi Under Glass and The Little Red Wagon are very well know to drag racer fans as well as his Little Red Fire Truck which he likes literally for the bells and whistles. If you check out his web page HemiUnderGlass.com you will see he has a lot to show off and you can follow him on Facebook.com/HemiUnderGlass. If you are going on the Power Tour West, MIke says he will be participating with his ’65 convertible VW Bug at Lake Havasu and his ’09 SRT8 Challenger which he plans to autocross at Chandler.

Anthony Svetic and Micah Fleming: After the action and drama of RoadKill nights, Scott heard about another car show at an abandoned drag strip formerly called Tri-City Dragway. By on scene reports the turnout was around 1200 cars which was much larger than the inaugural year and is fueling next years volunteer effort to do further renovations and cleanups at the site. Scott wanted to find out more and he together with Ryan Brutt were able to interview the founder Tony and then the second year promoter, Micah. Surprisingly enough these were high school boys and not surprisingly they were working on Eagle Scout projects. Micah was the big promoter of the track in the past year by spearheading contact with the airport who owns the property, volunteer efforts to clean up the dragway, and organization of the car show that ultimately drives interest to the location. Between last years initial event and this years there have been very noticeable changes in the landscape revealing much of the original track and buildings used at drag events back in the 1960s and 1970s. Micah has started paperwork on a 501c3 non profit charity and they are taking donations to continue efforts to restore this strip back to its glory including fixing the buildings and even further cleaning.
If you would like to find out more you can follow along at Facebook.com/groups/fansoftricitydragway or Facebook.com/Tri City Dragway. Check out some classic photos of the track back in the day waterwinterwonderland.com/dragway.