GAINESVILLE - Larry Dixon has a crazy job in which he can earn $40,000 in less than 20 seconds. He drives a 7,000-horsepower Top Fuel dragster, a National Hot Rod Association race car for which he calculates fuel - a mix of nitric acid and propane - in gallons per mile, not miles per gallon.
From a dead stop, his car can accelerate from zero to 100 mph in less than eight-tenths of a second, almost 11 seconds quicker than a production Porsche 911 Turbo.
Dixon, in other words, travels the length of more than four football fields in less than five seconds. He launches from the starting line with a force nearly five times that of gravity, about the same force of the Space Shuttle when it leaves the launching pad at Cape Canaveral. And he stops with the help of parachutes at a reverse seven-Gs.
That's the easy part for the Avon, Ind., driver. After earning his Top Fuel license 10 years ago at Gainesville Raceway, Dixon has won 33 races. If he wins three more, he will pass "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, the Tampa native and Ocala resident honored as history's top driver.
However, the two-time and reigning Top Fuel champion, who dominated the standings in 2002 and led after all but one of the 23 races last year, hasn't won in 10 races. He has exited in the second round in each of the two races this season.
Dixon is poised to drive in his 500th elimination round here this weekend at the 35th annual Gatornationals. He'll have to contend with defending Gatornationals champion Brandon Bernstein and current points leader Tony Schumacher.
"To be honest, there's less pressure on me now than ever," Dixon said. "Once you're in the points lead you never want to lose that. But we're not in that mode."
Dixon's crew chief, Dick LaHaie, the 1985 Gatornationals winner in Top Fuel who is considered one of the sport's sharpest strategists, said he never cared for being the chased. "I never liked doing it the way we did the past few years. I hated it," he said. "You started looking over your shoulder after the first race, and it's tough. It really is. You start making decisions on how to not lose any ground instead of being aggressive. That's how I won all my other championships, to really come after it."
Dixon knows how to do that at Gainesville, where he learned to drive a dragster at Frank Hawley's school in 1990. He won the Gatornationals in his rookie year, 1995, and again in 2001 and 2002. His car owner, NHRA legend Don "The Snake" Prudhomme, is a five-time winner.
"If we make the right calls on race days and gain knowledge with each run from the data we gather, we should be fine," Dixon said.
