This could also be the last major race for your current car since you have a new Stratus waiting to make its competition debut.
Scruggs: Yeah, the Stratus is ready to race, but we’ve got this car here ironed out and it’s working good, so going into the championship race we don’t want to debut a new car without any testing. I’ve been farming so much and just haven’t had time to test it and (car builder) Garret (Livingston) has been nice enough to work with me on that. I mean, I know he’d love to have the Stratus out there, but he realizes that when we get it tested we’ll run it and we’re confident it’s going to be an awesome racecar. We’re excited about it, we’ve changed some stuff around and we think it’s going to be a little bit faster car.
Not that my Tommy Mauney car isn’t a great car—it is—but the Garret car, we’ve put a lot of thought into it, done a lot of stuff the way I wanted and the way he wanted, we put our heads together and we all think it’s going to be quicker and faster. But we set the bar pretty high for ourselves, so you know, we’ll see what it does.
Is the plan to run the ADRL series in 2008 with the Stratus?
Scruggs: Yeah, that’s the plan. As long as the ADRL keeps having the races, God willing we’re going to try to be there.
Was your current car built for you or purchased elsewhere?
Scruggs: Tommy Mauney built it for me. I called him and told him I wanted a car and it took him just four months to get it to me. The first year I had it I basically just hauled it around for testing when I got a chance because I was still racing my small-block car. So I really didn’t make it my primary car until ADRL came along.
People don’t realize that it was kind of a new car still when I started with ADRL. It’s three years old now and it really doesn’t have all that many runs on it. Another thing that people forget is that the first full year ADRL raced (2005) I didn’t race that year. My first little girl was born and we just decided to sit that year out. I went to one race that year, the whole year.
So what is your record-setting current car destined for? Will you hold on to it, carry it as a spare, or put it on the market?
Scruggs: We’ll probably hang on to it unless the right buyer come along wanting it. We’re not really going to try to sell it, basically because I just like to keep two cars anyway. I kept my small-block car as a spare last year, but I sold it in the fall. We had intended to bring out the Stratus in late spring, but we had that unfortunate accident there (crashed on inaugural launch at Huntsville Dragway—Ed.) that put us behind the eight ball a little bit. So our plan right now is to keep both cars for next year.
Where is the small-block car now?
Scruggs: Gene Hector out of Texas bought that car, turnkey. He runs in west Texas, so you don’t hear a lot about him, but I think he may be at the ADRL race in Dallas. They’re still learning with it, getting their feet wet, but they’ve run some 4-ohs with the car and are doing a good job.
After having such great success with the small block for years, what finally made you switch to running Brad Anderson Hemis? Had you simply wrung everything you could out of the small block?
Scruggs: Well, I think that’s it a little bit. I’m not going to say we couldn’t have made the small block go quicker; I mean any racer will always tell you he can go a little quicker, but I don’t think you were going to see any major leaps and bounds in its performance. I think we could run low .90s and maybe even .88 or .89 if we were still running that car.
You know, there’s a lot of technology for running the small blocks out there now that we just didn’t have and honestly I don’t know what the potential is for them right now. I’m pretty confident, though that we could build a small block to run 3.80s right now, but that’s still not 3.70s and as everybody got faster and faster we looked at it and said we would have to make the progression.
To be honest with you, I got to where I was still doing good with the small block and was still running with anybody on the outlaw tracks and winning just as much as anybody, but I couldn’t hardly go any faster. We were nit-pickin’ over a hundredth or two here and there and I was wanting something else to play with that I could really get some E.T. out of, so that’s why we went with the Brad deal. Then ADRL just came to us because we had already made the decision and commitment to test and run the new combination and ADRL came along and put us on better tracks and that really made that combination what we needed.
You once said that you’ve never been interested in NHRA or IHRA Pro Mod racing because they penalize racers for going faster and ADRL’s no-hold-barred approach to performance appeals more to you. Is that still how you feel?
Scruggs: That’s exactly the way I feel. NHRA, IHRA, and you can look at the Big Dog races in the Carolinas that are pretty big, but every time Todd Tutterow goes fast they go change the rules on him. I like racing where as long as the cars are safe there are no rules.
The only thing that I’d like to see on a personal note is the Pro Mod cars to stay Pro Mod cars. You know, working suspensions, doors, the same wheelbase that is Pro Mod-legal, because even though it’s outlaw Pro Mod and you can run any power adder you want, no minimum weight and all that, the bottom line is it’s still a Pro Mod car. I mean, I could add weight to my car, make a few changes and go run IHRA next week if I wanted.
So I don’t want to see ADRL let it get out of hand to the point where they’re not Pro Mod cars any more. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not seeing that anywhere right now and as long as it keeps going where it’s going I think the ADRL is a great deal.
The whole purpose of Pro Mod is doorslammer racing with suspension; that’s what makes it different from a Funny Car or a dragster, getting the power to the ground through a suspension. We’ve always been outlaw Pro Mod racers with no rules, but I think we’ve always had an understanding of what makes a Pro Mod car and I don’t want to see that slip away.