Now we realise it’s conspicuously close to April’s fool day — but this is SOME BULL news!….
An interesting dimension of note is being added to a highly popular Central Canadian TAD camp.
Manitoba’s Clif Bakx, owner of the “The Bull” injected nitro car, has morphed the complexion of his team a bit, while helping to further develop the talents of one of his crew members, Daniel Flewelling, as a driver.
In recent times, Flewelling (who is from the Thunder Bay ON area) did make a national event level debut in the TAD class, with entry to the IHRA’s recent season opener held in North Carolina, where he qualified “The Bull”.
Flewelling, who also owns a pretty formidable 2-car dragster team of his own, did in fact first begin his licensing process for TAD about three years ago.
Daniel Flewelling (from Thunder Bay ON) is being nurtured as Canada’s newest TAD class driver.
“The first time I met Cliff was at a Terrace Bay Drag Fest event about 10 years ago,” Daniel revealed. “They would come and put a show on in Terrace Bay with his then – Top Dragster. 10 years later I saw him in Brainerd, Minnesota with a Top Alcohol Dragster, so I went over and chatted him up. As fate would have it about two weeks after that I found myself in Norwalk, Ohio — to be the clutch man for his car!”
“Since then and over time I have done 4 races in Top Alcohol Dragster in Clif’s car. My first NHRA regional race was in Tri State Iowa – where we placed R/UP at the event.”
Daniel’s best math so far driving “The Bull” has been a 5.38 secs at 271 mph.
Daniel’s future assignments for being in the cockpit for that car are to be determined, his role for that is presently a supplemental one to current and highly skilled team driver Todd Bruce (from North Dakota).
But the equation does offer Clif’s team some options for any potential season event scheduling conflicts – and perhaps allowing them more frays into the new IHRA Outlaw Nitro series (?).
Wily Clif Bakx, well known and respected for some creative concepts in TAD racing – owns and operates “The Bull”.
Parallel to that is Daniel Flewelling’s continued mission within the Top Dragster class with his own race team run by himself and his father.
“My racing plans for this season are to do all of the NHRA D5 races for Top Dragster and couple more races in Clif’s A fueler,” Daniel stated. “We really enjoyed running Top Dragster and have a lot of history there now.”
“I started doing some NHRA races with a Big Block 871, super charged. But as the fields got tighter in Top Dragster I bought a new dragster. That is a Mike Bos car, powered by a Keith Black 526 cubic inch Hemi with a 1471 psi supercharger. So presently we do have the capability to qualify at pretty much any top dragster event we go to.”
“Our team has another dragster too, a Race Tech chassis that I plan on racing Super Comp. We do a lot of bracket racing with that — mostly at Rock Falls Raceway (in Wisconsin).”
Daniel and his Dad (Dave) do fund their drag racing ventures independently. They own and operate Circon Electric, which his father established back in 1997.
Posted by Bruce Biegler
Photos by Dave DeAngelis and Les Puchala
