“Cool and Commendable” are the first words that come to mind about two similar thinking Top Dragster teams….

There is a common denominator that exists for two Canadian-based dragster teams, one from Ontario and another from Alberta. Both Scott McCann (Stratford ON) and Vince Gareau (Nisku AB) have by coincidence chosen to do their part to honour and recognize Canada’s military through some very innovative schemes for their respective race machines.

Scott McCann, who is in fact a cousin to Jim McCann, one of Canada’s most veteran drag racer names, is a very formidable competitor within Eastern Canada’s Napa Ultimate Showdown Drag Racing Series, racing his now supercharged Fritz-chassied dragster. McCann, who is the owner and operator of Fraser Asphalt Paving, with his son Brayden, gave their dragster a cool P-51 Mustang look which in fact does carry forward some McCann family tradition.

“Jim’s brother Gary owned a real P-51 Mustang,” Scott revealed. “So when we bought Jim’s engine program (a 377 CID Chevy) we kind of combined things. We also wanted to take the opportunity to salute both Canadian veterans and current service men and women. We hooked up with Devin Klein (from Waterloo) who first did an artist rendering which we loved – so we then applied that to the trailer and also the race car.”

Scott McCann (top left) races his Canadian Military tribute TD in conjunction with his son (and soon to be driver) Brayden and team member Brian Balantine

McCann, reports that while he currently is driving the race car, which remains in somewhat of a test mode for 2017, the longer term plans are to put his son Brayden (a former junior dragster racer) in that cockpit soon.

“Brayden does have his licence already but we are holding things up after we converted the car from nitrous to it’s new supercharged engine program,” Scott continued. “I’m the “test pilot” for the time being – but once it’s all dialled – he will drive it.”

In fact this team made strong strides forward with their program evidenced by Scott emerging as the event winner recently for the Samson Top Dragster class eliminator title for the Napa USDS Stratford Spectacular race held at their home track of Grand Bend Motorplex.

Vince Gareau and his son Dalton also decided to recognize Canada’s military service with their M&M Race Cars built car. Garneau, who is the owner and operator L-Jay Auto Body (Nisku AB) used some truly great in-house talents from within his facility to create his remarkable race car vision.

“We did have an incident with the car racing in Las Vegas last year,” Vince revealed. “So during that resurrection (repair) process my son Dalton came up with this idea. My sister (Heather) works in the Canadian military and we wanted to try to capture a Canadian aviation theme that incorporates a couple of different WW II aircraft.

Dalton and Vince Gareau are regular racers in Castrol Raceway’s Top Eliminator program – are providing some special deserved additional recognition to Canadian military service men and women.

“Rebuilding this car could not have been possible without the help of my best friend & teammate Stan Essery,” Vince continued. “The Melton Family (at M&M RACECARS) were fantastic too helping us with all components required & tech questions. Once the car was repaired (completely at our own facility) some of our staff members took on the task of creating something special to show our pride in our military. It was just our way of giving something back. Our techs Jay Bagaslo, David Albert, Tyrel Loden & our expert air brush artist Rod Fuchs were all involved, and we just just love the final finished product.”

Cool Cool & Cool!

Vince with partner Stan Essery, do in fact operate a 2-car drag racing team. Their second dragster is run in Super Comp index racing.

Their Top Dragster has a 1200 HP, nitrous-assisted 615 CID Sunset Performance engine program and it has run a best of 7.1 secs at 190 mph so far.

Vince and his team are regular runners within Castrol Raceway’s extremely thriving and highly compeititve Top Eliminator Club which was founded by Bob and Gord Ebertz. They also compete with the car at select NHRA-sanctioned Top Dragster events and recently the car in fact did place in the TD final round during the (Saturday portion) of NHRA’s National Open event held in conjunction with the Mopar Rocky Mountain Nationals last month.

Post and photos by Bruce Biegler