The highlight of the March 2009 issue of Drag Racing Action is the feature entitled “Best (& Worst) of 2008,” and both the IHRA and Top Sportsman champion Steve Corker were singled out for recognition.

Corker received top honors in the “Best Single Performance By A Sportsman” category, thanks to his outstanding performance at the three-race season opener at Florida’s Immokalee Regional Raceway last February.

In the two-day Pro-Am event, Corker, of Clayton, North Carolina, collected Ironman trophies in both Quick Rod and Top Sportsman competition, and he followed up with a second Top Sportsman victory during Sunday’s Sportsman Nationals race. Corker went on to dominate the Top Sportsman class in 2008, clinching the class championship and being named IHRA’s “Sportsman of the Year.”

The IHRA took the prestigious “Best Single Race” nod for outlasting Mother Nature and her ill-behaved daughter Hurricane Hanna to successfully complete the Amalie Oil North American Nationals at Epping, New Hampshire’s New England Dragway.  

Hanna huffed and puffed and dumped monsoon-like rain in an effort to wash the facility away, but despite her best efforts, the crews from the IHRA and NED fought back, draining, bailing, and drying the track, pits, and parking areas in time to get the event into the books. It took a maximum effort by all involved, an effort certainly worthy of recognition in the pages of Drag Racing Action.

Congratulations to Steve Corker and the hard-working IHRA team.