Close Top Fuel battle highlights NHRA meet at BIR
Top Fuel dragsters, those long, slinky monsters that are the fastest of all drag-race machines, can usually be counted on as the highlight of a national drag-racing event. But this year, the Top Fuelers have outdone themselves.
Every year at this time, the National Hot Rod Association brings its 22-race traveling show to Minnesota to run at Brainerd International Raceway. This weekend is it, and the usual 100,000 will show up for the four-day show that began Thursday, continues with Friday and Saturday qualifying, and rises to a Sunday afternoon climax as eliminations in all classes halve the fields until the final round matches.
In the top three pro categories, we have Funny Cars, in which John Force is the odds-on favorite to win. He has 1,361 points for the season to 1,105 for runner-up Tony Pedregon, who, incidentally, runs the Force Castrol team’s second car. In Pro Stock, Iron Range native Warren Johnson is the odds-on favorite, having 1,123 points for the season, compared to 1,022 for runner-up Kurt Johnson, who, incidentally, is Warren’s son and teammate.
While both of those categories appear stacked, Top Fuel points leaders are: 1. Mike Dunn, 918 points; 2. Kenny Bernstein, 901; 3. Joe Amato, 873; 4. Tony Schumacher, 869; 5. Doug Kalitta, 854; 6. Gary Scelzi, 852; 7. Doug Herbert, 825; 8. Larry Dixon, 789; 9. Cory McClenathan, 763; 10. Bob Vandergriff, Jr., 748.
In the NHRA’s inflated method of scoring, one competitor can make up about 80 points against another by winning a championship while that foe loses in the first round of eliminations. That leads to the high point totals, which obscure how close the top 10 really are. Put into another perspective, the gap from first to second in Funny Car is 256 points; the gap from first to 10th in Top Fuel season standings is 170 points. The gap from first to second in Pro Stock is 101 points; the gap from first to seventh in Top Fuel is 93 points.
However, you needn’t go back more than to the last NHRA event, No. 14 of the season, at Sonoma, Calif., to see how fragile the competition can be. At that race, Force, the big favorite, lost in the first round for the first time all season, and he didn’t just lose, he crashed. Chuck Beal put together a spectacular run to beat Force, but as the two hurtled toward the finish line, Beal’s car blew its motor in a ball of fire. The explosion blew the body of Beal’s car up into the air and also scorched Beal and wiped out his face shield, to say nothing of his visibility. A tire also exploded, throwing Beal out of control.
Beal’s disabled car crossed the finish line in 5.29 seconds at 253 to Force’s 5.51, then it veered across the center line, right into Force’s path. Force slammed into Beal’s car, wiping out his Castrol racer as well. Beal couldn’t get repairs done in time for the second round, and with Force eliminated, Whit Bazemore went on to win the title in Funny Car.
In Pro Stock, Warren Johnson had trouble qualifying through three rounds of trials, but just when it looked like he might fail to make the top 16 for the first time in 233 consecutive races, ol’ WJ cracked off a 6.925 in the unsupercharged class, at 200.77 miles per hour. His was the only 200-plus run among the Pro Stocks, and his 6.925 was second only to Kurt Johnson’s 6.898. But Warren Johnson was eliminated in the second round, by Mike Edwards, and Jim Yates went on to win the class, beating Kurt Johnson in the final.
LAWRENCE HITS 30
In Up North stock car racing, the biggest news last weekend was that Scott Lawrence didn’t win at Superior on Friday. He was expected to win his 30th feature of the season at Superior’s Friday night event, but he banged up his car and didn’t win at Superior, leaving him with 29 wins.
Lawrence, who is unrivaled king of the Street Stocks at Superior, Ashland and Proctor, had swept the previous weekend’s races at Superior on Friday, Ashland Saturday and Duluth Sunday.
No matter. Saturday at Ashland’s ABC track, Lawrence reverted to form, winning his heat and the feature. It was not only his 30th feature win of the season, it was Lawrence’s 13 victory at Ashland.
Ryan Aho won his seventh Super Stock feature at Grand Rapids last Friday night…Joel Cryderman was involved in a first-lap tangle in the Late Model feature at Superior, but he came back to win the feature…Brady Smith won the Super Stock feaure at Superior.
The final weeks of the dirt oval stock car season are arriving fast, with season championships and special events in the next couple of weeks. It’s been an impressive season, despite more than enough rain to “keep the dust down.”
CART, IRL NEGOTIATE
Inside stories continue that the IRL and CART race organizations have met several times on reuniting, but there are some stumbling blocks. The biggest ones are the engines, where some compromise in formula will be required. In CART, manufacturers build the exotic, high-revving, turbocharged engines and lease them to customers, who aren’t allowed to tamper with them, and must send them back to the factory for major repairs. In the IRL, the manufacturers are only responsible for the basic block, selling them to race teams who hire builders to rework them with their own specialty parts, similar to NASCAR’s Winston Cup stock cars.
CART ‘s exotic, factory-built engines, create real factory competition among Honda, Ford (Cosworth), Mercedes (Ilmor) and Toyota. In the IRL, Oldsmobile (Aurora) and Infiniti build engines to basic specifications, then turn them over to race teams. With Oldsmobile much more liberal in allowing buyers to revise engines with aftermarket parts, nine out of 10 IRL cars use Aurora engines. Less factory involvement means that fans care far less about which Aurora wins than in CART, where the fierce competition has made the Honda, Mercedes and Ford all about equal, and Toyota has pushed to catch up.
CART is undergoing an upheaval. Roger Penske, whose once-dominant team no longer is competitive, signed Greg Moore and Gil deFerran to run his Team Penske cars next season. That leaves Al Unser Jr. out of his familiar Marlboro ride. Al Jr. is an interesting case, because three years ago, he and Michael Andretti were the two most-recognizable racers in CART, but there are indications that Unser has lost some of his competitive fire.
Early last summer, I saw copies of the transcripts for practice laps for all the drivers of Mercedes-powered cars. While other drivers with the same, or lesser, Mercedes engines ran hard all the way around one of those new, banked 1-mile ovals, either never lifting off the throttle or lifting only in one or two brief moments, Al Jr.’s telemetry showed that he was lifting off the throttle frequently, and in every turn. Not coincidentally, Al Jr. hasn’t won a CART race for three seasons, and no longer even challenges to run in the top half dozen unless there is a lot of attrition. He apparently is waiting for finalization of his divorce, and insists he intends to race for another, as-yet unnamed race team. It would be interesting if he jumped to the IRL, and then the IRL and CART merged.
Track record speed makes Hanson kick return threat
Four years ago, Mesabi East High School was pretty good in football, and a state contender in track — both courtesy of Erik Hanson. Now, after one year redshirting to let a knee injury heal, Hanson is a junior at UMD, where he still is doing his thing to make his school’s football and track teams competitive.
“I think we’ll be right there with St. Cloud State,” said Hanson, looking ahead to Saturday’s football game with the Huskies at St. Cloud. “They’re probably as good as Mankato State, but now that we’ve gotten past our first game, I think this one is going to be a good game.”
It was a startling event when Hanson ran a kickoff back 92 yards for a touchdown in last Saturday’s season-opening 37-15 loss against Minnesota State-Mankato, because no UMD player had returned a kickoff for a touchdown in 14 years. It was less surprising to anyone who was aware of Hanson’s exploits in track.
Hanson owns UMD records in the 200 and 400 meter sprints, as well as the 4×100, 4×400 and sprint medley relay teams. If you move indoors, he also holds records in the 400, 4×100, 4×200 and 4×400 relays. That’s nine — count ’em, 9 — track records, and he represented UMD at the Division II track national meet in Emporia, Kans., where he was eighth in the nation in the 400.
“Erik really showed some speed on that kick return,” said coach Bob Nielson. “He’s by far the fastest player I’ve had the privelege of coaching. We actually timed him at 4.27 seconds in the 40-yard dash. Erik Conner was second, at 4.5 — which is also fast. He’s coming along as a wide receiver, too, and we think he’s certainly a guy who has big-play potential.”
At 5-8 and 165 pounds, Hanson is built for speed. But that didn’t lessen the surprise of his spectacular touchdown run against Mankato. He recalled it in detail.
“We had a middle return on,” Hanson said. “I caught the ball on the 8, and everybody executed the return perfectly. There was a big hole up the middle, and after I got through it, I broke it outside.”
Hanson exploded through the hole and veered to the right sideline. A retreating Mankato defender seemed to be pacing himself, as if certain he had the proper angle on Hanson. You could almost read the surprise of that defender as he realized he had miscalculated Hanson’s speed.
“I was hoping noboyd would catch me,” Hanson said.
Earlier, he had returned a punt 39 yards to the 50 in the second quarter.
His dad, Denny Hanson, who watched from the grandstand, said: “He’s fun to watch. He was that way in high school too. He’s always been fast. In high school, he won the state 100 and 400 as a junior, and as a senior he repeated in the 400 and was second in the 100 and third in the 200. He also was fifth in the long jump, even though he had never tried it until the sectional.”
In high school, Hanson, who is from Hoyt Lakes, was a running back and defensive cornerback. “I’d move to flank out on passing plays,” Hanson said. “I was recruited by UMD to play cornerback, and I figured I wasn’t going to play offensive until one day during my freshman season, when they asked me.”
Hanson tore his ACL and needed surgery, knocking him out one year, but he recovered fully — obviously — and has been used as a wide receiver as well as a kick return specialist. The extra year means Hanson is nearing completion of his health and phy-ed major, although he says he will come back as a fifth-year senior next fall. But that’s a long way off, and his touchdown run made him anxious for more.
“I had another kickoff and a punt return where I was maybe one block away from going all the way, too,” said Hanson. “Our new turf is awesome when it’s dry, but it was really slippery when it was wet from the rain.”
If Hanson had trouble with the slippery turf, imagine how the defenders felt as he sped past them.
SCOUTING REPORTS DON’T HELP
Nielson said that the tough challenge of facing fully funded Division II teams, which can have 34 scholarships as opposed to UMD’s restriction of 21, has been made tougher because both Mankato last weekend and St. Cloud State have veteran teams under new coaching staffs. Randy Hedberg, formerly offensive coordinator at North Dakota, and a finalist for the UMD job that Nielson got, is the new coach at St. Cloud. Hedberg’s debut was successful, with a 22-15 victory over Wisconsin-River Falls.
“The information we got from River Falls doesn’t really help us this year,” said Nielson. “They run a triple option, so what River Falls did against them won’t do us any good.”
Records fall in first-day qualifying at BIR
BRAINERD, MINN.—Veteran drag-racers Warren Johnson, John Force and Cory McClenathan broke Brainerd International Raceway records in all three National Hot Rod Association professional categories Friday, as opening-day qualifying runs built to a stunning, flame-throwing finale.
McClenathan set the track’s Top Fuel speed record with a 320.36 mile per hour blast down the BIR quarter-mile, breaking the two-year-old record of Joe Amato. Force, the runaway leader in Funny Car, broke the track’s elapsed-time record in Funny Car, with a 4.900-second dash — bettering Whit Bazemore’s two-year old 4.916 — while reaching 312.28 mph, which was just shy of Crtuz Pedregon’s year-old mark of 312.39.
Meanwhile, Johnson, the “Ol’ Professor,” and an Iron Range native of Makinen, Minn., took care of both ends of the Pro Stock records at BIR, clocking a 6.995-second first-session time, and a 197.59-mph speed. That lowered the mark of 7.002 and raised the 196.76 he had recorded in 1997 to establish both records.
The pros will get two more chances to beat those records today, before the fastest 16 in each category line up Sunday for eliminations to decide the winner in the 18th annual NHRA nationals at BIR, and the first named after the Colonel’s Truck Accessories.
Johnson’s 6.995 in his Firebird was followed by his son, Kurt Johnson, at 6.979 in the first session, and when they came back for the evening session, Warren couldn’t improve his time, but Kurt did, with a 6.963. Those three were the only runs ever to get under 7.0 in Pro Stock at BIR.
As the Pro Stocks lined up for the night session, Warren was asked if he thought he could improve his time, and hold off his son. “We’ll have to see whether the track will hold it,” said Johnson. “As for Kurt, you know how kids are — all we’ve got left are age and treachery.”
Warren then ran a 7.005 at 196.64, which didn’t lower his afternoon record, and was beaten by Kurt’s time (6.963) and speed (197.45). This time, pop’s treachery was to set the records on his first try.
The Friday night session on every NHRA weekend always is the most spectacular, because if it is dark enough, the flames shooting out of the headers of the Top Fuel and Funny Car engines lights the sky like Roman candles. And because it’s always cooler, the air’s increased density makes more horsepower in the supercharged 500-cubic-inch engines. This weekend was a perfect example, because it was fairly dark when the Pro Stocks ran, and the Funny Cars followed, and were interrupted by a brief shower.
That meant the finishing Top Fuelers ran in darker than usual conditions, which riveted the 20,000 fans. with the fire show. Nobody in Top Fuel could beat McClenathan’s speed in the night session, but elapsed times are what determines the pairings for Sunday’s eliminations, not speed. And Cory Mac’s elapsed time on the run was a swift 4.648-seconds, and didn’t stand up through the night session.
In fact, it dropped to fourth. Mike Dunn ran a 4.614 in the night session to claim No. 1, but then he was bumped to second by Bob Vandergriff of Alpharetta, Ga., a comparatively unheralded racer in the highly sophisticated Top Fuel field, ranking 10th in season points at this point in the season. Vandergriff, in the Jerzees racer, ran a 4.597-second time — just missing Amato’s E.T. record of 4.562, but good enough to claim the top spot.
Larry Dixon later ran a 4.628, to take third, bumping McClenathan to fourth when Cory Mac couldn’t improve on his first-session time and shut down after violent wheelspin sent him up in smoke off the starting line.
There are only 16 Funny Cars entered this weekend, so all of them are assured of making the field, unless someone damages a car in today’s qualifying. And with only 19 Top Fuelers, there isn’t a lot of challenging left to the first-day’s top 16, although Amato, a frequent winner at BIR, currently is 16th and will be determined to improve on that today.
In Pro Stock, however, the unsupercharged, stock-appearing racers may take the spotlight, because there are 26 cars at BIR, and competition will be fierce in today’s qualifying, because such stalwarts as Jim Yates, Tom Martino and Rickie Smith are as yet unqualified.
Huskies chew up inept Bulldogs, 49-0
ST. CLOUD, MINN.—The two huge North Central Conference hurdles that open UMD’s football schedule have come and gone, now. Call it “One step forward and two steps back,” after UMD’s expedition Saturday resulted in a 49-0 drubbing by St. Cloud State on a perfect afternoon at Selke Field.
Actually, that evaluation requires that the Bulldogs opening 35-17 loss to Minnesota State-Mankato was a step forward. OK, so maybe it was a baby step, but the Bulldogs at least put together a few decent offensive drives against Mankato, and were in the game long enough to generate some optimism about St. Cloud.
Then the game started, and the Bulldogs simple didn’t function. They didn’t execute on offense, they never mounted anything resembling a sustained offensive drive, and they worked hard on defense, which spent so much time on the field that, after a scoreless first quarter, the Huskies churned for touchdowns on five consecutive possessions in the second and third quarters.
Opening Northern Sun Conference play at Minnesota-Crookston should be a welcome break after the two opening tasks, but that did little to salve the self-administered wounds the Bulldogs suffered Saturday.
“I thought we had a good week of practice, and we prepared all week for what we were going to do today, then we just didn’t execute,” said quarterback Mark Drommerhausen, who was a creditable 10-19 passing, but only for 58 yards, and his protection broke down enough that he was sacked four times. Drommerhausen was most impressive punting, where he had eight kicks for a 42.2-yard average, including one that skipped out of bounds after traveling 52 yards.
St. Cloud quarterback Ryan Stelter, on the other hand, had all day to throw, and was 14-20 for 158 yards and second-quarter touchdown passes to Mike Jacobs and Ben Nelson.
In total yards, the Huskies outgained UMD 425-103, and the breakdown by quarters painted something other than a masterpiece: St. Cloud’s edge was 108-16 in the first, 95-33 in the second, 153-0 in the third, and 68-41 in the fourth quarter, when both sides had second units on the field. UMD’s 103 total yards was easily surpassed by Erik Hanson, who compiled 155 yards on eight kickoff returns, and also ran a punt back for 11 yards and caught a pss for 11 more yards, giving him 177 yards for the day’s work. But he took a battering in return.
Like Mankato State, St. Cloud State has the benefit of NCC rules that allow more scholarships for football than UMD’s, but most of the Bulldogs thought Mankato State was the stronger of the two, further underlining UMD’s ineptitude against the Huskies.
“Last week we executed all right in our first game, so we looked for improvement today,” said UMD running back Erik Conner, who led the Bulldogs with 35 very difficult yards in nine carries. “It’s real frustrating. We worked all week on a game plan, and what we did was totally different than our game plan. All day, their defense was penetrating from somewhere. But we didn’t help our situation with the breakdowns we had. We just can’t afford to have so many breakdowns.”
An interesting subplot was the two first-year coaches on opposing sides. UMD conducted its search first, and both Bob Nielson and Randy Hedberg were finalists. UMD hired Nielson, the Wisconsin-Eau Claire head coach. St. Cloud State then conducted its search, and hired Hedberg, who has been offensive coordinator at North Dakota.
“I’m sure UMD is happy with their choice, and I hope St. Cloud is happy with theirs,” said Hedberg, defusing any suggestion that the Huskies might have poured it on a bit.
More likely, Hedberg was girding for the upcoming North Central Conference wars in the coming weeks. “We go to Fargo next week,” said Hedberg, looking ahead to an opening NCC showdown with North Dakota State. “You have to be able to run the football to succeed in the NCC. That’s one of the reasons we ran a lot in the first quarter, when there was a little feeling out on both sides. Once our guys got the handle on what they were trying to do, I thought we played well. I was happy with our defense.”
Andy Thyen scored two touchdowns for the Huskies, and freshman Brian Olson, second-string quarterback Ryan Neuberger and Nick Hatton scored the other Huskies touchdowns. Olson, from Pine City, was St. Cloud’s top ground gainer, with 76 yards in 11 carries. Bill Stallings added 47 yards on 10 carries, and Hatton 46 yards on 10 carries.
Nielson, on the other hand, broke from his personal tradition and addressed the Bulldogs after the game in the dressing room, then held a meeting or two with assistant coaches before emerging to talk to reporters.
“It’s disappointing, very disappointing, with regard to how we executed, and to the final score,” Nielson said. “Give St. Cloud credit, they played an error-free game, and they’ve got a good defensive team. But the bottom line is, we’ve got to play a lot better. It’s frustrating that we’re making some of the same mistakes as the first week of practice.”
The Bulldogs lack of cohesiveness and intensity was evident from the start. It almost appeared as though enough players had heard how tough the NCC foes on the schedule would be to that a few of them eased up on virtually every play. “I felt that way, too, so we addressed that at halftime,” said Nielson. “You’ve got to bite, claw and scratch in a situation like this, and make up for any deficiency with effort. We didn’t do that.”
The players noticed, too. “You could feel it in the huddle,” added Drommerhausen.
“Last week, we played well in spots, but today we seemed flat from the opening kickoff,” said Bill Shaughnessy, a running back from Greenway of Coleraine who came off the bench, and while he had only 12 yards in nine carries, that ranked second on the team. “Our defense came out hard, but our offense didn’t, and I don’t know why.”
The players agreed that there might have been only two or three offensive plays all day where all 11 Bulldogs executed correctly and with crispness. Out of 51 total offensive plays, a performance like that could only guarantee being shut out. By St. Cloud State — or anybody else on UMD’s schedule.
USA Hockey excluded for Canadians at 2002 Olympics
It would seem that the long-standing — and honestly-earned — paranoia that the U.S. feels toward Canada in all sorts of hockey issues might be subsiding a bit with the recent upsurge of success the game has achieved all across the U.S. But just when hockey types thought the U.S. had achieved something approaching respect, if not parity, with our northern neighbors, along comes 2002.
When the 2002 Winter Olympic Games are conducted in Salt Lake City, Utah, the hockey tournament will be organized, directed and managed by Canadians. This will be the first Olympic Winter Games where the host country did not serve as host for the hockey tournament.
It’s Canada’s game, Americans concede that, but we play it pretty well too. And as everybody from John Mariucci to Herb Brooks to Val Belmonte says or has said: “We’re not anti-Canadian; we’re pro-American.”
USA Hockey, which used to be the Amateur Hockey Association of the U.S. (AHAUS) until the late Bob Johnson got that awkward name changed, can be oppressive and overbearing at times in organizing and coordinating youth and amateur hockey in this country, but it has also done a fantastic job of building a sport of national interest from a cult sport that used to be isolated into small pockets of Minnesota, Michigan and New England.
In the process, hundreds of highly qualified folks have organized and coordinated every imaginable type of team, game and tournament. Historically, U.S. officials ran the hockey tournaments twice at Lake Placid and once at Squaw Valley, Calif. Canada has been host to only one Winter Olympics, in Calgary in 1988.
Americans are not rude enough to point out that in the last 50 years, the U.S. has won two Olympic gold medals in hockey while Canada has won none. Or that such success, plus the slick operation of the Lake Placid games in 1980 might make it more logical that Canada would have called in USA Hockey types to help run Calgary than for the Salt Lake City organizers to beckon Canadians and exclude USA Hockey to run the hockey tournament for Americans.
Herb Brooks, the coach and sole architect of that 1980 “Miracle on Ice” hockey team at Lake Placid, was shocked wen he heard what had happened. “Are you trying to say we don’t have anybody in the U.S. who could organize the Olympic tournament?” asked Brooks, incredulously. “I would say whoever hired the Canadian people in the first place should be fired. It’s an insult to everybody connected with U.S. hockey.”
It is possible the whole thing unfolded innocently.
When the Salt Lake City organizing committee started organizing its staff for 2002, a highly efficient woman named Cathy Priestner was a viable candidate. She long had been involved with speedskating, working closely with U.S. officials in Illinois, and also helped organize the Center for Excellence in Calgary, a Canadian multi-sport training facility. In fact, Priestner hired Shannon Miller to work there, and Miller later became coach of the Canadian women’s national and Olympic hockey teams and currently is the coach of UMD’s first-year women’s hockey team. Priestner also hired Dan Morrow from the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association to manage the Center of Excellence.
Organizers from Salt Lake City approached Dave Ogrean, then the executive director of USA Hockey, to become the Director of Sport for the Salt Lake City games, Ogrean turned it down, and subsequently took a job with the U.S. Olympic Committee. Later, the organizers hired Cathy Priestner as Director of Sport.
Priestner, in turn, interviewed quite a few men for the job to direct the “ice hockey” portion of the Olympics. Val Belmonte, a former college hockey coach more recently the director of coaching for all of USA Hockey, and perhaps the best-qualified of a number of American candidates, was among those interviewed.
But Priestner decided to hire Dan Morrow. “Because she’s not a U.S. citizen herself, maybe she wanted to hire people she felt most comfortable with,” said Belmonte, showing great restraint and diplomacy.
Despite tact and protocol, however, the fact is: A Canadian was hired as Director of Sport for the Salt Lake City games, and she hired a Canadian to be director of the ice hockey tournament.
“They’re both wonderful people, well qualified, but even though they’re both fabulous people, there are a lot of qualified Americans who could have done those jobs,” said Doug Palazzari, the former Eveleth High School and Colorado College star player who, two months ago, replaced Ogrean as executive director of USA Hockey. “I didn’t even know Cathy Priestner was a Canadian until she hired Dan Morrow.
“We’ve gone through this for a long time. There’s no question that Americans in hockey are still at a disadvantage, whether it’s something like this, all the way up to the top professional coaching opportunities. We were offended, and we expressed our dissatisfaction.”
The man who expressed it was Walter Bush, the president of USA Hockey, and the vice president of the IIHF (International Ice Hockey Federation).
“I wrote Cathy Priestner a blistering letter,” said Bush, who just returned this week from an IIHF meeting in Switzerland. “I said in the letter that we know we’ve been Canada’s ‘little brother’ in hockey, but through all this I still couldn’t believe that she couldn’t pick an American to run the hockey tournament. She said she picked the best person available. But she promised she’d name an American to be in charge of the women’s hockey tournament.”
She did that, recently naming Liz Ridley for that role.
“I know it’s great to have an international flavor in the Olympics, but a lot of good U.S. candidates were bypassed,” said Belmonte, still being diplomatic. “It’s not like any of us are anti-Canadian, it’s just that we’re pro-U.S. And this will be the first Winter Olympics where the host country’s hockey federation hasn’t run the hockey tournament.
“I’m sure they’re going to need a lot of volunteers, but right now, as far as the 2002 hockey tournament in Salt Lake City goes, we in USA Hockey don’t have any involvement at all.”
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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