Forty years ago this weekend, an incident transpired that would forever change the life of Pro Stock’s winningest driver Greg Anderson.
A 22-year-old Anderson stood on the starting line as his mentor, Mopar Pro Stock racer John Hagen, barrel-rolled his Dodge Charger at 170 miles per hour. He was the last to interact with Hagen before his death in that crash.
Anderson took note of Hagen’s pre-run rituals as he belted him in the car.
“He’d kiss the picture of his two young kids in his helmet and then put his helmet on. I’d shake his hand, and away he’d go,” Anderson told CompetitionPlus.com in an exclusive interview. “I was definitely the last person to talk to him, see him, and touch him before it happened.”
The pain is still real for Anderson, who, after the fateful weekend, went to work for former Minnesotian Warren Johnson and later launched a driving career that would put him among the legends of Pro Stock drag racing.
Sure, Anderson was a ball of raw talent waiting to happen when he started working for Johnson, but it was Hagen who had begun teaching his 18-year-old apprentice life’s lessons.
“I learned a lot of family values from him,” Anderson said. “What I really learned was the value of hard work. We didn’t have the resources, so we worked very hard -- every night until about midnight in the shop, and then we’d drive all night long to get to the race track. We did it on a shoestring budget, and he taught me what it took to compete in a class and how hard you had to work, and how you had to treat people.
“I learned back then to be good to the people that you race against, and you have to live with at the race track; that’s kind of like your second family. I think it’s paid a lot of benefits for me down the road and allowed me to get where I am today. Those values I learned from him, how to treat people right whether it’s at the race track or in the grocery store. Clearly, he was like a second father. He taught me a lot of values. I had it growing up with my father, but John reassured it.”
Anderson, born in Duluth, Minn., grew up going to the drag races and learning the ropes from his father, a hobbyist-type Modified Eliminator racer in NHRA’s Division 5. The father and son befriended the personable Hagen during their time at the track. When the elder Anderson parked his race car, it was only natural that his son would begin assisting Hagen as he made the move into Pro Stock.
“That’s where I got my Pro Stock start,” Anderson recalled. “I had a blast, and we traveled a lot of races and had a lot of success and had a lot of fun. John was a great guy and -- I can’t emphasize this enough -- a super, super, super nice guy. I considered him like a second father to me. I spent a lot of time with him; I lived at his house when I went racing with him and stuff.”
“I ended up traveling the country with him and chasing this Pro Stock dream that they all talked about.”
Anderson quickly grasped the nuances of tuning a Pro Stocker, first on a pounds-per-cubic-inch and then later once the 500-inch format was adopted. For Anderson, the real lessons of racing with Hagen had nothing to do with four-link setting or setting the air gap on the clutch. These lessons had everything to do with becoming a champion without having to light the scoreboard with a low elapsed time.
Hagen never won an NHRA Winston national event, but he was clearly a threat every time his Minnesota-based Plymouth Arrow rolled through the gates. He qualified more times than not, but of special note is that Anderson tuned Hagen to a qualifying berth in the first-ever NHRA 500-inch Pro Stock event.
Hagen trusted Anderson immensely, and the confidence was mutual. This bond is the primary reason Anderson chokes up when talking about the day Hagen lost his life.
Seeing Hagen’s car careen out of control and barrel roll was a life-changing experience for the aspiring champion.
“That experience absolutely knocked the wind out of me,” Anderson confided. “I got to see it first hand. I went running down the race track and got to the wreckage right away. It was the most gruesome scene that you’d ever seen in your life. It was a horrific scene. There were no guard rails. We were at Brainerd, and there were no guard walls at the time.”
Anderson walked away from the sport with no intention of ever returning. In fact, he went to work for his dad at the family dealership. The accident caught him and others completely off guard.
“I had gotten the bug, and I knew I loved racing and drag racing and racing Pro Stock. But when you lose somebody close like that, it just kind of knocks the wind out of your sails,” Anderson explained. “I gave it up for a couple of years, and didn’t even hardly think about racing in that time until I went down to the Brainerd national event two years later just as a spectator.”
At that race, a friendly exchange with Kurt Johnson and an invitation to come on the road with the team was enough to get him thinking.
“I thought back to the years when I raced with John, and as under-financed as we were, we could hold our own against the guys like Warren Johnson, Lee Shepherd, and Bob Glidden – they were the heavily sponsored teams of that era.
“I always thought in the back of my mind if I ever decided to come back, it would only be to race with one of those kinds of teams," he said. "We weren’t heavily sponsored, and I learned right then what it took to be Pro Stock. You needed to be heavily sponsored, and you needed to have resources. We did a great job with what we had, but we didn’t have those resources, so I kind of learned right then that if I was ever going to race again, it was going to be with one of those top-tier teams that had the resources. That’s why when Warren offered me the opportunity, I jumped at it.”
Anderson has been knee-deep in Pro Stock ever since. He also took note of the advancements in Pro Stock safety following Hagen’s death.
“His death led to the implementation of the Funny Car roll cage in the Pro Stockers,” Anderson said. “They also put guard walls up at these things. Never again have they run at a national event without guard walls. Some good things came of it, but it sucks that we were all kind of asleep at the switch at the time. That’s the way it works: You kind of have to have tragedy to learn and go forward. That’s the main thing that he did right there, that’s what he’s responsible for.”
Anderson maintains contact with Hagen’s family after all these years, and every time he starts his Pro Stock entry, he envisions a part of John riding along with him.
“I miss him every day,” Anderson said. “He was such a great guy, and he has a great family. I still talk to his family all the time and they still come to the Brainerd race. The kids grew up to be great people. They’re married and have children now, so it turned out great. I was scared because they were 9 and 12 years old then. They were at that age where they really needed their dad. He was just such a great guy that they lived in his memory and lived like he lived the rest of their lives, and they turned out to be great, so I’m very proud of them.”
And somewhere, looking down, Hagen is proud of his apprentice.
During the first day of the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals, Anderson drove to the No. 1 spot in Hagen’s honor Friday. He stopped the timers with a 6.597 elapsed time at 205.97 miles per hour. It was a triumphant homecoming for Anderson and the Pro Stockers, who haven’t raced Brainerd in four years.
