Rod Hymas of Rosebud spent race season touring Canada and the US, and recently won the Lucas Oil Divisional Points Series
championship for Division 6. He has been racing his Sportsman Class 1969 Camaro since 2011.
A Rosebud farmer who spends his off-season on the drag race track now has some hardware for his effort.
In 2011, The Mail reported on Rod Hymas’ first season on the track with his 1969 Camaro track car. The full tube chassis drag car tucked under a Camaro body was built by RJ Racecars in Illinois and the engine was built by Sonny Race Engines in Virginia.
This year he ran a full season in the National Hotrod Association (NHRA) Division 6 area and won the points season.
“We had a pretty good season,” said Hymas humbly.
The car runs under a 7 second quarter mile at speeds of 200mph in the Top Sportsman Class. He describes it as the fastest class of cars that still look like streetcars. This means working doors and left hand drive.
In the spring of 2013, he crashed and was out for the summer. In October of last year, he had the car fully repaired and went back drag racing.
Right away he raced in Las Vegas, where he won a national event race right out of the trailer.
In February, he began the new season in Phoenix and came in second place. In March he was back in Vegas where he went three rounds. In April, he was in Boise, Idaho where he also went three rounds.
He explains the size of the race determines how many rounds a driver has to win to make it to the end.
“Some races there is as many as 64 cars, so you have to go six rounds to win, some are as small as 25 so you would go five rounds,” explains.
The season continued, and he sat out a race in Spokane as farming called, but then made it in June to Billings, Montana and came home with a win. In Seattle in August, Hymas made it to the semifinals.
In September, the team was in Vancouver where they went two rounds. October they were back in Vegas and they went two rounds.
This set them up for the final races of the season, again in Las Vegas in November. Although they lost in the first round, he was the points leader and won the Lucas Oil Divisional Points Series championship.
He runs in the NHRA Division 6, an area that covers western Canada and the northwest US. He is able to race in three out of division races a year to collect points. He also fills in his season with International Hotrod Association (IHRA) races.
In all, he said last year they slept in their motor home for 125 nights. While for a couple races, he had a crew of three, by and large he travelled with his crew chief, and wife, Jackie who did everything from pack parachutes, to looking after tires, fuel and consult on car setup.
“The season was pretty much trouble free. Luck was on my side when I needed it,” said Hymas “The car was really good and between myself a my crew chief we had some good fortune.”
On the racecar, he ran 108 passes and only had one resolvable engine issue at the Phoenix race.
“Anywhere after 90 runs, you are probably on borrowed time, and if we were not in a points chase, we wouldn’t have gone to the last two races in Vegas, but when you gotta go, you gotta go.”
The engine is back in Virginia getting a full overhaul.
While it seems like an expensive pursuit, it is worth it for Hymas.
“It is just a hobby. Some guys go to the bar and play VLTs, I race fast cars,” he chuckles.
