Doug Herbert Racing | Doug Herbert's B.R.A.K.E.S Foundation
2008 Photo: Doug Herbert and Krista Marie
On January 26, 2008, both of Doug "Good Guy" Herbert's teenage son's - Jon who was 17, and James who was 12 - were killed in a car accident on their way to McDonald's for breakfast. When it happened, Doug was in Phoenix with his Top Fuel dragster doing preseason testing for the upcoming NHRA season. He flew home immediately to be with his wife and family and start the long process of putting the pieces back together. The Herbert's decided to form a non-profit organization that would focus on safe driving. They wanted to help prevent others parents, friends and families from enduring the pain of losing a loved one to an automobile accident. Doug partnered with Jon’s classmates to create a name for the safe driving foundation. The students chose B.R.A.K.E.S. – which stands for Be Responsible and Keep Everyone Safe. Donations to the Foundation are tax exempt.
Doug was able to return to NHRA Championship Drag Racing. He earned an emotional win at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals, Norwalk, Ohio and dedicated it to the memory of his two young sons. Norwalk was the first race two weeks after the NHRA SuperNationals, Englishtown where Funny Car driver Scott Kalitta lost his life. Doug also earned a runner-up finish at the O’Reilly NHRA Mid-South Nationals, Memphis. He has 10 NHRA Top Fuel wins and 27 career final round appearances. Doug started pro drag racing on the International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) circuit in 1991. He went on to win 20 IHRA events as well as four IHRA Top Fuel Championships. Currently, Doug is not racing his Doug Herbert Performance/B.R.A.K.E.S. top fuel dragster. He and his father Chet have been building a Bonneville Salt Flats streamliner which they hoped to achieve 500 MPH, breaking the world speed record for piston-powered, wheel-driven cars.
On April 23, 2009, Doug's father passed away. He was an amazing individual. A memorial celebration of Chet Herbert's life is being held Saturday, May 2, 2009. I/we greatly appreciate Doug sharing his memories. ~ fla <> The Herberts, Drag Racing Royalty
Chet Herbert Passes
04.23.09: Villa Park, California -- Drag racing pioneer and innovator Chester "Chet" Herbert died on April 23, 2009. Herbert, born on March 4, 1928, overcame huge personal challenges and went on to develop some of auto racing's most significant speed components. Growing up in Southern California's early hot rod scene, the teenaged Herbert had a reputation for building and racing fast cars and motorcycles. When he was 20 years old, though, he was stricken with polio and lived the rest of his life in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down. "My grandmother told me he was so wild about racing, that if he didn't have polio to slow him down, he probably would have died," said son Doug Herbert, 41, who followed his father into professional drag racing. "When my dad was 12, my grandma bought him a trumpet and hoped he'd learn to play. But he traded the trumpet for a Cushman motorscooter and it was life in the fast lane ever since."
Lying in a hospital iron-lung for six months in 1948, Herbert developed ideas for manufacturing racing parts in his head. When he was released, he developed the first roller camshafts for race cars and was among the first to try nitromethene fuel in a dragster after reading how the German army had used it to power torpedoes during World War II. Although he never personally raced again, Herbert fielded scores of dragsters, drag motorcycles and land speed-record streamliners for other drivers. His racing Harley-Davidson, nicknamed "The Beast," was the fastest quarter-mile dragster in its day, having achieved a then record-shattering 129 mph, faster than any car in 1950. Herbert also developed the zoomie-type exhaust header, which blew the smoke away from a dragster's rear tires in order to achieve better traction, helping them break the 200 mph record.
Herbert was one of the first to establish a successful speed shop and parts mail- order business. According to hot rod historian Greg Sharp of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, Herbert was probably the first racing parts retailer to utilize advertising in national magazines to reach consumers. His chopped 1932 Ford sedan was a rolling billboard for his business. He built it with a Hydromatic transmission so he could drive it using hand controls. It was featured in the March, 1952, issue of Hot Rod Magazine and in 2007, was voted one of the most significant 1932 Ford hot rods in history.
Herbert was inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 1993. Herbert is survived by his wife, Leanne; three children: Doug; daughter Heather Herbert-Binetti and daughter Tracey Drage; and his sister Doris, who as editor of Drag News, was also inducted into the Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 1993. Herbert was preceded in death by his sister, Fay Trout, and by grandsons, Jon and James Herbert.
To overcome the sorrow of his grandsons' death in 2008, Herbert and son Doug were in the process of building a Bonneville streamliner with which they hoped to achieve 500 MPH, breaking the world speed record for piston-powered, wheel-driven cars. Son Doug is still determined to accomplish that dream. (See more details from Doug's comments below ~ fla)
A memorial celebration of Herbert's life will be held at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, May 2, 2009 at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 1855 Orange Olive Road, Orange, CA 92865. A private, graveside family service will be held that afternoon at 2 p.m. at the Fair Haven Memorial Park in Santa Ana.
STATEMENT FROM DOUG HERBERT: "My dad was my hero. He taught me so much about how to be a strong and determined person. Despite the fact that he had polio and was in a wheelchair for much of his life, he never let that stop him from doing anything. He proved to everyone that he could accomplish whatever he set his mind to; which taught me that, no matter how tough something may seem, if you fight hard enough, you can overcome it. I always looked up to him. I'm glad I had the opportunity to follow in his footsteps and be involved in a sport that he helped to invent. Some of my best memories with my dad were made over the past year. We had grown much closer since my boys, Jon and James, died in a car accident in early 2008. I will miss my dad very much. I am lucky to have many wonderful memories of him that I will always cherish." - Credit: Doug Herbert Racing
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FULL COMMENTS FROM DOUG ABOUT HIS FATHER'S PASSING ~ fla
My dad was a real innovator. He always liked to think of new ideas and better ways to build things. One of my favorite stories about him is one that my Grandma told me. My dad traded his trumpet for an old broke-own Cushman scooter. My Grandma told him that she couldn't believe he traded a nice trumpet for an old box of parts that he would never be able to put together. The next day she came home from work and my dad was riding the Cushman! He later sold the Cushman and bought a Harley. He said his Harley, nicknamed "The Beast," s the fastest thing on the road in Southern California in the mid-'40s after the war.
In 1949 his buddy had a roadster that he wanted to race and my dad had heard about a Wayne head GMC six-cylinder that was overhead valve and wanted my dad to help him build the engine to go to Bonneville with the roadster. I think it was Ed Pink. My dad agreed to build an engine. When he started working on it he did not understand why the race car engines did not have a roller cam in them like his Harley did. So he decided that he would make a roller cam and lifters to run in this engine. The car went out and set records and, kind of by accident, my dad had people that wanted to buy cams from him in 1949. So he decided to go into the cam business and he was the only person that made roller cams for many years. All of his ads just said, "Roller cams are better than flat tappet cams." Well... duh! It took almost 10 years before anyone else even caught on and started to make roller cams. Every top race engine still runs roller cams today.
He was also the first to run "Zoomie" headers on his Top Fuel dragsters in the late 1950s with Lefty Mudersbach, Zane Shubert, Gary Cagle, and others at the wheel. Everyone still runs zoomie headers today. "The Beast" won most of the drag races at Santa Ana drag strip during the first three years of organized drag races. The Beast was billed as the "Drag King of them all" and "the fastest accelerating vehicle devised to ever carry a man." He was a mechanic for several cars at the Indy 500 in the late 1950s. They allowed engines to run nitro methane at Indy and in the 1950s my dad was considered to be one of the biggest authorities on how to run an engine on nitromethane. He held several records at the Bonneville Salt Flats, including the fastest single engine car. He also had two and three engine cars that held several records. He won many drag races. I don't know this for a fact but he told me that his cars won more Top Eliminator races at Lions Dragstrip than any other cars during the '60s. He was inducted into the Drag Racing Hall of Fame with his sister, Doris, in 1993.
My dad was my hero. He was put in a wheelchair from polio when he was 20 years old but he never let that slow him down. He told me that he did not want to sit around and feel sorry for himself so he got out and went to work. When I was about 11 years old he decided that I was big enough to lift him up and carry him around. He was a big guy, about 6’4” and 200 pounds, pretty big for an 11-year-old to carry. I guess I am lucky that I was big, too. I have so many great stories with my dad; it’s hard to nail them all down. One of the best is from a fishing trip that we took about 10 years ago to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with my dad and my boy Jon. We went out deep-sea fishing and the seas were really rough. By the time we barely got out of the marina Jon (who was only about 10 years old) got sick and started to toss his cookies. So I tried to help him and make sure that he didn't fall overboard. During this, Jon threw up all over me and that made me sick, so then I started to throw up, too. We went ahead and decided to stay out fishing all day and ended up catching a few good fish.
On the way back in, Jon was still holding his stomach and feeling pretty weak and he asked my dad, "Grandpa, how come my dad and I both got sick and threw up on this boat, and you didn't get sick?" My dad said, "Well Jon, I guess it’s just because I have been fishing for so long and been on so many boats in rough water that it really doesn’t bother me anymore". Jon replied, "Grandpa, you are one tough hombre." I laughed so hard that it just about made me throw up again! I’m really not sure where he came up with that but it sure was funny. Jon and James went and spent time with my dad in the summer of 2007. They all had a great time. My dad took off work to be able to spend time with them. He took them to Disney, Sea World, Vans skateboard park, and even set up Jon to drive a friend’s nine-second drag race Mustang. They all had a great time. I think that last year, when James and Jon got in the accident, part of my dad died, too. He couldn't get himself to get out of bed for a week from being so depressed.
I thought that doing a race project with my dad would be fun and I tried to talk him into going to some drag races with me last year, but he said that didn't really interest him anymore because all the modern Top Fuel cars look the same. So after some thought, I asked him if he would be interested in helping design a Bonneville streamliner that could set the world land speed record in the Unlimited Streamliner class for a wheel-driven car. This lit him up and gave him a new lease on life, and he actually drew up all of the original diagrams for the car. NASCAR's Ray Evernham and his engineers were amazed when they saw the plans and asked, "Who did you have draw these up?" When I told Ray that my dad did them, he said, "I can’t wait to meet your dad." My mom said that as soon as we started working on this LSR project that my dad went from being an 80-year-old man in a wheel chair to a 40-year-old man with a purpose and a vision. My mom, Leanne Herbert, thinks that this LSR project may have saved his life. My mom told me that all he has talked about for the past year was going to Bonneville with this new car and setting the record. We are still working on the car and a bunch of my friends are helping to make sure we accomplish the record that we set out to.
