Tracy Kile and his Bad Apple Racing team showed up at IHRA’s National Trail Raceway on September 5-6  looking more like the band than a Top Fuel Harley racing team, and left showing who’s boss.

Kile towed his bike, tools and spares to Ohio in a small 12-foot trailer after having his own trailer rear-ended by a semi at the Kentucky-Tennessee line on the way home from the AMRA Byron Dragway race.

“How ironic this whole race was. From packing all my shit in that little trailer and joking with Mary before we left about going up there and whipping everybody’s ass out of that little trailer, which we then did,” said Kile.

His last trip to National Trail didn’t go so well. It was the AMRA race this past May. The bike struggled to find the track, and when it did, it struggled to stay on it and slapped the wall.

“And it happened to be my birthday. Happy birthday to me, right?

Kile decided to spend much of the summer concentrating on tuning his teammates “Bad Apple Mary” Dangrow (AMRA Pro Fuel) and Cameron “Flash” Gunter (Nitro Funnybike). Mary has won every race so far this season and Cameron was the number one qualifier at Byron. This IHRA race was his first race back in the saddle since then.

And with the little trailer unpacked, Kile felt like it was HIS ass being whipped. His bike wasn’t exactly cooperating—blowing the tire off and shooting the bike left. “Yeah, it was like, deja vu, you know?

“Before we went out for first round go to start the bike, it’s f*cking acting nuts. The clutch is f*cked up, pulling the motor down, like, I could have never ran it like that. I mean, it was something serious. And I’m like, ‘I hadn’t done anything to the bike since the latest race!’

“So I’m f*cking with it. The clutch is f*cked up, I know it’s the clutch. So we get the clutch out. We’re going over that. And we put it all back together and started the bike—same shit. Take it apart, going over shit again, started—same shit.

“Well, by now they called us to the lanes. So everybody’s gone, they’re up in the lanes. And I’m like, about ready to f*cking throw in the towel. But you know, then once again, I think of D.J. (the late, great “Nitro Santa” Don Johnson) who’s a never quit guy, you know? He never got excited, he just was always steady. And so I’m like, let’s keep going.

“And about the fifth time, I got the slipper hat off, I’m looking at it, and the fingers look f*cked up to me. And I’m like, ‘What the f*ck is going on here?’ Well, here I had one of the primary fingers in backwards, okay? I’m like, ‘Oh,’ so I change it around. We start the bike and it’s happy. F*cking Beautiful.

“Now we’re f*cking scattering to get up to the start line. We get up there just as they’re about ready to start pulling up to the start line in the back of the field, which was fine, you know, so that was a whole ‘nother f*cking thing, you know, just beat you up. Whether it’s my stupidity or whatever.

“But after that, the bike acted really good. And the other thing, the clutch cannon on this bike has not been cooperating. It just hasn’t worked the way it needed to work. And really, I’ve been struggling with that for the last year or more. So we go out and we run 5.55 (1000 foot). So, then we were happy we’re in the show.

“And that 5.55, that’s real sentimental to the Bad Apples, because that was my good buddy Mike Wells‘ race number. He raced sprint cars for years, and after he quit racing sprint cars, he used to come out to the races with me all the time. And he loved it. He loved the Harleys, but he was a really good friend.

“So, then right away, my social media guy (Jim Garrahan) posted about qualifying with a 5.55, and Wellsey’s up there drinking a beer, smiling down, you know. So, so that was, like, the next cool thing, you know, as far as the weekend went.”

5.55 may have been a sentimental number for Kile and his team, but it only placed him sixth in the field. Chris Stewart Racing’s Jordan Peterson qualified number one with a 5.36, followed Jay Turner Racing’s Chris Smith, Byron AMRA number one qualifier Paul Anderson, Ryan Peery, and opening round IHRA winner Bob Malloy. After Kile came JTR racers John “JT” Toth and Turner himself, with Buddy Johnson not making the eight-bike field.

“So I knew I needed to get up on a tree, you know what I mean? So then I got all these f*cking stellar lights. I think my worst light in eliminations was a .050 something against Paul Anderson.”

Actually an .057—well ahead of Anderson’s .093. Ditto for Kile’s 5.43 at 200 against Anderson’s 5.56 at 201.

“The announcer said we kind of swapped times. He’d run like a .43 in qualifying and I run a .55 and then first round, I run a .43 and he run .56 or something. And they’re like, ‘Hey, they swapped times,’ and whatever. So that was cool as f*ck.

“That guy’s been doing a super f*cking job,” Kile said about Anderson. “And it was funny because I was pitted next to him. And I was kind of busted all weekend. That guy’s 70 years old and just started riding a Top Fuel bike, and he is doing better than anybody I probably ever seen do this. I’ve seen him get squirrely on the big end and doing a good job of not crashing a few times.

“But overall, as far as consistently going down the track, the f*cking guy’s knocking it out of the park.. And when I got there, I got talking with him, I said, ‘I’m 63, and, I’ve been going back and forth about ‘Maybe it’s time, you know.’ And I said, ‘Then I look over at you, and you’re 70 f*cking years old, and I realized I don’t need to retire. I just need to get in shape.’ All weekend, I’d look over there, I’d go, ‘Yeah, you’re my inspiration, buddy.’

“And he was all stoked about running me first round too, you know. ‘Man, I gotta run Tracy Kile first round,’ you know, because I’ve been around for a minute, I guess.

“My thing has always been, once you get past first round, it’s all gravy, you know, because you’re not a loser. Hey, we’re always in it to win it, but if you got past first round, you’re not a loser.”

Not-a-Loser-Kile then had an .032 to Smith’s .043 in E2, and again was quicker with a 5.39/204 vs. 5.41/202.

“I knew the kid was a good leaver, and he was running good, you know. So we looked at the graph real good, and the cannon was finally working. But I still didn’t have enough clutch in it. It still was driving through the clutch.

“So we hop it off a little bit more, and I just tried to get up on a tree, and f*ck man! I had like a .032 to his .044. Actually, I think his .044 was the worst light of the round, which was f*cking amazing once again, for the show.”

Turner had an .013 against Peery, who had an .020 on a Top Fuel Harley and LOST! “That’s fucking good racing!” said Kile, noticeably excited.

Kile did have a moment on this pass where he crossed over in the shutdown. “It was f*cking pulling me again, and I got over right a little bit forwhatever reason. I don’t know if I grabbed the brake hard when I shut it off, but the thing carried the front wheel pretty much to 1000 feet. I mean, that thing was eating. I always tell people, ‘You think that get going is good, you should experience the get stopping.’

“So I was going over towards him, and I could see him over there, because we just both made a good lap. I got the ‘chute out right away, but then I just kept going over, I couldn’t pull the f*cking thing back. I knew I had passed him, but then I didn’t want to get on the brakes because I didn’t know how close he was to me, you know, and I didn’t want to have THAT happen. That’s why I got stopped right at the pebbles there. So split second, I’m trying to f*cking do the right thing and not have a catastrophe.

“I apologized to him and Jay.”

The final was against Turner—the OG measuring stick that Kile and the whole class compares themselves to. “Me and Jay have made so many passes down the track side by side, it’s just another fucking epic moment. We were in the staging lanes and we were laughing about it, and Jay said, ‘Yeah, Top Fuel Harley, sponsored by Geritol, soon to be Depends.’”

This time both great racers rang up identical .043s at the tree, with Turner appearing to smoke a motor and Kile thundering away with a 5.41 at 204 for the win. “We were locked together there, man, until he dropped that hole. It’s kind of a shame, because it would have really been neat to have seen how close the race was going to be. But sure, I could have been on the bad side of it, so I’m not sad!

“But we go out and, you know, put a good number up, and another 204 miles per hour, and that pass is really nice and straight and clean. And like I say, the whole weekend—it was just fucking epic.

“It was just so ironic in that aspect. And then, you know, me and Turner running the finals. You got some younger guys, you know, like Jordan and Chris Smith and, you know what I mean. But just the fact that it was f*cking the two old dogs, you know, in the f*cking final. And the show we put on as a class was f*cking epic, you know.

Kile’s reaction times had Bad Apple Nation on fire. “So all my buddies posted on social media, ‘Who’s riding the bike? That can’t be TK, it must be Drums!’ Another one of my heroes, you know.” That would be the late, great Drum Brancaccio.

“And then I come home, and like, the next day’s D.J.’s birthday—super f*cking hero to me. So it, it just felt, I don’t know, it was f*cking awesome.

“You know, the 5.55 and Wellsey, and to cut the killer lights, you know, like Drums, and Frankenstein (Kile’s bike) being a D.J. creation with other people. Turner had his hands in it. It just was good, man. It was just a feel good weekend. Winning definitely don’t suck.

“It sucks that my interview for the finals never got aired, because the first thing the guy said to me—and it really it caught me off guard and kind of blew me away—was he said: ‘How does it feel to win your first Iron Man since Baton Rouge in 2015?’”

That level of preparedness was only one part of the IHRA experience that impressed Kile. “And that’s how the whole weekend was, as far as feeling appreciated. Like, givin’ a f*ck, you know what I mean? The whole sanction’s just upped their game. It feels so, right. In so much shitty circumstances that we live through, it’s just f*cking awesome.

“What a great weekend, what a great experience. This IHRA man, they got people in place that know, they get it. They get the whole racer deal. I mean, from feeding you, bringing you ice every morning. That’s how the old IHRA treated us. They knew we were the show. Without us there was no them.

“And then you go to this other f*cking guys (not AMRA….), and they’re just like, ‘Go f*ck yourself. We’re the big dog.’ Well, you go f*ck yourself!

“But, yeah, total respect. You know, I talked to (Mountain Motor Pro Stock guy) John Montecalvo. He was up there getting paid when I went to get paid. He was just raving about the same shit, you know. It’s just awesome to race somewhere that you feel appreciated.”

This weekend it’s back to AMRA in Bowling Green, where Kile will be back on his bike in addition to tuning Cameron and Mary. “She’s having a perfect season. I mean, I don’t know how many people’s ever done that, but I’m feeling the pressure.”

The $7500 IHRA purse is very attractive, but Johnny Mancuso’s Circle M Ranch is stepping up to $10,000 for the Rockingham Top Fuel purse—exactly what AMRA needs. Mancuso is lettin’ it loose!

“F*cking A, ten G’s!” said Kile.

“I wanna thank everybody at the Fairview Tavern, and everybody with the Bad Apple Nation. And Mary, of course, and the team—Jon Wayne (Stephens), Cameron, Bro, Gasoline Larry, Brenda, my competitors. I mean, you can’t put on a good race without good competition. My social media guy, Callahan (Jim Garrahan), up in Pennsylvania, does a f*cking great job. The people were just losing their shit.

“All them years of digging, I was due. Especially to get out there and really make a bunch of good laps. There was no gimmies, you know. Usually getting to the finals, it helps to get a lucky round that there was none of that—other than the final, maybe.”

The Little Trailer that Could was the right tool for the job.

photos by Patrick Grant (except where noted), story by Tim Hailey