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Local drivers ready for Pinks All Out

Photo by James Nix

Concord residents Larry Childress and Tonia Eynum put a Pinks All Out decal on Childress' 1978 Chevorlet Malibu at the zMax Dragway Thursday afternoon. Childress will race in the Pinks All Out events this weekend.

By Steve Winzenread | Independent Tribune

Published: April 23, 2009

Updated: 04/23/2009 06:50 pm

CONCORD - Larry Childress has been watching Pinks All Out since the program started, and he's been a drag car racer for 15 years.

So naturally he wanted to participate Saturday in the program's television shoot at zMax Dragway.

"I've been to Rockingham to see it and to Atlanta," he said. "I decided I'm going to try my luck."
The first four-wide, nationally televised, official drag racing competition is to take place on Saturday.

Dragway officials expect the taping to be a sellout by Saturday morning.

The episode, which is being shot for Season Three, is scheduled to tentatively premiere on Aug. 6, and is presented by NAPA.

Traditionally, the show's technical advisors evaluate a field of 450-plus grassroots drag racers through two time trial sessions and a 32-car runoff to select a field of 16 finalists.

The cars are chosen by an objective set of criteria including closeness of competition, consistency in performance and an adherence to the rule of running "All Out."

Once revealed, the cars are lined up in the staging lanes, rigged with cameras and microphones and run through a competitive eliminator starting around dusk.

That format will be altered specifically for zMax Dragway.

For this event, more than 520 racers have signed up, and each will receive two time trial runs in hopes of being selected as one of 32 cars to participate in one of eight, four-wide eliminators.

The remaining eight contestants will then compete in the customary 'side-by-side' format to the race's conclusion, where a best "two-out-of-three" hot lap final will determine the winner.

Pinks All Out is hosted by creator and executive producer Rich Christensen and offers grassroots racers a chance to win $10,000, a new NAPA tool chest and an opportunity to run their cars in front of a national cable television audience on Speed.

All racers are asked to run "All Out," but if they are caught sandbagging (or slowing their cars to hit a perceived elapsed time) they will be eliminated from competition.

This will be the show's first appearance in this area, and will be the 23rd different track visited since the start of the show at the Texas Motorplex on Labor Day Weekend of 2006.

That inaugural show premiered as a Thanksgiving evening network special later that year in front of a record-breaking television audience, which spawned the creation of the series.

Childress, a native of Concord, works on cars for a living.

"I started working on everybody else's race cars," he said. "I thought if I could work on everybody else's, I can work on my own."

Childress said he loves drag-racing competition.

"It's the nicest bunch of people you've ever met," he said. "Everybody is like family."

Childress credits his girlfriend, Tonia Bynum, for helping him race.

"She has supported me with this in every way," he said. "You just wouldn't believe it. It doesn't matter what I need for my car, she never complains about any of it. If it wasn't for her, none of this would be possible."

Also entered are C.S. Bagwell of Kannapolis and Randy Rush, Gene Phillips and Shane Gibble of Concord.

Bagwell has lived here for 14 years.

"I started racing in the early '90s at a local track in West Hampton, Long Island," he said.

He, too, has seen the Pinks All Out program.

"It looks like it would be a lot of fun," said Bagwell, who owns a fabricating shop in Mooresville.

Part of the attraction, of course, is the ZMax facility, which opened last September.
Childress has tested there, while Bagwell will be making his first appearance, other than as a spectator.

"It's a very nice facility," Bagwell said. "One of the best that I've seen. I've drag-raced with a friend up and down the East Coast since 1992."