Barber: Blake Alexander hopes for more chances in NHRA after Sonoma win

SONOMA

After Sunday’s Toyota Sonoma Nationals at the raceway here, the winners of the four NHRA divisions took turns at the podium in the media center. As Funny Car champion Robert Hight spoke, Blake Alexander stood quietly at the back of the room, still in his fire suit.

Alexander, who had just triumphed in the elite Top Fuel division, was holding the “champion’s goblet” that the raceway presents to event winners - a goblet of red wine mounted on a commemorative base. Alexander tilted it back for a swig, and the base detached and clattered to the floor. That messed up the weight distribution of the trophy; the goblet bucked toward him, and there was Alexander, Man of the Hour, with wine all over his face.

Nothing, apparently, comes easy for this guy.

Alexander’s win at Sonoma was his second of the year. In Top Fuel, only points leader Steve Torrence (five) has more. Alexander also had a runner-up finish, and has advanced to the semifinals five times.

These results are surprising when you consider that Alexander, 29, has raced only six times in 2018. He is a part-time NHRA driver, which is its own disadvantage.

“We don’t have as many runs as the other teams get. We don’t have as much data, we don’t get to try as many things to make us better,” explained Alexander’s team owner, Bob Vandergriff. “… Obviously, it’s pretty impressive. It shows it can be done, even on a limited basis.”

From here, the NHRA circuit moves to Seattle for the final stop on the association’s Western Swing. Alexander currently sits 12th in the Top Fuel standings. Ten drivers will qualify for the circuit’s Countdown to the Championship playoff series; Alexander beat the two men directly in his path, Mike Salinas and Scott Palmer, on Sunday.

But Alexander will not be in Seattle. He and his wife, Leah, were taking a Sunday night red-eye back to Charlotte, North Carolina, to resume the other half of their lives. Leah Alexander, a physician’s assistant, has to work today. Blake Alexander will not race again until the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis at the end of August.

While the drivers he just defeated are getting settled in Seattle and tuning up their cars for another weekend of racing, Alexander will be helping local Charlotte businesses, primarily in the construction trades, with their marketing.

During Sunday’s racing, Alexander piloted his dragster as fast as 330 miles per hour. But he couldn’t outrun the realities of his sport. The Sonoma Nationals were billed as a sellout, one of several on the tour this year. Yet money is hard to come by in NHRA, and the machinery is vastly expensive. There just aren’t enough full-time rides to go around.

You would hope for something more for Alexander. After he won for the second time in four weeks, the script should have been edited to have Vandergriff striding to a microphone and proclaiming, “I changed my mind. We’re going to Seattle!”

It doesn’t work like that.

“We’re operating under a nine- or a 10-race budget,” Vandergriff told me after the race. “We’re not gonna try and run 15 races on a nine- or 10-race budget.”

Alexander fully understands that. But he admitted that he’d love to be getting on a plane to Seattle rather than retreating to North Carolina.

“One-hundred percent,” he said. “I’m not lying. I always tell myself that I’m on a scenic journey, and that I’m doing it my own way.”

That’s a lovely image, but Alexander’s journey seems to include a lot of detours. He’s a third-generation NHRA driver, born in Glendora (in Southern California) and raised in Virginia. He received his Top Fuel/Funny Car license on his 21st birthday, ran Funny Cars for a few years, and is driving Top Fuel for the first time in 2018. Race fans are just beginning to learn his name.

Alexander’s season has come out of nowhere. His record in elimination races this year is a gaudy 16-4. Sunday, he knocked off one of the sport’s top racers, Antron Brown, in the quarterfinals, and another, Tony Schumacher, in the final. Schumacher actually got the jump on him; both drivers smoked their tires on the run, though, and it was Alexander who did a better job of “pedaling” (easing off the throttle, then hitting it again to regain traction) en route to the finish line.

When Alexander got his first NHRA win in Norwalk, Ohio, last month, he became emotional as he exited the car. As he said Sunday, “It looked like someone was cutting an onion next to me.” Alexander told the TV crew that day there were times he wasn’t sure if he’d get to keep his place in the cockpit.

He sounded a little more businesslike after Sunday’s win. In fact, he was largely upset with himself for his slow reaction time in the final round.

So, Alexander has to get a full-time ride in 2019, right?

“I have no idea, man,” he said. “Bob and I are working on it. We had a big meeting this week, and I was helping him prepare for it. He’s really good at the business aspect of racing. I know that my schedule’s expanding and my sponsors are excited, but I don’t exactly know for sure if I’ll be going full time. I think it would be cool.”

Even if Vandergriff doesn’t have the budget to make Alexander a regular in 2018, you would think the pitch would be pretty easy next year: I’ve got this sensational young driver. He handles one of the fastest race cars on the planet, and he wins one third of the time.

Again, the NHRA business model is complicated. Vandergriff told me that he is optimistic about increasing Alexander’s workload in 2019, but not necessarily because of the driver’s high rate of success. It’s more about his marketability and his ease at working with sponsors, and because Bob Vandergriff Racing might be able to expand some business opportunities.

“In our sport, a big part of what the driver has to do is outside of the car as well,” Vandergriff said. “He understands that. He doesn’t mind working at it. He understands that it’s the business that’s gonna drive the race car, and not the race car that drives the business.”

I asked Alexander whether he watches the NHRA races when he’s not participating.

“Uhh, I do,” he said, but he sounded as if he were thinking it over. “Sometimes I don’t. Most of the time, no. It’s not fun to watch other people race. I think that we have the opportunity to win every time now, so it’s even harder to watch.”

Come on, corporate America. Find some money for this man.