AUTO RACING: Du Quoin's Scotty Vaughn reaches 100-win milestone

For the past 16 years, Scotty Vaughn and his father Steve have spent the majority of their weekends drag racing. The owner of Du Quoin Auto Service and a 1995 DHS graduate, Vaughn reached an impressive milestone this past Saturday night with his 100th career victory when he won at Gateway Motorsports Park just east of St. Louis, Mo. in the All-American Hot Rod Shootout's Pro class.

He came up a round short of win #101 too, and even added a 'Run for the Money' paycheck to his weekend totals on Sunday. The 'Run for the Money' featured 78 cars making a standard bracket race pass, all trying to run as close as possible to their dial time. Vaughn tied with one other driver, both running on the dial with a two, but took home first place after a tie-breaking procedure thanks to his quicker reaction time.

"It was kind of a last minute thing," Vaughn said, "we were going to just run (at I-57 Drag Strip in Benton, Ill.), but there ended up being a 40% chance of rain, and we knew we could get two days out there at St. Louis."

"It was pretty cool, I really didn't expect to just go into Gateway and win, let alone have the weekend that I had. It's kind of disappointing that my whole family wasn't there to see it, they always come to Benton when we run over here, but we were two hours away from home and it was just me and my dad this weekend."

Though his wife (Devan) and their four children (Gauge, Tach, Savannah, Tristan) were unable to attend, it was the 99th of 100 wins for Vaughn that his father Steve was on hand to witness.

"He's been there for all of them but one," said Vaughn. "It's been me and him forever."

Vaughn was strapped into his 1975 Vega Panel Wagon, which has been his ride for approximately 55-60 of those 100 victories, and driving on the same track where he won a 2009 Pro points championship. He purchased the 'Vega Bomb' - with a chassis built by Zeigler's Buddy Ingersoll, a former pro stock driver and an innovator in drag racing - in September of 2006 and researched the car's history himself.

"That Vega was bought new at a dealership over in Benton in 1975 by Federated Auto Parts," Vaughn said, "and they used it for delivery to deliver their auto parts. In '82 it was purchased and turned into a race car and has been that way ever since. It actually ran some Pro Stock many, many years ago."

No longer a delivery vehicle, the Vega now has about 550 horsepower, a 406 cubic inch small block Chevy motor, and can run elapsed times on an eighth-mile drag strip at 6.30 seconds and 114 miles-per-hour; 9.95 seconds and 140 mph on a quarter-mile track.

Vaughn's first car that he raced was his '68 El Camino, which accounts for the remainder of his career victories, including one very special win he considers a personal favorite - a 2007 Sportsman class victory at Chandler Motorsports Park near Evansville, Ind. It was there he earned his first and only 'Wally', the trophy awarded to winners of an NHRA national event, named after NHRA founder Wally Parks.

"Those aren't handed out very often," said Vaughn. "I took both my cars over there, the Vega broke before we even started eliminations, so I hopped in my El Camino and went right through them."

Vaughn also got his first career win back on July 5th, 1997 in the El Camino, which he says is still just a half day's work from being a street-legal vehicle.

"It was the very first bracket race I ever entered and I won the very first one," said Vaughn. "Back then the car ran 10.50's. It was a stock 350 motor, two-barrel carburetor, just a street car. We took it to (I-57) one day, we won, and I've been hooked ever since."

One glance at his long list of triumphs on the track may make winning seem like it comes easy for Vaughn, but he is quick to point out that the learning experience of drag racing is a never-ending process, and a difficult one at that.

"It looks easy, it looks simple," he said. "I've had friends go out and buy a car and do it for a couple months, thinking they can win and make some money, and then they figure out it's not as easy as it looks, and they quit. It's more than just putting a number on your car and driving it down the drag strip. There's a lot to it."

"It's something you've got to figure out. Every year you still learn stuff, especially how to lose. You learn how to lose every weekend. There's a thousand ways to lose and basically one way to win. The guy in the other lane doesn't even matter. (In bracket racing), you're racing yourself, you're racing your time. If you get there too fast, you lose."

Unlike a full-time professional racer, Vaughn hopes to continue piling up his wins on the weekends while remaining committed to running his local auto service shop full-time Monday through Friday. But it's more than just a hobby for him and his racing family - it's an addiction.

"It's an adrenaline rush, it's almost like a drug," Vaughn said. "If we get rained out for a week or two, I'm about to go insane."