Courtesy photo Joe Fox Sr. (right) stands next to his 1980 Chevy Malibu.

Competitive drag racing has been a lifelong passion for Joe Fox Sr. But his indoctrination into the sport as a student at the Johnstown Vo-Tech High School nearly 50 years ago was somewhat bittersweet.

“I was 17 years old back in 1975, and I asked my dad if I could use his car to take my girlfriend to Idlewild Park,” said Fox, 67, who now lives in Portage. “I took his brand new Chevy Chevelle, but we didn’t go to Idlewild Park.

“Instead, we went to the Keystone Raceway Park in New Alexandria and I ended up racing with his car that day and winning the race,” Fox Sr. added with a chuckle. “I was in trouble when I got home, but that experience gave me the bug for racing.”

After taking a long hiatus from the sport for military service, and then to marry and raise a family, Fox resumed drag racing nine years ago, in 2015, and he has continued ever since. The 2024 calendar year has been Fox’s finest ever in drag racing, in which races are contested on asphalt tracks on distances of either 1/4 or 1/8 of a mile.

Fox racked up the most points of any racer in his Sportsmen Series Division at Keystone this year, then accumulated enough points in the World Drag Racing Alliance Eastern Regional event at Keystone to qualify for the WDRA National/World Championship event at Montgomery (Alabama) International Track Oct. 24-26. He finished in eighth place among 35 cars there to earn induction into the WDRA International Hall of Fame in early November.

“This is the furthest I’ve ever made it in a season,” Fox said. “I’ve been in the top five finishers at the local (Keystone) track several times, but this is the furthest I’ve ever gone outside of that.”

In drag racing competition, two cars go out of the starting blocks at the same time, and the races are held according to a timed and handicap system. At the Montgomery track, Fox’s 1980 Chevy Malibu finished just three-thousandths of a second behind eventual national champion Kyle Wanamaker of Michigan.

Fox finished fifth in the nation in his division for the season, according to overall points accumulated, with Wanamaker winning the overall championship.

“The WDRA world/national competition invites racers from countries outside the United States, like Canada and Aruba, and in my class, the 35 most winning racers from inside and outside the United States were there,” Fox said. “There were no racers from Aruba there this year, but there were racers from Alberta, Canada, and from states all over this country, like Kansas, Georgia, Florida, Michigan and California.

“If you lose one race in the event, you’re finished, and I made it to the quarterfinals before losing,” Fox said.

Fox built his Chevy Malibu 20 years ago with the help of his son, Joe Fox Jr., who is also involved in competitive drag racing.

“I was a crewman for him until we built my car and I resumed racing,” Fox Sr. said. “I had won a main race at Keystone this year on the Fourth of July weekend, and finished second in another race that weekend. I knew that I was having a good season, but at the end of the season, I didn’t realize that I was doing as well as I did.”

Fox Sr.– who also races at tracks in Hagerstown, Md. and Salem, Ohio — said that consistency has been the key to his success on the track.

“These races are very precise now,” said Fox Sr., who earned $1000 for his finish at Montgomery while Wanamaker earned $10,000 as the event champion. “You can win or lose a race now by a small fraction of a second. I’ve become more consistent in racing as I’ve gotten older. Things don’t get me as excited as they once did. You have to do the same things time after time in the races, so I think my consistency is what got me my success this year.”

Steve Vasbinder of Punxsutawney is a longtime racing colleague of Fox Sr.’s at the Keystone Raceway Park. Vasbinder competes in a different division than Fox Sr., but has known Fox Sr. for the past decade and has observed him in competition.

“He’s very good for his age,” Vasbinder said. “To win in our sport, a racer has to possess very good reaction time upon leaving the starting line, and he does. He’s very methodical. Focus is very important in the races, and when he’s focused and he’s having a good day, he’s incredibly good.”

WDRA is the organization that sanctions the racing events in which Fox Sr. is involved. The National Hot Rod Association is perhaps the most well-known sanctioning organization for drag racing in the nation.

Fox Sr. said that drag racing is an endeavor in which even the very elderly can successfully compete if they are able. Therefore, he has no immediate plans to retire from the sport.

“I was at a Keystone Raceway awards banquet recently and there was an 80-year-old man there who was driving a race car this year,” Fox Sr. said. “They had a birthday party for him there.”