Driver for Oakley Mad Scientist Funny Car in 2001
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The Mohawk and funky metallic over-the-top-of-the-head sunglasses are the first giveaways.
Scotty Cannon is just as individualistic in his approach to the 2001 NHRA Funny Car season as he is in his fashion statements.
While most of his competitors frame their expectations with boundaries that 10-time Winston Series champion John Force has set, Cannon has other ways of motivating himself.
Scotty Cannon
Cannon never has won an NHRA national event, although he was runner-up to Whit Bazemore at Denver last July. Cerny has tuned Top Fuelers and Funny Car drivers to plenty of those. But Cerny doesn�t have a Winston Series championship. Cannon said he�ll do his best to fix that.
"That's my goal, to win one for Wes," the 38-year-old team owner from Lyman, S.C., said. "Nobody else could. So it'd be a feather in my cap."
They had more than their share of tough luck at the start of this season, though. Cannon didn't put his Chevy Camaro into the field until the final qualifying session, then lost in the first round to Tony Pedregon. The season is young and he's still putting his trust in Cerny.
"The man's contributed a lot to drag racing," Cannon said of Cerny. "Without him and (Force's mechanical wizard) Austin Coil and all those guys, drag racing might not be here. 'Big Daddy' Don Garlits and Kenny Bernstein and all those guys have won a championship. But Wes has outrun 'em. Wes has beaten their eyes out for years and years, but he always seems to get a bad break. He's had a lot of rocky roads.
"We're going to try to find him a home here for a long time and try to win some championships."
Cannon is unconventional also in that he fields just a one-car team. He wants to join the growing number of competitors whose double data is paying dividends - but "not till we're ready," he said.
His eldest son Scott, 21, presumably would occupy the second seat in Cannon's Oakley-sponsored "Mad Scientist" operation. "That's what he wants. He's going to do it anyway - I don't have any choice in the matter. If he doesn't drive for me he'll drive for someone else," Dad Scotty said.
Scott Cannon works on his father's crew and races Pro Stock Motorcycles. "He's a good driver. He listens pretty good," Scotty said.
Cannon does a burnout.
"I'm a hands-on guy. I know everything about the car, so I can run the car myself, with my guys," Cannon said. "Everybody on this teams knows everything about a car."
He said they had planned to survive, even thrive, on their own. He noted that Force's advantage includes personnel, equipment and money but said his team isn't so far behind: "We have a lot of resources, too. We have a blower dyno and big shop. We have our own chassis shop. We design our own bodies. We got everything, too."
He had supreme confidence in himself and his crew before Cerny joined the team. "We've always won, until we came to this class here. We've won six world championships. It's the same team. We knew as much about running one of these things and figured we could do as good as the average bunch," he said, "and until one of the higher profile crew chiefs became available, we'd continue to do that."
When Joe Gibbs abandoned his NHRA effort last year, making Cerny a free agent, the popular thought was that the veteran wrench-twister would retire.
He didn't plan to, contrary to rumor. Cannon contacted him about two weeks after the 2000 season finale at Pomona. Both shoppers checked out the merchandise carefully first, though.
"If I were in his position, the last thing I�d want to do," Cannon said, "is go to a team that's going to lolligag around and maybe run good and look good. That's not what our team's about. Our team's about winning.
"He wanted to make sure we were in the serious, go-get-it mode. We're not settling for anything less in our minds but winning. He just wanted to make sure. I'd have done the same thing."
Cannon did do the same thing. He knew what he wanted, and he didn't feel compelled to hire anybody. He said he had spoken with crew chiefs � "crew chiefs who weren't the caliber of Wes." He said he found that "the downfall I see in some of (them) was they would say, 'OK. You get in the car and drive the car. More or less 'Sit down and shut up' in a roundabout way. Wes ain't that way. I feel like I have a lot of input in what goes on."
For instance, Cannon likes to do the burnout and back-up his way. And that's fine by Cerny. He found Cannon was consistent in that department and regarded the arrangement as a relief. "That's one less thing he has to do," Cannon said. "He can concentrate on some of the more hardcore (functions)." That also reinforces Cannon's contribution.
"This is my team. I drive the car. You've really got only one guy to keep happy, and that's me. "And sponsors, too," he added. His sponsors are a group of three-year investors who call themselves "Dead Presidents." Oakley founder and chairman Jim Jannard is among the folks whom Cannon said "are more involved than a lot of other sponsors are. They're here all the time and hang out."
What surprised Cannon is how easily Cerny interacts with them. "He mingles right with 'em and talks to 'em about the car. He actually tells 'em what he's going to do next and what he's thinking about doing. It's kind of cool. It's a lot different for him, but he�s enjoying it."
With Cerny in Cannon's pit, more than one driver from a prestigious two-car stable has acknowledged that if the Oakley crew gets hot, it could strike some fear in the rest of the competition.
Jerry Toliver, whose third-place finish last November only deepened his desire to win a title, said of Cerny, "I wish that guy was in dragsters. He's good. He can make a hot rod run."
Tommy Johnson Jr., who teams with 2000 runner-up Ron Capps in driving a Chevy Camaro for Don "The Snake" Prudhomme, is especially mindful of Cannon, calling his operation one of the "pretty stout one-car teams."
Said Johnson, "I've had a lot of history with Wes Cerny with the Interstate Batteries car. Some of the numbers he's shown in testing already kind of scare me. I thought, 'Boy, I was afraid he was going to do that.'"
Source: https://www.dragracecentral.com/DRCStory.asp?ID=85309
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