Bruce Litton seems oddly professorial in a sport that already has its trademark “Professor” in the person of Warren Johnson.

Maybe it’s the salt-and-hold-most-of-the-pepper hair and the easy tone of his voice. Had Litton chosen a different path — one with, say, turns — maybe you could imagine a tweed jacket and a 10 a.m. lecture.

Litton records data into a notebook as his crew gets the Lucas Oil Top Fuel dragster ready for an early pass over the weekend at the IHRA’s Spring Nationals at Rockingham Dragway.
Maybe it’s the salt-and-hold-most-of-the-pepper hair and the easy tone of his voice. Had Litton chosen a different path — one with, say, turns — maybe you could imagine a tweed jacket and a 10 a.m. lecture.
Instead, you get a race-car driver with 33 years of climbing that ladder. You get a family man with a couple of decades of building those bridges. You get a businessman who has built a trailer business into a success.
Have there been some tough knocks?
Like those 10 finals losses during the 2002 IHRA season?
Or maybe like that 2006 crash at the IHRA North American Nationals that sent him skidding what must have seemed like miles along a cement guardrail. It was horrendous and destructive enough to earn its way onto Youtube.
Or maybe like being one good run away from his first championship last fall at Rockingham in the World Finals and having an excruciating wait for an oiled track to be cleaned up?
“(Waiting) just something you have to prepare yourself mentally for in racing, particularly in drag racing,” Litton said. “You’ve just got to get out of the car and relax - take a break.
“I was at peace. I knew what he had to do and needed to do. It’s something we’d been striving for for a long time.”
The wait was 30 minutes or so, but it seemed “like quite a while” longer.
Besides, that wait last fall just showed a little bit of Litton’s mettle. With a championship and a three-decade-plus-old dream on the line, Litton waited just a few minutes more and then cooly got the job done, setting the low e.t. for the final round and creating a Rockingham memory that rivals the first victory that came here during the 1999 Spring Nationals. His wife, Carol, was at that race — one of the few she has attended because she usually stays back in Indianapolis to run the Litton family business of building custom trailers.
That was nine years ago, and Litton finally returned this past weekend with a title in front of his name and as the man to beat in IHRA Top Fuel competition. He made it to the finals before losing to hot rookie Spencer Massey, who won for the second time in as many races this season.
If anything, Massey, who qualified for his Top Fuel license just six days before previous weekend’s Amalie Oil Texas Nationals in San Antonio, has used his debut to announce his presence as a contender for Litton’s title.
But Litton expects everyone’s best shot.
“I think there’s pressure you put on yourself, and people will come and get after you more,” Litton said. “We just have to run our race... We know we’re going to win some, and we’re going to lose some.”
So it is for Litton — and any driver, really — winning some, losing some.
Litton’s had his share of both in a career that has been far from the overnight sensation Massey appears to be.
Sometimes you have to wait for the good things, the great things, while you endure the tougher times.
Sometimes it’s 30 minutes. Sometimes it’s 30 years.
That’s only part of the lesson learned — and taught. Class dismissed.