Staff Writer

The sign above the garage proclaiming Scotty Cannon’s six IHRA Pro Modified World championships from the 1990s is faded, the paint peeling and worn by weather and time.
But along the winding lakeside lanes, past the waterfall flowing at the sweeping curve on S.C. Highway 358, down to Racing Road where the Greer Dragstrip is hidden behind rows of mill houses, things have a way of coming back around to where they started, regardless of what the signs say or where they point.
After years away from the ultra-suped Pro Modified division that he made largely his own a decade ago, Cannon is returning to take on a new kingpin, the division’s new top gun — his new teammate and his son, Scott, Jr.
Scott Cannon, Jr. is the defending Pro Mod champion, capturing the title at last year’s World Finals at Rockingham (N.C.) Dragway by earning the top-qualifying spot even before the eliminations bracket was set. At the same time, his then crew chief and father, Scotty, was the top qualifier in the Top Fuel division, marking the first time a father and son had each been top qualifiers in the same IHRA pro event.
This time around, the drag-racing world will get a double shot of Cannon — ready or not.
“Everybody else out there wants it to clash and not work good,” said Scott, Jr. of the new, expanded Team Cannonball Pro Mods. “We’re going to try and use the information and work together.
“But it will definitely be interesting when we have to run against each other — especially in eliminations. I’m not sure how that’ll turn out.”
If history is a guide, the two, driving like replica 1968 Pontiac Firebirds, will have ample opportunity to find out as the 2008 IHRA season, which is scheduled to begin April 4 with the Amalie Oil Texas Nationals at San Antonio Raceway, progresses.

Scotty Cannon, Sr. competing in the IHRA's Top Fuel division in 2007.

“Our plan is — if the stars and the moon line up — is to battle it out and have some fun,” said Scotty, Sr. “We can race together, and we get along good. It was a feather in my cap to see him win the championship last year.”
The Cannons had just completed a laborious, rain-interrupted testing session at South Georgia Motorsports Park in Valdosta, Ga., before returning to their Upstate South Carolina home to make the final preparations for the season. At the test, Scott, Jr.’s car showed the form that won the title a year ago out of the box, but it took time and patience for Scotty’s to come around. It finally did.
Despite the early tuning troubles, the elder Cannon, 45, whose trademark Mohawk is now a distinguished silver matching his Fu Manchu moustache, said this is where he wants to be after a run in the Top Fuel division in 2007, which followed several seasons of Funny Car competition.
“I drove Funny Cars and did some other things, and I liked that OK, but I guess sometimes you have to do some other things before you figure out what you really want to do,” he said. “I drove the (Top Fuel) dragster last year and Oakley gave me the opportunity to run Funny Cars and I’m grateful for all of that — and if I hadn’t done it, I’d probably still be wanting to be in it — but my heart really lies with the Pro Mods.”
And so it is with Scott, Jr., 29, who honed his skills a few snaking miles from the family home at Greer Dragstrip, just as his father had years earlier.

“We’re not kidding each other — when we roll up to the start, we’re going to be going for the throat, both of us. But that’s part of the fun. It’s not going to be fun to get beat by him, which I know is going to happen, and I’d like to think he’s going to get spanked some by Dad, too. But if I was on the outside looking in, I wouldn’t want to race against us — not when one of these cars has won several championships and the other won the last one.” — Scotty Cannon, Sr.

“It’s never boring,” Scott, Jr. said of driving a Pro Mod. “They’re supposed to be the hardest cars there are to drive. On the eighth-mile, ours are the fastest cars there are. It makes for some exciting racing, I think.”
Scott, Jr. set a national record with a 5.938-second run at Budd’s Creek, Md., late last year. He followed that with a track-record pass of 5.969 seconds at 239.27 miles per hour during qualifying at Rockingham.
For Scott, Jr., it was just more of the same to end a season during which everything seemed to fall into place.

Scott Cannon, Jr. working in the shop in Upstate South Carolina.

“Last year, we just concentrated on qualifying. We ended up making a few rounds and kept qualifying good, and we ended up making a championship out of it,” he said. “This year, we’re basically going to do the same thing with both cars.”
But this year, Scott, Jr., who has foregone the Mohawk but sports the obligatory 20-something tattoo, is more than just another driver — and more than Scotty Cannon’s son. Any pressure that came with being a second-generation driver has been trumped by that of defending a championship.
“I want to just go out and run my own race, but a lot of times when you’re the champion people go out there and throw everything they’ve got at you,” Scott, Jr. said. “They think they’ve got to make one of the best runs of their lives. Sometimes they mess up doing it, but sometimes they pull that fast run out.”
Last year’s title came as a single-car team and without the sharing of information that multi-car operations bring in today’s sport. This year that will be different.
The team has already discovered the advantages of shared knowledge during the test at Valdosta, putting the setup it had in Scott, Jr.’s car into Scotty, Sr’s Firebird in order to find speed.
Of course, that shared information comes with a price — to get it, Scott, Jr. will have to face off against a six-time Pro Mod champion who has won 27 times in the IHRA who just happens to share his name as well as garage space.
“I can’t think about what he did and everything else,” Scott, Jr. said. “I just have to go out and race the best I can.”
Both Cannons are looking forward to this season because each will be racing with — and against — the other, but there are no misconceptions of what it will be like the first time the two of them face off in an elimination round.
“We’re not kidding each other — when we roll up to the start, we’re going to be going for the throat, both of us,” Scotty, Sr. said. “But that’s part of the fun. It’s not going to be fun to get beat by him, which I know is going to happen, and I’d like to think he’s going to get spanked some by Dad, too.
“But if I was on the outside looking in, I wouldn’t want to race against us — not when one of these cars has won several championships and the other won the last one.”
And that last one is a source of pride for both Cannons, but Scotty, Sr. said it meant more than the fading glory of his own titles.
“People ask about my championships, but I can’t really remember the best one — they were all that good. But his, I will always remember,” Scotty, Sr. said. “It’s your kid knocking the home run out of the park, but we never got to do any of that stuff when he was growing up because we were racing.
“Racing was selfish. It stole all our time, but now it’s paid it back somehow. It took a long time, but it was probably more rewarding.”
The winding road has led back here, back to Pro Mods, back to the tiny shop next to a lakeside cove off of drag racing’s deafening beaten path. And, finally, back to family. The sign above the door says it all — or at least it used to. Maybe it will again with a little paint and a little more luck.
“The only thing that could be better now would be if we won another championship,” Scotty, Sr. said. “Preferably, from a daddy’s standpoint, it would be him. From a racer’s standpoint, it would be me.
“If we could win the championship again, it would be off the chain.”