drag brace central

[jwsamuel]

Originally Posted by John Kelley

Didn't Eddie Dykes start that deal ?
Then died in a plane crash.......RIP

Yes to both.

For anyone who is interested, here is a brief history.

What is now DRC has its roots in the mid to late 1980s in the Motorsports forum on the old CompuServe Information Service. There were a group of us who would cover NASCAR, Indy cars, sports cars, drag racing and other types of motorsports by taking computers to the races and filing reports throughout the event. Someone wrote a program (for MS-DOS) that automated the process for NASCAR and other racing that runs laps around a circuit. Larry Sullivan wrote a similar program for drag racing. The group covering drag racing at the time on CompuServe included Ed, Larry, Rick Green, Dave Rowe, Dave Gerard, Bob Orme and the late Darryl Jackman (I hope I have not left anyone out). Back then, I was only covering NASCAR and Indy cars and did not become involved in drag racing coverage until 2001.

When the Internet started to take hold in the 1990s, Ed was one of the first to recognize what was going on and created FastNews Network, which provides the content for DRC. What exists today grew from Ed's idea and work.

Ed Dykes died in January 2000 when he was flying his private plane home from the IHRA banquet. After his death, Rick and Larry kept FastNews going since then. Larry continually updates the software, both to provide more information and to accommodate changes, such as four-wide racing or 1,000 feet), and Rick keeps us up and running.

That's the brief version and I am sure I have forgotten someone or something that happened along the way.

Jim