The Emmons family has been racing for decades, stretching all the way back to patriarch Harvey Emmons Jr., who brought his four boys up to fully understand what it took to have success on the quarter-mile dragstrip and in life. Harvey Jr., along with friend Mike Trumble Sr., started T & E Used Cars in 1972 and later co-leased and operated a racetrack – Eastex Dragway in Porter, Texas. The Emmons boys grew up learning the ins and outs of every aspect of the sport that their father so dearly loved, along with the family business that the brothers now own and operate as Emmons Autoplex.
For Jerry, Gary, Terry, and older brother Harvey “Speedy” Emmons III, the lessons shown by their father were taken to heart. Before Harvey Jr. passed in 2017, the family had long been established as a respected team under the esteemed Lucas Oil Products banner, and in recent years, Speedy’s sons – Will and Landon – joined the fold at the national event level. Their collective efforts culminated in over 50 national event wins (51 to date), and a pair of world championships in Stock Eliminator: Speedy earned the title in 1994, and Jerry claimed the honors in 2021.
Like each of the brothers working to carry on their father’s legacy, Jerry strives to be exceptional in all that he does. On Friday evening at Texas Motorplex, during the 41st annual NHRA Texas FallNationals, his efforts were recognized. Jerry was honored as one of NHRA’s Top 50 Sportsman Racers, and his inclusion on this special list was particularly meaningful as it was determined through a voting process that included a group of world champions with undeniable credentials: Dan Fletcher, David Rampy, Peter Biondo, Luke Bogacki, Justin Lamb, Gary Stinnett, Jeff Taylor, and Austin Williams.
“I worked so hard at racing because I wanted to make my dad proud,” said Jerry, a 20-time winner at the national event level who has earned multiple division championships in the ultra-competitive South Central region. “I saw how much my mom and dad put into this for us. Our dad never complained about the financial burden or anything, really. He was always all about NHRA drag racing, Stock and Super Stock, and the sport in general. All of this is because of him, and I want to do good for him so that he knows that everything he did to get us to this point wasn’t lost. We’re still working hard to get better, and we’re still racing in honor of our dad.”
Jerry’s first win was at the 1989 South Central Division race at Houston Raceway Park, and in addition to the 2021 world title, he’s so far earned six Division 4 championships. Twice he’s won the esteemed U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, and he is a three-time winner in the prestigious JEGS Allstars. Jerry is still running strong and challenging for titles alongside his brothers and nephews, with wife Shauna and their three children standing firmly behind him.
“Years ago, when we had Eastex Dragway, an [NHRA] camera crew came and did an interview with my dad, my mom, and all of us brothers. They asked, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up, what do you want to do with your life?’” Jerry recalled. “I said that I wanted to be a successful car dealer, and I wanted to be a world champion. I accomplished that, but to be recognized as a Top 50 driver and to know who voted on it, to know that a group of respected champions see something in me that sometimes I don’t even see in myself, it just feels really good.”
Although Jerry was the one standing before the crowd at Texas Motorplex being recognized alongside his peers as one of NHRA’s Top 50 Sportsman Racers, there is no doubt that his own accomplishments and those of his brothers and nephews can be traced back to the roots of the Emmons family tree.
“We couldn’t have done any of this without our parents; they were both integral to our success. Our mother, Martha, sacrificed a lot and always made sure we were taken care of, and our dad always made the effort to do the best he could with the resources that we had – sometimes we didn’t have the quickest cars, but they were the cleanest. It was always important to be a little bit better than we were the year before, and that’s something that stuck with me. I’ve always said, I don’t have to be remembered as THE greatest, but I would really like to be remembered as one of the greatest. I work hard at trying to live by that. I feel like I have so much left to improve on, so much left to do – and that’s okay; I don’t ever want to feel like I’ve made it. I want to keep chasing it. But being recognized like this makes you feel really good. It’s a huge honor.”
The post Lucas Oil Series World Champion Jerry Emmons Honored as One of NHRA’s 50 All-Time Greatest Sportsman Racers first appeared on Drag Illustrated.
