Earl
Laskey- Crew Chief
Born August 7, 1944 in Chicago IL
Moved to Orange County, California in 1957 and has
lived there ever since.
He graduated from Cal State-Long Beach in 1967 with
a degree in accounting.
His interest in motors started when Earl was 11 years
old by helping friends work on motorbikes and go-karts.
His first car was a 1950 Ford followed by a 1955 Chevy.
He did his first swap at 19 years old installing a
283 V-8 where a 6 cylinder used to reside. The first
race car was a 33 Willis with a Chevy V-8 and the
car turned out to be very evil and sold it before
it drove him into the guardrail.
He
then built a D Gas 1955 Chevy and raced at Lions,
originally Irwindale and Fontana Drag strips. When
Orange County International Raceway was built in 1967,
he applied and became one of their first tech inspectors.
Worked there for seven years and also campaigned a
new lightweight 1955 Chevy. It was one of the first
small block 55’s to break into the 10’s
locally.
In
1974-5 he competed in the new NHRA competition eliminator
class, B Econo Dragster. This team won Comp Eliminator
at the 1975 NHRA Fall Nationals in Seattle as well
as setting some speed and ET records with the car.
A short shot at an alcohol funny car ended his first
racing career.
Even
though 20 years passed without any active racing,
Earl never lost the love for drag racing. He began
racing again in the late 90’s because of Mike’s
interest in Hondas. Earl says, “I remember driving
his turbo street car for the first time. The acceleration
felt like warp speed from Star Wars with all the stars
passing me up very fast!”
Racing
keeps him young but also makes him feel old to be
around the new breed of Sport Compact racers.
