ProData's Hartley a Split Second from Milestone Victory

Published: April 3, 2007

by Dan Burger

ProData Computer Services owner Allen Hartley's hobby of racing one of the world's fastest vehicles put him and the Hartley Racing Team in the racing world's spotlight last weekend. Hartley's son, Joe, drove their top fuel dragster to a second place finish at the O'Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals in Houston, Texas. Hartley came within a whisker of making the winner's circle--losing in the final round by only 4/100ths of a second. Hartley's quarter-mile time was 4.645 seconds and his top speed was 307.79 mph compared to 4.603 and 313.80 mph for the winner, J.R. Todd.

The Hartley racer qualified ninth in the 16-car field. Joe won three races Sunday on his way to the finals, including a victory over the fastest car in the qualifying rounds. It was Joe's first trip to the finals in 57 races. Look for him to be back there again. After all, he's turned in better times and speeds. His personal bests are 4.575 seconds and 330.88 mph.

The super sleek red and black top fuel dragster includes an iSociety emblem on the side and a DBU (ProData's top product) logo on the rear spoiler. Shelli Peck, vice president of business development for ProData and Hartley racing, tells me sponsorships are available on a per-race and full-season basis. Nearly all of the top fuel dragsters running in NHRA races have major, full-time sponsorships, but the Hartley crew has yet to put together such a deal.

Looking at the companies that sponsor NHRA cars and events, there are numerous organizations that run System i boxes and software that runs on i5/OS. The list includes: Werner Enterprises, Levi, Ray & Shoup, Wells' Dairy, Weld Racing Motorsports, Anheuser Busch, Miller Brewing, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, UPS, Mac Tools, and Toyota.

Without a major sponsor, Hartley Racing, which currently resides in tenth place, participates in just about half of the 21-race NHRA schedule.

The next opportunity to see Hartley's 8,000-horsepower racing machine in action will be April 12-15 in Las Vegas at the NHRA SummitRacing.com Nationals. Stop by the pit area, where the team works on the dragster with wrenches--and computer programs--between races. That's a show worth seeing as well.

For those who can't make it to the track, ESPN televises all of the NHRA POWERade Series races.

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