Jon Nelson, one of many best fabricators and masterminds of off-road truck racing, handed away Tuesday after an extended battle with most cancers.
Nelson started working for desert racing nice Walker Evans within the late Seventies earlier than being employed by Larry Minor in 1983. With Nelson’s experience, Minor’s Class 8 vehicles rapidly loved success with drivers like Steve Kelley, who gained in his debut with the group on the 1984 HDRA Frontier 250 adopted by the 1985 class championship. Minor and Parnelli Jones additionally raced the Miller American-sponsored truck, although Kelley was successfully the group’s star en path to his induction into the Off-Highway Motorsports Corridor of Fame.
In 1986, he and his brother Eric based Nelson & Nelson Racing Merchandise. Chevrolet enlisted the corporate to supervise their Class 8 and quick course programmes, the latter of which entailed racing within the Mickey Thompson Leisure Group‘s stadium vehicles with Ricky and Jimmie Johnson, unrelated motocross riders who later grew to become legends in off-road and inventory automobile racing, respectively.
Jimmie Johnson bought his begin in four-wheeled racing due to Nelson and excelled in MTEG earlier than happening to compete in SCORE Worldwide with Nelson & Nelson help. For the NASCAR Cup Sequence’ 2019 throwback race at Darlington, Johnson’s automobile was adorned with a livery emulating the “Butch” truck that Nelson ready for him.
“Once I bought into the stadium vehicles, I tore up loads of tools and drove Jon Nelson loopy by destroying his race vehicles,” quipped Johnson at a press convention in 2003. “However I realized some exhausting classes by means of that. Rick Johnson has influenced me by means of quite a lot of my profession and so has my dad. I had some exhausting knocks together with means with Jon Nelson particularly being annoyed with a few of his tools that I tore up.”
Butch was beforehand pushed by Larry Ragland, who slid over into a brand new Trophy Truck constructed by Nelson known as “Arnold” that went on to win the Baja 1000 4 occasions from 1995 to 1997 and 1999. Whereas it was the one TT that Nelson constructed, it featured a novel reverse mounted engine.
“Most individuals simply known as his double torsion bar suspension, with rear mezzanine arm coil over suspension, genius,” wrote John Elkin in an obituary for Nelson.
Like Johnson and plenty of of their contemporaries, Nelson dabbled on pavement within the late nineties. In 1996, he based and raced in Spec Truck, whose automobiles featured identically ready Chevrolet ZZ3 V8 engines and was in essence a little bit cousin of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Sequence, itself developed with enter from desert racing veterans corresponding to Nelson’s early shopper Frank “Scoop” Vessels. Formally referred to as the Extremely Wheels Spec Truck Sequence, it competed in help of the now-defunct NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Tour at California quick tracks like Mesa Marin Raceway and Irwindale Speedway, and even street programs in Buttonwillow and Willow Springs.
On the flip of the millennium, his focus shifted again to off-road once more when he designed rock crawlers named “Scrapper” and “Tiny”, a pair of buggies which went on to win championships within the self-discipline. He additionally remained concerned briefly course because the crew chief for Greg Adler within the Lucas Oil Off Highway Racing Sequence.
