Jon Nelson, one of many biggest fabricators and masterminds of off-road truck racing, handed away Tuesday after a protracted 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 vans shortly loved success with drivers like Steve Kelley, who received in his debut with the crew 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 crew’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 brief course programmes, the latter of which entailed racing within the Mickey Thompson Leisure Group‘s stadium vans with Ricky and Jimmie Johnson, unrelated motocross riders who later grew to become legends in off-road and inventory automotive racing, respectively.
Jimmie Johnson bought his begin in four-wheeled racing because of Nelson and excelled in MTEG earlier than occurring to compete in SCORE Worldwide with Nelson & Nelson assist. For the NASCAR Cup Collection’ 2019 throwback race at Darlington, Johnson’s automotive was adorned with a livery emulating the “Butch” truck that Nelson ready for him.
“After I bought into the stadium vans, I tore up loads of tools and drove Jon Nelson loopy by destroying his race vans,” quipped Johnson at a press convention in 2003. “However I realized some onerous classes via that. Rick Johnson has influenced me via lots of my profession and so has my dad. I had some onerous knocks together with means with Jon Nelson particularly being pissed off 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 instances from 1995 to 1997 and 1999. Whereas it was the one TT that Nelson constructed, it featured a singular 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 autos featured identically ready Chevrolet ZZ3 V8 engines and was in essence just a little cousin of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Collection, itself developed with enter from desert racing veterans resembling Nelson’s early shopper Frank “Scoop” Vessels. Formally often known as the Extremely Wheels Spec Truck Collection, it competed in assist of the now-defunct NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Tour at California brief tracks like Mesa Marin Raceway and Irwindale Speedway, and even highway 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 Collection.
