Hirschi set to call it like he sees it for NHRA

If you are headed out to the SummitRacing.com Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend, the first voice you probably will hear will be a security guard’s, saying you can’t park there without the proper credential.

The second voice you probably will hear is Nathan Hirschi’s. He’ll be the main track announcer.

No, he’s not the guy who shouts “SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!” and invites you to watch “the best rear-engine fuel dragsters in the country try to push their brute machines into the magic five-second elapsed-time barrier!”

That was the guy on your car radio, if you were around in the 1960s and grew up within earshot of “Smokin’ U.S. 30 Dragstrip, located south of Gary, two miles east of Interstate 65 on Highway U.S. 30!”

If the Chi-Town Hustler still were around, and TV Tommy Ivo, “and from Ohio, John Milton’s Motion Maker Fuel Dragster!” Nathan Hirschi would be the guy interviewing them over the public address system. (Well, maybe not the Chi-Town Hustler, because the Chi-Town Hustler was a car, a famous 1973 Dodge Charger Funny Car.)

This is the 40-year-old Bonanza High graduate and Boyd Gaming IT department employee’s first season as an NHRA track announcer. There are four in 2013. For years, there was only one, Bob Frey, whose voice to drag racing fans was more familiar than the SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! guy’s on the car radio. But Frey retired after the 2012 Auto Club Finals at Pomona, Calif.

Figuring four (gear) heads are better than one, the NHRA replaced Frey with a rotating team of track announcers. Alan Reinhart, Joe Costello, Bill Stephens and Hirschi will alternate between prerace festivities, interviewing drivers at the top end of the track, calling the sportsman classes, and calling the pro classes.

Calling the pro classes, blending a crew chief’s toolbox of racing knowledge with an Allen wrench of humor, was Frey’s forte. As one drag racing enthusiast put it, when he retired, it was like your best friend in grade school moving away.

Nathan Hirschi can relate to the grade school thing, because his first gig was calling Sunday morning junior dragster races at LVMS.

In 2004, when LVMS was trying to find drag racing announcers and red-lighting from here to Surf City, it was Dan Stark of Boyd Gaming, one of the speedway’s major benefactors, who said he had a guy back at the office who was into drag racing, was a proponent of two girls for every boy, and the rest of it. This guy even had a bracket dragster at home that looked like a Woodie. Not a ’30 Ford Wagon, but definitely an oldie and a goody.

This guy was Nathan Hirschi, and he thought he could be a track announcer.

“I said send him over and we’ll give him a tryout,” recalled John Bisci, LVMS public relations manager in charge of nitromethane. “He auditioned for a while. Great voice.

“I told him ‘You’re hired.’

“He said ‘When do I start?’

“I said ‘tomorrow’ for Sunday morning junior dragsters.”

At least Bisci, a drag racing enthusiast in his own right, took time to train the new guy.

This is how Hirschi remembers it: “John said, ‘Here’s the mic. Here’s how you turn it off and on. Now get ready to go.’ ”

So in eight years, Hirschi has gone from interviewing snot-nosed junior dragsters to John Force, which is sort of the same thing, and Force would be first to admit it. But as ascensions in one’s field go, this one was rapid and amazing, like the kid who goes from the mailroom to CEO — like Michael J. Fox in “The Secret to My Success,” though I’m sure there are better examples.

Hirschi worked the season-opening Winternationals at Pomona, Calif., and he’ll work Las Vegas, Houston, Dallas, Sonoma, Seattle, Las Vegas again, and the Finals back at Pomona in November.

The SummitRacing.com Nationals will mark his debut as an NHRA primary announcer; to say he’s excited is like saying John Force is excited about keeping those engine candles lit.

“The part I think is cool about it is the local guy, the guy born and raised here — like Jamie Little, the Busch brothers — there’s such a connection between Las Vegas and auto racing,” Hirschi said.

“It’s just cool for me to represent the city. Hopefully, I’ll be like those people, and do Las Vegas justice.”

So the guy who began eight years ago by calling junior dragsters will be calling the (hole)shots, when the senior dragsters, Force and those other guys (and gals), blast off in their brute machines into magic elapsed-time barriers of 3.7 seconds or so, because magic elapsed-time barriers have come way down since the day of the Chi-Town Hustler and TV Tommy Ivo and John Milton’s Motion Maker Fuel Dragster, from Ohio.

I suspect Nathan Hirschi will keep the candles lit, and not only on SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! but on Friday and Saturday, too.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.