By Taylor Short/reporter3@trcle.com

For 44 years, Buddy Corzine worked as a firefighter, engineer and the last driver of the Santa Fe Railroad’s steam engine No. 3417, riding the rails from Cleburne to Fort Worth and beyond. In 1982, he stepped off the train for the last time.

After 27 years, his son Bert “Bubba” Corzine practices a different type of locomotion; one with nitrous oxide and a lot more speed.

As the executive vice president of competition for the American Drag Racing League, the premier sanctioning body for eighth-mile drag racing in the nation, Corzine said he oversees everything on the race track.

“It’s kind of like the buck stops with me on everything as far as running cars down the race track, technical questions, timing, just about anything,” he said. “If it’s something pretty big, it always ends up in my lap some way or another.”

Corzine said the foundation of the ADRL is the term “pro-modified” that evolved out of the South. He said the rules are that the car must be bodied with operable doors and the driver must be in the left-hand side, unlike a funny car. He said they resemble stock cars with 4,500 horsepower engines.

“These guys are called outlaws because traditionally there was no class for them. They formed organizations and ran all over the small tracks in the southeast. What we did is come in and give them a place to race on nice, safe race tracks,” he said. “So, they’re called Outlaw Pro-Mods, but there’s nothing outlaw about them. These cars are half-million dollar cars.”

The life-long Cleburne resident was not always the man overlooking the races. He started behind the wheel of a drag car himself, racing for several years before moving on to learn about other aspects of the sport.

“I’ve been doing this all my life. I used to race, I was a professional racer for several years and then worked some different race-oriented jobs,” he said. “I started about 1984 on the management side of it, race track management.”

Corzine said he worked for four years with the all-concrete, quarter-mile tracks at Texas Motorplex when it was built in Ennis in 1986, and spent his last few years as the general manager at the Texas Raceway in Kennedale.

“About five years ago, I got involved with the American Drag Racing League as the competition director, which was part time up until about a year and a half ago,” he said. “Now, I’m full-time as the vice president of competition for the entire series.”

The races have become international, with eight trips to Qatar in the Middle East last year, 10 more races planned this year and a trip to Australia.

This Friday and Saturday, Oct. 23-24, the Texas Motorplex will hold the LenMar Motorsports World Finals V, sponsored by the National Guard and Ford Motor Company.

“This is the 10th race of the year and the guys have gone all over the United States,” Corzine said. “The top eight point earners for the year run off for what we call the Battle of the Belt, similar to the wrestling federation. Instead of giving a trophy, we came up with a deal to do a belt.”

There are five professional classes, including Pro Extreme, Pro-Nitrous and Extreme 10.5. The popular Pro Extreme Motorcycle began last year and Extreme Pro Stock is new this year.

“The World Finals is a big-shot event where we crown our world champions and it’s a heck of a race on Friday night. We run Friday night for the belts and Saturday it starts all over for the guys to start accumulating points for next year,” Corzine said. “We should have 30 to 40 cars in each class and lots of Texas guys. A lot of Texas guys run good because the Texas area has been kind of a hotbed for these types of cars for some reason.”

Tickets for the event are free and can be picked up at most auto parts and convenient stores, or online at ADRL.us.

“We do some unique things. All of the tickets for our races are free. We give every ticket away and what’s happened is that we get 60,000 to 70,000 people in places like St. Louis and Richland, Va., and Houston,” he said. “It’s turned sponsorship deals into now, everybody wants to be on the bandwagon. We just kind of lucked into it, started doing it and all of a sudden, we’re marketing geniuses, but it was an accident.”

Corzine, like his father, knew when to move onto greater things and said he doesn’t miss being down on the track.

“No, no. It’s a young man’s game. I’m 61-years-old, and I’m enjoying everything I’m doing right now,” he said.