IHRA Drag racing | Nitro Jam heads to Bradenton Motorsports Park

Early in the afternoon on the day before the International Hot Rod Association came to Bradenton Motorsports Park for the 2015 Nitro Jam Southern Nationals, Bruce Litton was stranded on the side of the road in Macon, Ga. The former IHRA Nitro Funny Car champion was driving his new motor home down to Florida from Indiana when it broke down, putting a hitch in his weekend outlook.

"I'm still planning on being there," Litton said. "but I'm still not there yet either."

Litton's arrival in Bradenton was delayed from an afternoon arrival to a slightly later evening appearance on the eve of his first race of the season. The Southern Nationals are the third race of the Nitro Jam season and Litton, who is making his season debut, is one of the event's headliners.

The 59-year-old spent the winter tinkering with his car, the U.S. Male, to help it adapt between tracks. He adjusted the frame, moved weight around in the car to let it transfer better and put newer, bigger fuel pumps on the car.

"We're just trying to make it more consistent and more easy to adapt to different tracks," Litton said. "It'll be good once we're dialed in."

That all kept Litton sidelined for the first two races of the year in Tucson, Ariz., and Port Allen, La.

He called his hiccup in Georgia a "first-race mishap," even if this was a bit earlier -- and different -- than the usual bumps he expects to hit during his first race of the year.

It won't change much of his plans, though. Even with his arrival in Florida delayed, his routine on Friday will be the same. He'll take his first qualifying run and use that as a starting point for the rest of the weekend.

"We'll take the first qualifying run and then kind of tweak it from there," Litton said. "Whatever the track will allow us is what we're trying to achieve."

Litton has been racing on this particular track regularly since the 1990s, so his season debut will have a tinge of familiarity to it.

And he'll be going at it as part of a field that is loaded with star power, including Mike McIntire, who sits in third place and won the season-opening race in Tucson.

"There's going to be a whole lot of really good cars," Litton said. "There's gonna be a bunch of good funny cars and it's going to be a great show for everybody."

Plus, he promises that highway troubles won't affect him on the contained courses at Bradenton Motorsports Park. He's been around long enough that nothing surprises him or distracts him from the upcoming race.

"Nothing ever goes exactly the way you want it to," Litton said. "I've done this for 45 years and there's always a different curveball. You would never ever expect to have trouble with the motor home, but you do. It's not life and death, it's just a bump in the road."

This story was originally published April 17, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "IHRA Drag racing | Nitro Jam heads to Bradenton Motorsports Park ."