Photos Courtesy Carol Parker

Over the last couple of seasons, Gary “Hollywood” Parker has been one of the toughest racers to defeat in the NMRA’s Modular Muscle class. His lightning-quick reaction times and super-consistent car, prepped by longtime sponsor Tim Matherly at MV Performance, have him in the hunt at every event. He won the class championship in 2010, in his first full year of competing with the series, and has been in play for the championship up until the final event in the two subsequent seasons. We recently spoke with Hollywood regarding some changes he’s made for the 2013 season in his quest to return to the winner’s circle and regain the championship that has eluded him since he last earned the NMRA’s coveted Champion jacket.

The dent-repair wizard and retired police officer from Georgia has been racing since 2003, when he competed in the Fun Ford Weekend series and came in eighth place for the season with his street car. He added the familiar blue 2002 Mustang he’s currently racing for the 2004 season and has been racing the same car ever since. The car underwent a couple of changes this past offseason designed to make it more consistent in the ultra-competitive Modular Muscle class, where racers qualify on reaction time and the top ten at any given event can register RT’s in the .020-or-better range.

“Tim pulled out the transmission and sent the torque converter back to one of my sponsors, Lenny Croteau at Ultimate Converter Concepts, who freshened and updated the converter to help the car react better off the line and perform down track. Tim also did some more work to the front suspension, which really seemed to help at Bradenton this year. I qualified third there with a .008 but went -.006 red on Sunday in the first round. We’ll be back and ready for Atlanta next weekend,” Hollywood explained.

As one of the NMRA’s more well-spoken and well-regarded racers, Parker has also been very successful on the sponsorship front and just this past off season, added SCT and Miller Welders to his program, to go along with Exedy Racing Clutch, UCC, and MV Performance. He’s always approachable and a wealth of racing knowledge, so the next time you’re at an NMRA event, you should stop by and say hi. If you do, ask him where the nickname came from.