Joe Lepone Jr., one of the most charismatic, outspoken and talented driver/tuners in Pro Stock and Pro Mod, passed away early morning Sunday, July 12, at his home in North Carolina. He was 61 and is survived by his wife, Cynthia.

Friends say Lepone was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago; however, he was still working as a consultant at the track in Bahrain in late February. He was also seen in the winner’s circle at the PDRA event just a couple months ago when Anthony Disomma won the Pro Boost class with Lepone’s help.

Memorial plans are pending at this writing, although a fund-raising effort has been started to help his wife pay for funeral and medical expenses.

Lepone started racing in the early ‘70s and rose to national prominence driving for Pro Stock legend Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins. Three times he finished fifth in the NHRA Pro Stock driver standings, and he finished in the top-10 five other years. Despite reaching the finals eight times, his only Pro Stock Wally came at the 1985 World Finals when he dusted off Frank Iaconio, Bob Glidden and Bruce Allen in eliminations.

I’m trouble!

Lepone’s last Pro Stock race was in 2000, and since then he’s mostly been helping tune cars and teaching drivers in the Middle East along with campaigning Pro Mod cars for Derrol Hubbard’s D Bar D Racing.

“He’ll be remembered for his personality,” says longtime friend Pat Musi, who builds the engines for Hubbard’s cars.

“He had a bravado. From the outside it’d seem like this guy is really full of himself,” remembers well-known tuner Shane Tecklenburg, who has known Lepone since the early ‘90s. “But at the end of the day, he actually brought it. I mean, he was good, really good.”

Always colorful as well as gracious, the Lepone legend is sprinkled with lively outbursts and heated debates about the sport. He proudly posted a photo from his first national race at Gainesville in 1970 on his Facebook page showing him arguing with an NHRA official over the classification of his car. At the time he’s wearing a T-shirt boasting “I’m trouble.”

EngineLabs last chatted with Lepone at an NMCA event in July 2014, shortly before he started treatments for the cancer. We’ve also talked Pro Stock and drag racing with Lepone at other events. Here are a few of his more animated quotes pulled from lengthy and far-reaching interviews:

• “It’s not cookie cutter stuff anymore. I mean, I’m not putting Pro Stock down. I turned a Pro Stock deal down this year. I mean, Pro Stock today is, ‘How do you start an engine program in Pro Stock?’ Answer: You steal someone else’s engine guy. Okay!”
• “I’ve made a living the last seven years making people go fast with the products that they have. My deal with Derrol Hubbard, I get to drive. People go, ‘Well, how do you like driving now?’ But you know, I like driving; I get to feel my work now. When I make a change, it’s not on a scoreboard; it’s on my butt.”
• “But the fans here are educated. I mean, and the thing about Pro Mod, we got turbocharged cars. You know, this is a fuel-injected Duster, okay. There’s a blown Corvette, you know. And what the fans see in the stands is something they can identify with, and there’s a diversity that the NHRA doesn’t have.”
• “When I ran Bob Glidden, it was me against Bob Glidden. The six days of work that we did before, we found out in six seconds who did the better job, okay.”
• “NHRA almost had fuel injection in Pro Stock in 1990, and then they had some people that didn’t have sponsors say, ‘Oh, it’s gonna cost more money,’ and this and that. But it really wasn’t going to cost more money, because you can take one fuel injection off of one engine and put it on the other. Okay? Back then I had a set of carburetors…I turned down $25,000 for two Holley carburetors. We put them on a car in a test and we picked up almost a tenth of a second, and this guy wanted to buy them but they’re not for sale.”
• “Each engine accelerates differently, okay. I mean, and you know… you know, it’s like different girls you go out with – they all kiss different, you know, but we all want the same thing in the end.”

Get it done work ethic

According to Doug Boyce, author of “Grumpy’s Toys,” Lepone had aspirations of driving Funny Cars after spending his free time in Jungle Jim Liberman’s shop. But when Jenkins’ then-current driver, Ray Allen, had trouble qualifying during the 1981 season, the Grump asked Lepone to take over the driving chores for the 1982 season when new rules requiring 500ci engines were introduced.

Ironically, it was Allen, according to Boyce, who introduced Jenkins to Lepone. At that time he was racing a D/Gas Vega. Hanging around the shop, Lepone impressed Jenkins with his “get it done” work ethic. Since Lepone didn’t have a Pro Stock license, he put the car up on a hoist and practiced with the Lenco late at night when everyone had left the shop. For Lepone’s first license pass at the track, Jenkins lugged on 4-year-old slicks. Despite slipping and sliding from third gear on, Lepone ran .09-second quicker than the car had ever recorded with Allen. With fresh tires and full race trim, Lepone clicked off a run than was only .04-second off the national record for that day.

“If your back was against the wall, Joe was the guy who was going to make your car go down the racetrack and more often than not, win,” says Tecklenburg. “Maybe it’s something he learned from Jenkins, but he was really good at the psychological part of it. He knew what he was doing and he knew how to play the entire game.”

“He was one of those guys who could give feedback and get the best out of an engine that you could possibly get,” adds Musi.

Extremely driven

Tecklenburg first met Lepone at Sears Point in 1992 when Lepone was still racing Pro Stock and Tecklenburg was helping a Pro Mod exhibition team. Their pits were adjacent to each other.

“He seemed extremely driven and hardcore. Pro Stock probably makes you that way,” says Tecklenburg. “And honestly, he came off as a jerk.”

The pair never saw much of each other until a few years ago in Dubai when Tecklenburg was tuning an import car and Lepone was helping a Pro Mod team. Lepone praised Tecklenburg’s work to all the racers in the pits, despite not having any personal connections in the previous years.

“What I came to find out is that Joe is a guy with a really big heart,” says Tecklenburg.

Lepone was always a champion of naturally aspirated engines and nitrous. But a couple years ago he met up with Tecklenburg at the hotel bar during a race weekend and the topic of turbos came up.

“He sort of absorbed it all, and not long after he was working with the Desert Demons team and made that car fly,” says Tecklenburg. “He knew what the car wanted, no matter what the engine, and that’s pretty unique. More often than not, Joe’s taken something that everyone else thinks won’t work, and he makes it work. You got to have a lot of respect for someone who can do that.

“I’m glad I had the opportunity to tell him that I totally respected him, and at the end, I consider him a friend. We had a bond with us going to the Middle East all the time, but I guess I grew to understand him more and to know that he was just a really great guy,” sums up Tecklenburg. “Not only did the sport lose someone who was really good, but the human race lost a good person.”

Ed. Note: Joe did not have any health insurance; some of his friends are trying to raise money for funeral expenses. If you knew Joe or were a fan and would like to donate, here is the GoFundMe link where you can do so.