Celebrating a Successful 2024 Season with Bogacki Motorsports

Join Luke Bogacki as he takes a look back at the highlights and unforgettable moments of the 2024 racing season.

As the calendar turns, we can take a short breath and look back on a busy and successful season! We currently have 5 racing vehicles in the stable (3 big cars, 2 Junior Dragsters). One of the big goals each season is to put every car on the team into the winner’s circle. In 2024, we got to put a big checkmark beside that goal!

My nephew Jase got us started on the right foot, winning Jr. Dragster at the New Year’s Race at Gulfport Dragway (he was the ONLY 6-9 year-old in a talent-laiden field of older drivers in faster cars!), and in retrospect, that sort of set the tone for the season.

It goes without saying that our biggest triumph of 2024 was victory at the Spring Fling Bracket Races Million in Las Vegas. A sweet win was made even sweeter since I was able to secure it behind the wheel of Jessica’s new Moser Engineering dragster, which we’d debuted less than a month prior – and the fact that we overcame significant adversity throughout the week in Vegas (we swapped motors in one car, and camshafts in the other!). When I was fortunate to win this event in 2017, I was able to join an exclusive fraternity – Million Winners – that I’d only dreamed of. It was the crowning achievement in a racing career that had exceeded my wildest expectations (and I thought I had pretty high expectations)! To become one of a handful of racers to win a race of that magnitude twice (and the only racer, to date, to win multiple Spring Fling Millions), well… I’m still at a loss for words.

At one point, I was confident that we’d cap the ultimate dream season by pairing that Million win with an NHRA world championship. And while we got super close, ultimately it wasn’t meant to be! It was an amazing Super Gas season, with a finish that was one for the ages. I’m incredibly grateful for having been a part of it, and I’m truly happy for Val Torres – a very deserving champion! In the end, while I wasn’t able to secure a fourth world championship, we did finish 3rd in the national standings, marking my 11th top five NHRA national finish. We won the Division 3 Super Gas title by a margin just as slim as the margin by which we lost the world title – my 8th division championship. Along the way, we picked up the event win at my favorite race track: Beech Bend Raceway Park.

Not to be left out, my beloved Vega found its way to the winner’s circle on five occasions in 2024. I’m proud to say that it won once in every category in which it was entered at our home track, I57 Dragstrip (perhaps every category that it fits into!): Super Pro, Quick 16, Pro (Bottom Bulb), and $5k all-run event.

The success that I’m most proud of in 2024, however, came from our 11-year-old Gary. His growth behind the wheel has been so immense in the last 9 months that it’s really difficult to understand, much less put into words. It all came to a head late in the season, with an incredible 20-round win-streak that included back-go-back wins at Midstate Dragway’s Halloween Havoc event, and the BTE King of the Coast Bracket Racing Series event in Gulfport, MS. He backed that up with a win in his age group at the prestigious Christmas on the Coast event – opposite some of, if not the best Jr. Dragster racers in the nation. Super proud of my dude!

The 2024 season started and ended at what has become our winter-time racing haven, Gulfport Dragway (actually, it started and ended in the winner’s circle at Gulfport Dragway!). In between, we made two trips to the west coast chasing Wally, and found our way to thirteen race tracks across eight states. It was a wild ride that we wouldn’t trade for anything!

Thank you to Moser Engineering for continuing to trust our family to represent your brand, products, and people. And thank you to all of the manufacturers whom we depend on week in and week out. Whether it’s the NHRA cars, the wheelie-Vega, or the little cars, one thing can be certain: Any product or any decal on our cars is there for one reason and one reason only: because we believe it’s the best product available. In this day and age, we can’t afford to compete with anything less!

Peace out 2024, Happy New Year to all!