es. When a torque wrench is not calibrated properly, it be-comes useless to follow any specs, oftentimes either tight-ening a fastener more or less than required.”

As the liaison between race teams and ARP, it’s Feaster who is in place to be on the spot handling such issues. The New Jersey native, still residing in that state with his wife Beth and daughters Allie and Hannah, Feaster is one of those rare individuals who truly enjoys his job along with doing it quite well. That one sentence says a lot about the man, making Rick Feaster a true Hedman High Performer.

high performer award

M A G A Z I N E

PRESENTED BY The High Performer Award is given to the individual who has contributed unselfishly to the overall betterment of the sport of Drag Racing.

20 Drag Racing Edge

RICK FEASTER

He’s not a racer, but cer-tainly a car guy as evidenced by the ’69 Corvette he origi-nally purchased as a basket case, not to mention the many others he has completely re-built and restored. However, there is much more than that to Rick Feaster, who has been a part of the sport for a long time helping racers with their needs.

With an engineering back-ground, he originally worked for the candy people, M&M Mars, and Lucent Technolo-gies out of school handling problem areas before the typ-ical corporate world mergers and other positioning found himself out of a job. As a car guy growing up, he attended a couple of NHRA national events where he re-connected with high school friends Chris Richline and David Karcanes. Karcanes is signed on with Don Schumacher Racing and Richline had been working with Dave Siipola on the U.S. Gear service truck which used

to be part of the Manufactur-er’s Midway. The U.S. Gear truck was the go-to source for most all drivetrain repairs on the NHRA tour in addition to supplying a complete invento-ry of ARP products. Needing someone with an engineer-ing and sales background to handle the overload of the ARP business and without many other employment pos-sibilities, Feaster signed on to handle the needs of the rac-ers when it came to the ARP product.

It wasn’t long before ARP realized the worth of having a person of his caliber and knowledge out in front of the racers at every venue on the circuit, eventually sign-ing Feaster on in a full-time capacity directly with ARP, a position he continues to fulfill today.

When the U.S. Gear service truck was parked, Feaster moved over to handle much the same with Tim Hyatt’s racing services trailer before

Hyatt unexpectedly passed away.

Today, Feaster is still out there in front of not only the public’s eye but also handling the racer’s needs when it comes to fastener concerns. From his posi-tion on the K&N Filters service trailer, Feaster stands at the ready to help any racer with their fastener needs.

“From my engineering background,” said Feaster, “I was always taught to ‘follow the facts.’ A lot of times a team will have a problem with a fas-tener, either breaking them or some other issue, and im-mediately they may blame the fastener when in almost all cases, the issue revolves around another issue.

“That’s when I kick into gear and look further into the prob-lem,” he added. “Such as the service we provide on the Mid-way testing torque wrench-