Bill Horton

Bill Horton has been involved with the sport of drag racing since the tender age of ten. He went to his first race in 1968 (a match race between Bill Lawton’s Mystery 7 Mustang and Frank Federici’s Shark Corvette funny cars), and soon became one of the track photographers at Connecticut Dragway. Through his teens and twenties he worked crewing for various cars including Rick Wolf’s Tempus Fugit SS/GA Barracuda and Bob Caruso’s Tasmanian Devil BB/FC. In 1989 Bill attended the Hawley School at Gainesville Raceway and ordered his first dragster shortly thereafter from South Jersey builder Jim Pashley. This car was campaigned through 1998, attaining several top ten points finishes at New England and Lebanon Valley Dragways and winning the 1995 Super Chevy show at New England . Bill’s current ride is a 1998 Dan Page hardtail dragster which consistently finishes in the top ten at Lebanon Valley and has finished as high as second place for season points. This car is powered by a big block Chevy engine which runs on 93 octane pump gas, and has run an aggregate best of 7.98 @ 166 MPH.

Bill has worked in the insurance industry since 1984 on first the company and then the agency side of the business. When he built that first car he became acutely aware of the lack of choices when it came to insuring drag racing cars. In 1991 he approached Aetna Insurance Company with the idea of insuring drag cars, bringing two executives to the races to observe the cars and how things were run. Later that year the first policies were written through Aetna . Three years later when Aetna pulled out of the property insurance business Bill moved the program to Great American Insurance Company, which remains the sponsoring company for the program over ten years later. Great American contributed their underwriting expertise and installment billing capabilities to the program. Today the Drag Racer’s Insurance Program is one of the nations largest and fastest growing insurance programs for Sportsman and Professional drag racers.