Put Dallas Glenn behind the wheel of a race car and he can probably get to the finish line first.

Proof positive came April 3 at the National Hot Rod Association’s Summit Racing.com Nationals at the The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Dallas Glenn, a Covington resident and Kentwood High graduate, drove a 1967 Chevy Nova to his first national event win in the super gas category. That weekend was the first time he’d driven the car. Granted he had helped Shane Thompson with the tune up of the car in the Las Vegas Open, the NHRA Lucas Oil Series Divisional event the previous weekend, so, he did know his way around the car.

“It was just very, very exciting,” Dallas Glenn said of the win. “It’s hard to describe because I had been so close to a national even win before.”

Just two thousandths of a second, in fact.

Dallas, 20, is the middle child of Steve Glenn’s three boys. Dana, the oldest, is 24, and Jayce is 16.

Steve raced and now his boys do. He started with his oldest son. Then when Dallas was 5 years old, he got behind the wheel of his first race car, a quarter midget.

Between the four of them — Steve and his boys — there are close to 400 racing trophies at the shop, Steve Glenn Enterprises.

Things changed for this racing family when Steve’s father died and left him a 1955 Chevy 210 Handyman Wagon. Dallas was 11 years old.

“So, I went racing,” Steve said. “Dallas’ track was 125 miles away and mine was one exit. Dallas just got sucked right into the wagon and absolutely found his deal.”

When Dana was 16, Steve put him into the wagon, and he won the 2004 High School Drags at Pacific Raceways.

Meanwhile, Dallas was helping with the wagon, he would wash it, unload parts for it, anything Steve needed done or anytime he was working on the car, Dallas was right there by his father’s side.

By 2005 things were rocking with the wagon. Steve was racing it and won a championship in the super pro category. That same year his oldest boy graduated from high school and he celebrated his 20th wedding anniversary.

And his middle son had been bit by the racing bug. Hard.

“Dallas was really figuring things out as far as dialing the car in,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t have won that championship without him. I really saw that he had a passion for it.”

The next season, though, things didn’t go as well for Steve on the race track. In fact, he just wanted to go camping on the weekends.

The next season, though, things changed.

“Dallas popped up and said, ‘I want to drive the car, I want to do the high school drags,’” Steve said. “When he got in the wagon the first race, he won. Then the next race he went to was the High School Drags and he won that, he won King of the Hill, that was seven or eight rounds.”

Steve put a pedal stop in the wagon to slow it down to help Dallas learn how to drive the car.

“His first pass was an 11.67 (second run) and by the end of the day he was down to 11.56,” Steve said. “It was amazing, when he got in that car it was like, ‘Oh my god.’”

Dallas said, “I hadn’t raced in a while and I really wanted to race, especially winning so many races with (his father). You get that itch to go racing and you just can’t get rid of it.”

Before Dallas ever drove the car, he would sit behind the wheel whenever the opportunity arose, he explained and “imagine I was going down the track and pull the gears which made it easier when I started because I had a routine.”

But, driving was different, Dallas said.

“You realize that stuff happens a lot faster, especially down at the finish line, than you might think,” Dallas said.

In 2008 he moved from racing the wagon to his grandmother’s 1968 El Camino.

He took it out the first race of the season just to figure out how to drive it because it’s a foot braking system. Dallas was just planning to race it at the high school drags.

But then he went out and won that race.

“That instantly put me into the points lead, so, sorry Grandma, I have to take your car,” Dallas recalled.

And that’s where he won his first trophy in the Lucas Oil Series — think of the Full Throttle Series as the equivalent of Major League Baseball and Lucas Oil Series as the minors with a wide variety of classes, driver skills and operations.

From there he won a national open race at the track in Bremerton in the El Camino in 2009 picking up Wally No. 2.

Now Dallas was on the radar and he got a call from Tom Turner, who lives in Lake Tapps, to see if the teen would be interested in driving Turner’s Corvette at the race in the divisional event at Pacific Raceways.

That was an opportunity Dallas couldn’t pass up. He told Turner, who owns two auto industry shops in Federal Way, Dr. Injector and Performance Prep, he would love to give a try.

Dallas ran the Corvette in the stock class which was definitely a learning experience.

“There’s things about that car that are a lot more difficult,” Dallas said. “Stock is one of the tougher classes to race when you combine the foot braking and how inconsistent the cars are with how good some of the drivers are in stock.”

At the end of 2009 he raced Turner’s Corvette at the track in Las Vegas in a divisional event then the national event, which is the second to last race of the season on the NHRA Full Throttle schedule, and struggled mightily.

On the first pass, Dallas explained, the car broke a distributor. On the next qualifying pass the bolt on the crank shaft broke. In the first round of finals, he won, but then an issue with fuel ended up disqualifying him.

At least he learned how to drive on the track since that knowledge would come in handy later.

In the middle of all that, Dallas was featured on an episode of Pinks All Out that was filmed for the Speed Channel at Pacific Raceways, making it to the final.

“What was really cool about it was how many people were there (in the stands) with no alcohol or fuel cars,” Dallas said. “It was really cool, especially at night time, I would leave (the starting line) and do a wheelie stand and the sky was bright with flashbulbs.”

Last season got off to a bit of a rough start. Dallas had changed his routine and added equipment he discovered he didn’t really need.

“I was having a lot of dumb driver attacks,” he said. “I took it all off and focused.”

Then he won the Seattle division race in late August in stock then won in the super stock category in Medford, Ore. He finished the 2010 season No. 9 in the country in stock, “and that’s cool,” Steve said.

This year Dallas picked up right where he left off at the end of 2010.

And his crowning achievement of his career came April 3 in Las Vegas, the same track he struggled at in 2009, in car he’d served as an unofficial crew chief on the weekend before.

“I almost didn’t enter into the national event because it filled up (in the stock category) before I knew could drive in it,” he said. “I ended up driving the national event in super gas. I had the car dialed in the weekend before for Shane. Except I had never driven it. I’ve driven a lot of different cars, though, so you figure out how they work.”

In fact, he’s driven well over a dozen different race cars over the past five years, so Dallas is at a point now where he feels like he can get behind the wheel of any car and go fast.

Not that Dallas would claim winning his first national event Wally — it’s pewter this season as the NHRA is celebrating its 60th anniversary — was easy by any stretch.

“Second round I took out Jim Hughes and he was No. 9 in super gas,” Dallas said. “The quarters was especially stressful because there was a computer glitch and the (timing tree at the starting line) didn’t come down like it was supposed to.”

Dallas made the pass against Max Tafoya again a few minutes later.

“That was definitely the lucky race,” Dallas said. “When I left, I knew I was a little late, I knew he had treed me. When it hit the throttle stop, it coughed once… right then I knew I was going to be slow. Now I know that I’m late and slow, so, I pretty much pushed it all the way through the floor and I’m not even doing anything at the finish line.”

And then Tafoya made a mistake and “broke out” or ran quicker than his dial-in time, which is part of the handicap system used in a handful of classes at NHRA national events. A more in-depth explanation can be found on NHRA’s website at http://www.nhra.com/nhra101/handicap.aspx.

In the semi-finals Dallas got a bye and went straight to the finals against Mike Ferderer.

Ferderer had the advantage off the starting line but Dallas took the win with a an elapsed time of 10.060, winning by 36 thousandths of a second.

It’s hard to tell who may have been more excited, Dallas or Steve, though for the dad it was far more exciting, Steve explained, to see his son win than any trophies he ever earned.

“You get to do so much more when you get the win on your side of the slip,” Dallas said. “When you finally win a big race that you hadn’t won before, you get the feeling, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’ They say the first one is the hardest and it’s true.”

Steve said they’ve gotten a lot of help from local businesses. In addition to Turner, Dallas has gotten support from Kent Tool, Security Race Products in Kent, Les Scwhab of Covington and Northwest Welding and Gases in Kent.

Dallas will need more support in the future if he hopes to achieve his dream of racing professionally in NHRA’s Pro Stock category.

“Any time I can get into a pro stock car, I would jump on it,” Dallas said.

But, if anyone gives him the chance, they’ll find out Dallas Glenn can drive anything they put him in. And win.