There’s something about racing their top alcohol funny car in national events at Pacific Raceways that just isn’t working for Jeff and Todd Ashwell.

In fact, they’ve had such bad luck over the years at the track just west of Covington off state Route 18, they have given their streak of bad races a name — the Seattle Curse.

As a side note, even though the track is near Covington and in unincorporated Kent, because of its proximity to the Emerald City the annual National Hot Rod Association event, the Northwest Nationals, is known as the Seattle race.

“Every time we go up there, something always happens,” said Todd Ashwell, who manages the team and works on the bottom end of the car after runs.

“The first year we went to the national event at Seattle, I was driving that year. The first run we made was like a 6.15 or 6.16. The second run is the one where we blew it up.”

Todd explained that the idler gear broke on that run, the car lost seven piston rods, “then we had a big oil fire, then the body burned up.”

This was four or five years ago, it was such a bad event neither Jeff or Todd are exactly sure which year it was, as if they’ve tried to block it from their memories.

“Everything had to be replaced,” Todd said. “We skipped Seattle the year after that. Then Jeff drove the car. Jeff caught the car on fire his first time also. It’s just one thing after another.”

Jeff and Todd got into racing thanks to their dad, Greg, who ran several different cars more than two decades ago.

“When we were real little, my dad had a bracket car,” Jeff said. “We did that for years. We’d go to church then right after church we’d go in the van, take the trailer, and go race all day.”

At some point their father got out of racing as the boys got older, got into other sports and activities.

Then in 1996, Greg got the bug again, and it became a family affair all over again.

“We did a couple races here and there just to see what we could do,” Todd said.

They started with a big block Chevy with a dual block carburetor then the next year put an 871 blower on it and run at CIFCA (California Independent Funny Car Association) funny car events, with the association running a series of five races in California, Arizona and Nevada.

It made sense for them to compete in those events since they’re based out of Woodburn, Ore.

Eventually they bought a HEMI motor and a newer funny car body then began racing at Woodburn Dragstrip in Oregon.

The Ashwells slowly worked their way up the ladder of Sportsman classes.

“We had some friends running an alcohol funny car and we wanted to go as fast as they did,” he said. “For us, (the progress) hasn’t been overnight. Every year we get a little bit faster.”

They are hoping they’ve progressed enough to make some good, clean runs and go rounds this weekend at the Northwest Nationals, Jeff said.

“These things are riding on the edge of blowing up all the time because you’re running them so hard trying to keep up,” Jeff said. “At Seattle we always seem to blow up a motor. It seems like we blow them up and catch on fire. And that seems like the only track we do it at. For some reason, we’ve had back luck there.”

Jeff said he is looking forward to coming out, driving the car and “being able to race all the guys that travel around the United States more than we do.”

“It’s always fun to compete against the guys that are on TV more than us and in the magazines more than us,” Jeff said. “It’s good to see with all the hard work we put into the car how we compare. We try to compete with what we’ve got. We know it’s got it in there, it’s just a matter of the driver doing his job and the car staying together.”

Todd said they’ve learned so much over the years they’ve been competing and that even though they’re a small budget team, “we do pretty well with what we’ve got.”

“Finally everything is starting to come together with tuning the car,” Todd said. “For those big national events, you want to do well, get a little TV time, then you can maybe get a bigger sponsor over the winter.”

And maybe, just maybe, this year they’ll break the curse at the Northwest Nationals.

For more information about Ashwell Racing, log on to www.ashwellracing.com.