Varner is a drag racer. In the world of vintage drag racing, he is known from Mississippi to Ohio as the “Dirt Man.”

Varner’s main ride is a black 1967 Camaro, and he crushes the competition with it. He is the king. He rules everyone from fellow 60-somethings to teenagers.

“We’re going fast, we love the competition of drag racing, and we eat it up,” Varner said. “That ‘Dirt Man’ name comes from my grading business in Kannapolis. I sell dirt. I like to tell people I trade dirt for money.”

Varner has a sense of humor, but he’s serious when it comes to his sport. He was a circuit champion in 2022 and he’s well on his way to repeating. He has a 45-point lead with three events left on the calendar.

Varner competes in the Southeast Gassers Association (SEGA), an organization that starts its season in March and concludes in November. “Gassers” refers to the gasoline that fuels the cars.

Things heat up a bit during the summer, but for most of the season there’s one SEGA event per month. The next one is scheduled for Knoxville, Tenn., on Sept. 9.  They’ll go to Gulfport, Miss., in October. The final show will be at Shelby’s famed Shadyside Dragway on Nov. 4, where champions in the four SEGA divisions will be crowned.

“I’ve got 17 trophies now, two less than my partner (Kenneth Phillips) in the shop, but I have a goal  to pass him,” Varner said. “I won the championship last year and if I can win it again, that will be two in a row, something no one has ever done. So that’s another goal.”

Varner already has reached some goals this season. He dominates the Super Stock division, wanted to set a speed record for that division and has done so.

Drivers are asked not to reveal the exact speeds they’ve reached, but the cars can travel well in excess of 100 mph on a track that is one-eighth of a mile long.

Competing at Silver Dollar Motorsports Park in Reynolds, Ga., in March, Varner actually won two divisions on the same night. He won the Super Stock division in the 1967 Camaro and then won the A/Gas division — those are the fastest cars — in a 1966 Chevy II.

“Winning two divisions in the same night — no one had ever done that,” Varner said.

The roots of drag racing are in the South, but Varner and his SEGA competitors take the sport as far north as Ohio and Indiana.

Thousands attend the SEGA events. They fill the stands.

“People travel from all over the world to watch us,” Varner said.

A lot of youngsters played with toy cars growing up. Varner was one of them, but the story goes that he didn’t just play with those cars, he took them apart, so he could put them back together again.

Now he travels as far as Indiana to get parts for his cars.

“If you want to win, you have to get the best,” Varner said. “I want to win. We’ve got full-time guys working on these cars.”

Varner has an interesting background that includes military service. He was born in San Diego, but has called Rowan County home for many years.

He served in the U.S. Army for three years and attained the rank of staff sergeant. He got to spend some of his service time in Hawaii.

Now he’s a businessman known for Kannapolis-based Varner Hauling and Grading, Rick’s Big Truck Sales and Varner Properties.

Drag racing was a huge thing in the 1950s and 1960s when a high percentage of American boys were obsessed with cars and speed.

Americans drove cars in those days that were made in Detroit out of American steel, and there were heroic figures to look up to like John Wayne on the big screen and Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays on the baseball field.

But the economy hit slumps, the auto industry took its lumps from foreign competition and gas prices soared.

Drag racing got much safer as the years went by and there were fewer fiery crashes, but the sport died gradually, with once vibrant drag ways being covered up by weeds and fences.

Varner, who first got involved with drag racing when he was only 15, never lost the love for the sport. He continued to race whomever he could and wherever and whenever he could.

In 2019, when he was 63, he encountered the SEGA organization at the Mooresville Dragway.

SEGA was a sanctioning body with complex rules and standards and had attracted a growing and highly competitive group of racers.

SEGA also built an enthusiastic fan base, not only by supplying the thrill of fast cars racing head-to-head through several rounds of playoffs, but by providing an old-fashioned feel of calmer times in America. All the cars are required to have manual transmissions, and SEGA cars not only had to adhere to rigid standards under the hood, they were required to look the part. The mission was to transport the audience back to the ’50s and early ’60s for one magical night through the sport of drag racing.

“It’s about nostalgia,” Varner said. “All the cars we race are from the 1950s and 1960s. None are newer than 1967.”

While there is still some unpredictability and an element of danger involved, Varner doesn’t view his sport as perilous.

“We’ve got all the safety measures — roll cages, helmets, fire suits,” Varner said.

All the SEGA cars have cool names such as “Young Blood,” “Spine Tingler,” “Dixie Twister,” “Rocky Top Missile” and “Four-Speed Stampede,” but it’s “Dirt Man” who rules.

Varner has won all but one SEGA Super Stock race this season. He was runner-up in the race that he didn’t win.

There’s no doubt “Dirt Man” is getting tougher with age. In a recent SEGA event, “Dirt Man” quickly jumped ahead of his rival and thrilled fans by repeatedly traveling with two wheels off the ground, as he made his way down the slick track to the finishing stripe.

“Wheels up, and the crowd loved it,” Varner said with some satisfaction. “I’m the only who does that.”

At an age when most men are retired or getting ready to, Varner lives for the next race, the next challenge, the next opportunity to make the fans roar.

It wouldn’t be wise to bet against him accomplishing every goal he has. “Dirt Man” is one of a kind.