NHRA Top Fuel Racer Buddy Hull Has Carved His Own Path To Success

Buddy Hull is an alien.

He’s not the kind from outer space. He’s not the kind who barged across the country’s southern border. He’s the kind who stands out from the others.

“Even my family says it: I’m like an alien. I’m really nothing like the rest of my family,” the NHRA Top Fuel owner-driver said. “What I’ve done is completely different, in terms of path and level of successes, than anyone else my family ever. Not one person in my family taught me much about what I do.

“I did. I had to. I didn’t have a choice,” he said, “because I wanted to be better. I just had to do what I saw other successful people do and make it work.

“At about 12 or 13 years old, something came inside of me. And I remember the moment. It’s so weird. I was in my bedroom. I remember the moment I decided that I had to be different. I couldn’t be like everybody else and get where I wanted to be,” Hull said.

“It first transferred over into athletics, and then it transferred over to every other part of my life. Once I decided that, it made it easy to make choices and decisions. I want to say it’s got to be a little bit of God’s work, [but] I’m mostly self-taught. I’m not taking credit away from those people along the way that helped me, but I’m mainly self-taught. I’ve been taught very little. I’ve mainly just figured it out myself.”

I do things because I want to do them, things that I can somehow get others to benefit while I’m doing it. Like everything I do, I take other people’s future to success in my thought process.

That’s his superpower. And he has parlayed it into a Top Fuel career that has seen him go from renting a ride from Terry Haddock to purchasing his own team and using his instinct to decide what steps and schedule his budget can handle.

Hull said he has no intention of showing up at a racetrack to pocket some qualifying cash to get to the next event: “You can’t just get out there. You…