Master of Chaos: Remembering Harry Haig
Harry Haig and I did not get off to a great start.
It was Hot Rod Drag Week in 2017 and Australia’s Street Machine magazine asked me to join their team covering the event. I was a complete newbie to drag-and-drive but I was vaguely aware of Harry and his car. Everyone said he was crazy. We were at a Motion Raceworks pre-party when I first saw the Chevelle roll in, its twin turbochargers breaking through the hood, bringing chaos wherever it went. The Chevelle known as ‘Sexaul Steve’ or ‘Steve-o’ was a late arrival, but still drew a crowd.
Two days later, we were approaching the end of the first day of Drag Week. Harry had not been able to make a clean run, with small issues besetting the Chevelle all day. They were in the staging lanes but were unable to fire as the last pair went down the track and Lonnie Grim told them to take the car back to the pits. I approached Harry with a camera to get his reaction. “Fuck that camera off,” he told me. I backed away.
Who did this guy think he was? He was loud and obnoxious, an outrageous extrovert. There was not a single bone of reservation in his body. He had a mohawk for crying out loud! Nothing he did was organized and he required a team of a dozen people from across the world just to keep this rusty hunk of junk running.
As the week went on, I kept interviewing Harry. My views on him mellowed, as I realized he was actually a good subject, giving entertaining and concise answers to questions. This was my first clue that there was more to Harry than the wild man persona. He could read people quickly and then do something to make those people like him. From there, it was up to them to keep up. A therapist might call it ‘emotional intelligence.’ He was a ringleader of chaos and Drag Week was the circus.
As years went by, I continued to cover Drag Week for Street Machine and Harry continued to make his annual pilgrimage to the other side of the world just to go drag racing with his buddies. I’d catch up with Harry each day and be regaled with the stories of the previous night. Sleeping under a bridge, sweet-talking cops out of tickets across a dozen counties, street racing against Mike Finnegan. This was a man who extracted an improbable amount of fun from every 24 hour period he was given (it helped he was often awake for all of those 24 hours).
The last in-person interactions I can remember with Harry were very different to our first. He was back for Hot Rod Drag Week 2022 and he wasn’t have a great week racing-wise, but the party was charging ahead with reckless abandon. Matt Reekie, Phillip Thomas and I were driving from Byron to Cordova (I think) when we saw Harry and his boys pulled aside on the road ahead. What at first seemed to be a mechanical issue was more of a road block where the gang were demanding burnouts. We pulled to a stop and Harry took a running dive through our passenger window, making it as far as his gut would let him, the stench of sweat, grease and Natural Light overwhelming our rental van. “The camera, Harry! Watch the camera!” I pleaded as his beer spilled all around.
A terrifying moment! Harry Haig at full speed about to leap into our rental van.
A few hours later we were having dinner at a bar in Elizabeth when Harry and his growing entourage of Aussies and Swedes showed up. What had been a quiet drinking hole in a small town was now bearing the brunt of what I can only describe as a Harry storm. Just like a hurricane approaching the coast, he had been building intensity throughout the day and he was at Category 5 party strength. But then Harry sat next to me, and he wanted to talk about Sick The Mag and everything we had been up to. It was like suddenly being in the eye of a hurricane as everything calmed down and we had a richer discussion than I ever remembered us having before. But then the last photo of us together is of his bare butt next to my face and suddenly it was back into the wind of Hurricane Harry…umm, figuratively speaking.
The last photo of Harry and I together, taken by Matt Reekie. That's us on the right, if you couldn't tell.
Harry was an easy character to misinterpret. All of the destructive force hid a highly motivated personality in business and racing. In Australia, where he had the benefit of locality to his racing program, he was a two-times overall Street Machine Drag Challenge winner with his seven-second HQ Holden. Sure, Harry did things that had more organized racers shaking their heads, but he also had the ability to overcome those challenges with an energy I don’t know how to describe. He was never a victim to chaos — he thrived in it.
The accident that took Harry’s life on Saturday night also claimed that of fellow drag-and-driver Andrew Baumgartner, while AJ John was critically injured. I did not know Andrew or AJ personally. At this time, I would like to reach out to anyone who knew Andrew and ask them to share their memories of him. My email is luke@sickthemagazine.com. I can help with writing.
