Over frosty orange juice and cheesy omelets, Bob Perkins looked to his left and saw his son Cody talking about throttle-body mechanisms and superchargers. He looked to his right and heard his wife, Trudy, tell the story about losing Cody at the track when he was a toddler, finding him laying down Z's, crawled up inside a nearby dragster. He looked further to his right and listened as Grandma Elaine explained how she, at 79, still pulls her weight at races, cleaning engine parts, draining oil, wiping down belts and emptying the puke tank.

He stroked his beard, as though he were hatching in his mind's eye better ways to blow through the quarter-mile in five seconds, but he couldn't think of any better way to pass time with his loved ones. He allowed a big paternal grin to crease his face, and uttered the following words:

"Where else but racing can the whole family do something that keeps you working and playing and spending time together? It's been worth every bit of it."

Yeah, fast living is good.

A family that goes 265 miles per hour together, stays together.

And celebrates together.

That's exactly what the Perkins family did a few weeks ago, when they hauled their top-alcohol dragster from their garage in Salt Lake City back to a track at Topeka, Kan., and proceeded to win the NHRA Summer Nationals, covering the distance in 5.37 seconds and crushing all the richly sponsored, million-dollar teams at the venerable event.

Cody, who helped build and tune the dragster's engine, piloted the beast, as the rest of the family did their duties and the crowd of 30,000 roared. After the parachute popped and the winning was done, Trudy screamed — "I jumped on Bob and almost knocked him over," she said — and Bob nodded and Cody cried.

"There's so much work that goes into it and there are so many things that can go wrong," Bob said. "When you win, it's a burst of emotion that flows out."

Other teams around the track — as well as Big Daddy Don Garlits, the iconic drag racer who was on hand for ceremonial purposes — had to tip their helmets and salute with their socket wrenches because they know the Perkins are getting more out of their modest budget than any of the big teams. Those crews have specialized tasks, fly in for races and stay at posh hotels. Bob's family comes in by truck, stays in the truck, and everybody does a little of everything to keep the endeavor afloat.

"They sit back and eat steak," he said. "We work and eat baloney sandwiches. We get congratulations from people who give us a lot of encouragement. We keep doing this, even though it's impossible."

Understanding how the Perkins got into drag racing requires tracking back to Bob's early passion for running cars through mud and sand when he was a teenager. Trudy joined him after they got married, traveling all over to races of all kinds.

"We went everywhere from rodeo grounds to the Kingdome," Bob said. "We ran in every God awful town you could imagine."

Bob's car was called "Blown Chances."

Trudy's car: "Games of Chance."

When Cody came along, Bob gave him a small dragster on his eighth birthday, a car powered by what amounted to a lawn mower engine. Its name: "Taking Chances."

Cody, who later picked up the nickname "Flash," went throttle up, running in regional and national NHRA junior events. He also worked on Bob's car, immersing himself in the mechanical side of racing.

"From that early age," Trudy said, "Cody just had the heart to do it."

After graduating from Riverton High School, Cody got an academic scholarship at the University of Utah, where he studied mechanical engineering. And went on racing. His best skill was reaction time off the line, where he beats his professional opponents a remarkable 86 percent of the time.

His senior design project at Utah was building a one-of-a-kind billet aluminum carbon-fiber injector, a contraption that he described as "the throttle-body mechanism that maximizes the intake area that was previously unexploited by earlier designs. It increases the air that goes into the supercharger, which allows you to make more power and go faster."

According to Bob, when track officials first saw Cody's unique design, they said, "What the hell is that?"

Whatever is was, it worked.

Cody, now 25, turned professional as a driver in 2006, and quickly became the NHRA rookie of the year in the top-alcohol division, the second-fastest below top fuel, which burns nitromethane and costs multiple millions of dollars to run each season. His aforementioned top-alcohol win in May at the Summer Nationals was his biggest thus far, and marked his rise as a potential star, despite the homegrown nature of the family pursuit.

The family's annual costs hover at the $300,000 mark, far below the investments of other teams. Those funds largely had come out of Bob and Trudy's salaries at the family business, Inesco, which sells cleaning equipment and cleans large-scale vehicles.

Recently, 801 Racing, an outfit based in Orem that develops and sells fuel additives, has boosted the Perkins' racing efforts with sponsorship dollars. It remains a relatively small-scale operation, but 801 co-owner John Hill said the company loves the family-oriented aspect and sees great promise in Cody's driving, saying, "We think he's the real deal."

Mom, dad and grandma, finished with their breakfast and heading for even faster times, agree.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Gordon Monson Show" weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 104.7 FM/1280 AM The Zone. He can be reached at gmonson@sltrib.com. —

Perkins Family Racing

Cody • 25; driver, engine builder, tuner, graduate of Riverton High School and University of Utah. 2006 NHRA top-alcohol rookie of the year. Nickname: Flash.

Bob and Trudy • Father and mother of Cody, graduates of Skyline High School. Longtime racers and now Cody's crew members. Residents of Bluffdale.

Elaine • 79, Cody's grandmother, crew member. Packs parachutes, cleans engine parts and tools, drains oil, empties "puke tank," which is an overflow container, cooks breakfast.