A High School Pick Up Goes Under the Knife with Goals of Rowdy Radial and Heads-Up 235 Tire Competition
Although every year dozens of first timers join the drag-and-drive community at Sick Week Presented by Gear Vendors Overdrive, it seems less and less arrive to Florida with no idea of what a drag-and-drive is, what it entails, or in some cases, a well-sorted ride.
For Alex Skrzypek, Sick Week marked the culmination of a drag-and-drive dream that started in grade school, and will expand to include a second entry in 2025!
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“Sick Week 2024 was my first time competing and it was truly a dream come true,” said Alex. “Probably back to middle school, I used to drive my teachers insane for a week out of every September where I would do nothing but watch the Hot Rod Drag Week live feed.
I’ve followed this stuff forever, and always wanted to build something to compete. Not to mention, I live just outside of Flagler Beach, so every previous Sick Week came right through town and it was just mind blowingly cool.”
School didn’t just infect Alex’s mind with attending a drag-and-drive, it influenced his choice for his first car, a 2002 Chevrolet S-10. “I bought the truck as a sophomore in high school, intending to quickly throw an LS and a paint job on it and have a cool project to slowly make fast,” Alex said.
“Six years later, the whole ‘cool project to enjoy and make fast’ got entirely skipped, straight to fast. But the cool thing is, I can sit here at 23 years old knowing I built, funded, and tuned this thing from the ground up. And at 22 on Sick Week and my co-driver at 21, I’d have to think we were the youngest group there, although I could be missing somebody.”
To get the S-10 ready for Sick Week, an aluminum 5.3-liter LS got a home in the truck’s engine bay. The block was filled with a 3.900-inch stroke K1 crankshaft, Molnar connecting rods, UEM pistons, and a BTR camshaft.
A pair of ‘untouched’ 243-casting cylinder heads route the air from the pair of 76-millimeter VS Racing T4 turbochargers, and the power is routed through a Turbo 400 3-speed transmission, a 9-inch rear end, and the tiny 235 sidewall (26-inch-tall x 8.5-inch-wide) tires.
“For Sick Week 2024, I had literally just got the truck done,” said Alex. “I made nine runs, and only three of those were full A-B passes before day zero. In fact, those were with a borrowed engine. Day zero was the very first pass with my engine, that hadn’t done anything more than drive to town for a haircut the day before.
I had no time prior to the event to get my license passes or chassis certed, which is why I made sure to stay above 10-seconds on Sick Week.” Running in the Dial-Your-Own (DYO) class, Alex averaged a 10.66, with all of his passes being early shut off to keep the truck above 10.00.
With his first drag-and-drive complete, Alex is turning his focus to the truck’s next step. “My goals currently are to actually show up at races and have a car that can compete, not just be there,” he said. “The truck is being set up to be completely legal in John Sears’ Limited Street 235 class.
It’s a cutthroat class, and being competitive is going to be a whole different story, but that’s the appeal of it for me. I hate anything being easy. By time Sick Week 2025 rolls around, I believe it should be a fairly solid competitor in the Rowdy Radial class. That’s the goal anyway.”
The truck had easy 9-second potential in it with the 2024 Sick Week combination in it, but a rocker came loose in March, causing damage that pushed Alex to make changes. Those include a new front frame section, as well as switching to a single turbocharger, a Precision Turbo cast wheel Ultra Street class legal 76-millimeter turbo and an air-to-water intercooler.
Despite the changes needed to his truck, Alex has bigger goals in mind, including his grandfather’s Dodge Dart. “My parents and grandparents rode along in the Sick Ward this year, and the bug bit all of them as well,” Alex said. “As soon as I wrap my truck up, we’re cutting into my grandfather’s Dart that he’s bracket raced since I was a kid, to get it ready for Sick Week 2025. My grandparents literally tell everybody how cool Sick Week is, whether they’ve asked or not!”
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Sick the Magazine, 1320 Video and Alex Skrzypek.
If you have thoughts / feedback / ideas, please e-mail us at derek@sickthemagazine.com