Can Mike Finnegan and Tony Angelo Conquer Hot Rod Drag Week 2024? Part 1 of Their Week
“The last time you saw us in 2022, total nightmare. We broke the motor on day 1.” The words spoken by Mike Finnegan, former co-host of the MotorTrend show Roadkill, as he and Tony Angelo opened an epic 2-hour movie showing what happened on Hot Rod Magazine’s Drag Week event in 2024.
“If we just make it down the track, it’ll be a huge improvement,” said Angelo.
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Before we go down the road of Mike Finnegan and Tony Angelo tackling Hot Rod Drag Week, let’s take a step back in time. After covering Drag Week event several times as both a writer and also as a pit reporter, Finnegan made the decision to jump into the driver’s seat as a competitor in 2017 with his 1955 Chevy gasser.
Inspired to build a clone to the 1955 Chevrolet from the popular Two Lane Blacktop movie, Finnegan acquired the shell of a ’55 Chevrolet in episode eight of Roadkill in 2012. The car was completely built between the Hot Rod garage and Finnegan’s shop, using an old-school HEMI powerplant, a manual transmission, and got the name ‘Blasphemi’ for the engine swap.
The ’55 completed a road trip of over 2,600 miles from California to North Carolina for the start of Hot Rod Magazine’s Power Tour just a few years later. Then Finnegan decided to up the ante, updating the ’55 Chevrolet to A/Gas standards, converting the naturally-aspirated Hemi engine to a blown combination, but kept the stick shift transmission.
Finnegan’s first Hot Rod Drag Week in 2017 was cut short on day two, but he returned in 2018 to not only complete his first event as a competitor, but finish second to Jarrad Scott in the A/Gas class by less than three hundredths of-a-second, 9.160 to a 9.189.
In 2019, Angelo joined Finnegan as the co-pilot, and the duo climbed to the top of the A/Gas class, scoring not only the class victory, but lowering the record to an 8.906 average, and their journey was captured for an episode of Roadkill.
After opting to not compete in 2020 or 2021, Finnegan and Angelo returned to Drag Week in 2022 looking to defend their title. But their efforts were thwarted early on, as engine issues on day one dropped them from eligibility. They rebuilt the engine in hope of making runs on day five, but rain put an end to those chances.
Finnegan brought along a camera crew to document the twists, turns and struggles the duo encountered that week, and over four hours of finished product was released on Finnegan’s YouTube channel in December 2022 to give a of a true look at what can happen during a drag-and-drive.
Finnegan tried to get Blasphemi ready for the 2023 edition of Hot Rod Drag Week by testing and thrashing on the chassis dyno at Harrell Engine and Dyno in the weeks leading up to the event, but ultimately decided to bypass Drag Week after issues were discovered.
One year later, Finnegan and Angelo would appear at Drag Week, and all the on-track action, as well as the drives and behind-the scenes details, were recorded.
Finnegan just released part one of the event on his YouTube channel this week, and you can check out the footage below:
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Sick the Magazine, Megan Taylor and Mike Finnegan.
If you have thoughts / feedback / ideas, please e-mail us at derek@sickthemagazine.com