Wheels Up Runs, Tom Bailey’s 3.98 Pass in ‘Sick Seconds 2.0’ and Beautiful Weather Highlight Day One of Sick At The Rock Presented by Motion Raceworks at Rockingham Dragway!
The drag and drive calendar is just starting to get underway, and Sick The Magazine’s first venture outside a full drag and drive weeklong event got underway on Thursday, April 10th.
Rockingham Dragway hosted day one of Sick At The Rock Presented by Motion Raceworks, and the Thursday test session produced some notable results.
Sick At The Rock Presented by Motion Raceworks event is TODAY AND TOMORROW - April 11th - 12th, 2025 at Rockingham Dragway in North Carolina! Come see some amazing racing action - from Pro Mods to our new class - the Sick Street Car Challenge with $32,000 up for grabs!! Advance tickets and spots in our Sick Spit Show & Shine are still available; CLICK HERE for more details on Sick At The Rock (use code ‘sickseconds’ to save 10%)!!
Leading the pack of newsworthy runs was Tom Bailey and the ‘Sick Seconds 2.0’ ’69 Camaro. Refreshed after some engine breakage in February, Bailey produced a solid 3.98 at 172 mph blast on the eight-mile hit, with a stellar 1.022 60 foot time. Will ‘Sick Seconds’ reign as the quickest ride in the new Sick Street Car Challenge class?
Rolling in right behind Bailey in performance is the ’66 Chevy Nova of Graham Hayes. After making the switch from nitrous to twin-turbos in time for the recent Sick Week Presented by Gear Vendors Overdrive, Hayes locked up the Ultimate Iron class title with 6-second laps each day. In Rockingham, Hayes unloaded a 1.10 60 foot clocking in route to a 4.21 at 179 mph run at the eighth-mile mark, the second quickest run of testing.
Sick At The Rock features two heads-up drag racing classes run in naturally-aspirated form, and the quickest is the Small Tire Pro Stock class. Based around minimum weights on engine design, cubic inch displacements and components, as well as body design, class leading competitors will clock times in the 7.7-second range. Garnering a lot of looks is the new ride from the Robbie Blankenship camp, a 2018 Ford Mustang packing a 400 cubic inch small block Ford. The car only had one shakedown run before arriving in Rockingham, but produced an early shut off 5.08 at 142 mph eighth-mile pass with a 1.17 60 foot time on Thursday afternoon.
The second naturally-aspirated class is the popular Coyote Stock group. Based around a sealed Gen 3 Coyote engine and spec tuner from Ford Performance, the cars must meet a 3000-pound minimum weight and use a 28 x 10.5-inch width tire. When the clutch pedal is released, it’s not surprising to see the cars go near the bumper when grabbing the next gear in the manual transmission while hunting for mid 9-second time slips on the quarter-mile distance. One of the quickest in testing was Aaron Worstell’s ’92 Mustang.
Combining a heads-up feel with a set index, the Street Race 8.60 index class was a popular one with the National Mustang Racers Association (NMRA). Combining similar class rules as our Sick Street Race and 275 Street Race classes, the small tire class brought out some familiar drag and drive rides, as well as some new ones, on Thursday. Grabbing our attention is this ’66 Corvette of Anthony Cupolo, packing a 427 cube LS engine with a LSA-style supercharger. CuPolo nailed a near-perfect 8.608 pass during testing.
The Nostalgia Super Stock and Nostalgia Muscle Car classes combine together for the Sick At The Rock and Sick On The Green events, and some period-correct / nicely restored rides come out to clock 8-15 second times in the index-based class. All big three manufacturers were represented in time runs today, with a Plymouth Belvedere facing an Oldsmobile Cutlass in this match-up.
The final class participating this weekend is Open Comp, a class with the smallest ruleset to promote racing that brings a wide variety of rides. One of them making laps on Thursday is this turbocharged Ford Lightning pick-up of Bob Dill. Despite the heft and aerodynamic challenges, the truck has clocked a good chunk of 8-second passes.
With all four of our major Sick The Mag events sold out, Sick At The Rock Presented by Motion Raceworks is one of your last chances to compete in a Sick The Mag drag and drive in 2025. Street machines and race cars will come together for an action-packed three days of racing and fun, with up to fifteen different classes of cars, including the 3,000+ horsepower Big Dog Pro Mods class!
To find out more about the Sick At The Rock event, CLICK HERE!!
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Sick the Magazine.
If you have thoughts / feedback / ideas, please e-mail us at derek@sickthemagazine.com