What Drives You to Finish – From 3-Second Drag Radial Rides to Drag and Drive
After watching drag and drive on YouTube for years, I thought I might have a good baseline on what to expect when I attended my first event, Sick Week Presented by Gear Vendors Overdrive, in 2022. I was so wrong, but in the right way.
We’ve all heard the stories about competitors helping each other to get to that final day, that final pass, to FINISH. I’m lucky enough to talk about these stories, on the mic and on the web. And they happen in the super competitive world of heads-up racing too.
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Just a few days ago, I attended the Lights Out 16 event at South Georgia Motorsports Park. One of the events that helped push drag radial racing into the spotlight more, I hadn’t been to it in a few years due to schedules. But after only a few minutes after passing through the gate, I ran into Doug Cook of Motion Raceworks.
Doug didn’t make it even a minute into the conversation before he told me about ‘Stevie Fast’ Jackson, and his last 24 hours that resulted in a win just by getting to the first round of competition. Doug recently posted this experience to Facebook on Stevie Fast’s Chevrolet Camaro known as ‘The Shadow’ that races in Radial Versus the World:
“During qualifier number three, the Shadow had a freak parts failure from fatigue that basically wrecked everything. Blew the blower off the car, and almost over the roof tearing the front clip apart, causing engine failure and transmission failure. It was one of those ‘how do we even move forward with this sort of destruction situations.’”
“Stevie looked at me and said ‘Man I’m out, I’m so disheartened and there’s no way we can fix this thing, too much stuff is broken. We are out for the World Series (Of Pro Mod event) too.’ At the same time, a kid came up with a piece of the front end, and Stevie signed it, and told him to keep it. It was one of those moments that made you question why even go to the racetrack again.”
“He put his head down and rode his scooter away disheartened and I was like I get it.”
“A few hours later I see Stevie and he says, ‘We’re about to fire up that Shadow brother.’ I’m like what, how can that even be possible and what changed?”
“He replied: ‘A mother and son walked up, and told me how they just got there, drove four hours to get there to see the Shadow run. A few minutes later, a few more kids came up for an autograph, and said something similar.’”
“So, in his lowest of lows, he gathered his team, they did an engine swap, transmission swap, fixed the blower and a variety of other destructed items. (Fellow competitors) Patrick and Jeff Miller came and grabbed the front end, and selflessly helped a competitor by fixing all of the carbon damage so that the car could structurally go down the track (oh, and he had to look on Instagram to find the post the kids’ mom made about the signed part of the hood, and ask to borrow it back for the race, with a promise to cut it back off after).”
“The car fires about midnight Friday night with a patented Stevie Fast throttle jockey session, and the car pulls in the lane the next morning.” There, Stevie leaves with an .027 reaction time and stay ahead of his opponent with a 3.55 at 213 mph blast to win first round by just fourteen thousandths of-a-second!
These are the stories that can inspire us, to push on when we think there’s little hope. We might not win most of the races we line up in, but if we can keep pushing a little more, that next win light, that top three finish, or even that orange helmet might come our way.
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Sick the Magazine, Stevie Fast Jackson and Motion Raceworks.
If you have thoughts / feedback / ideas, please e-mail us at derek@sickthemagazine.com