“I’m a Mopar guy, but a car enthusiast also. When a car guy sees a Fairmont Futura for 500 bucks, you click on that ad. It looked pretty clean, and I beat everyone to it.”

Needless to say, we were excited to see the Redwood Rally! The First West coast drag-and-drive! I asked Jason if he wants to go, and he lights up and says “Hell Yeah!” which is huge because he never takes time off (he has a body shop).

Maybe you’ve been a lurker, a live stream viewer, a magazine reader, or all of the above and you convinced yourself to procure an entry into your closest or favorite drag and drive event. Great job getting in, because most of these events sell out in minutes and you’ve completed your first task. But now comes the next stage: panic. How the heck do you drag-and-drive?

“Right as Brad gets to us in the lanes, we hear that we are on a 2 minute clock, so I hurried up as much as I could to move the clamp and tighten it up. I was a bit ginger with it; I knew if I broke it, I wouldn’t have time to get to the pit and get another one.”

One of the newest competitors to Sick Week in 2024 is Kolby Bouck, who made the trip from Edmonton, Alberta Canada to Orlando. Kolby has owned a few Mustangs, but this 2017 model showed up ready to party in the Rowdy Radial class.

With two of the ‘Big 3’ auto manufacturers axing their ‘muscle cars’ for the foreseeable future, what will this do to the auto enthusiast and racing community? With a limitation of these cars in the pipeline, both new and used, what will enthusiasts turn to next?

“The first Sick Week, we took dad’s car. The second year, we took my 1988 model. This year, we decided to take both models.”

You’ve just got into your favorite drag and drive for 2024. You paid the entry fee with excitement, without so much thought as: “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!” But what’s it going to set you back?

“In 2018, I bought another car, and this Supra sat. Meanwhile, the cars we should’ve been racing with got quicker and faster, and this Supra continued to sit and not get used.”

So a 3.99 pass might not have been in the cards, but that doesn’t mean LaSala didn’t try to get there. With Job Spetter tuning “from the hallway of his hotel (on vacation)”, LaSala continued to pick away at his elapsed time record.

By now you’ve probably seen the ‘Support Your Local Track’ T-shirt designed by Sick The Artist, Garrett Olsen. I love it. I bought one for every day of the week because you can never have too many black T-shirts and because the message is one that I care to spread.

The final day for US 60 Dragway’s original surface was November 23rd of 2023, and then the track’s surface would be torn apart for an all-new concrete surface.

The world of drag-and-drive just keeps growing.

Tribute cars aren’t uncommon in the street machine world, but often the emphasis is placed on authenticity rather than personality, lest they be judged by the dozens of other owners of identical vehicles.

Thankfully, that’s not the case for Nick Wiegand and his Smokey and the Bandit-inspired ’76 Pontiac Trans Am. We’re sure Burt Reynolds himself would have been impressed with the combination of subtle black-and-gold nods and horsepower that Nick has blended into his own screaming chicken.

“In the meantime, my dad had so much fun at Drag Week in 2019, that we started building a gasser for him afterwards. “

We know Jessie Harris isn’t afraid to exercise his 6.7-liter Cummins diesel-powered 1975 Chevrolet 1/2-ton pick-up on the street and the track during numerous drag-and-drive events. But what does it make for power?

“I love driving my car every day, everywhere. Drag racing and meeting new people that enjoy the same hobby is what has gotten me interested in the drag-and-drive world.”

In February of 2024, after the latest round of upgrades and a visit to Nicolas Performance for a tune-up, Colby Davis posted a short dyno clip to his Instagram page showing 2156 rear-wheel-horse-power!

While we did write about several track closures in 2023, it was refreshing to hear and see about a few tracks coming back to life as well. It’ll be just a few weeks before a popular track in Alabama re-opens with a new name, Rocket City Dragway, this spring.

Ford definitely got some eyeballs with a 7.75 at 180 mph pass in their Super Cobra Jet 1800 at last weekend’s NHRA Winternationals; will it open people’s minds to the possibility of owning, driving and even racing electric cars in the future?