Drag Illustrated Issue 127, November 2017 | Page 75
30 UNDER 30
NATHAN VANBEEK
N
athan Vanbeek was kept busy
in 2017, not only attending a full-
time job as a Caterpillar main-
tenance technician at a manu-
facturing plant near his home in
Smithfield, North Carolina, but also finishing
second nationally in IHRA Top Sportsman points
and serving as co-founder and president of the
still-fledgling, but growing Carolina Xtreme Pro
Mod (CXPM) series.
The 28-year-old cut his race promoter teeth
in the early- to mid-2010s with several success-
ful standalone Top Sportsman and Top Drag-
ster events held throughout the Southeast. In
response to racer requests he ventured into the
Pro Mod arena in November 2015 with what he
thought would be another one-off affair at North
Carolina’s historic Shadyside Dragway, working
with fellow racer and promoter Tony Wilson.
That event proved so successful and popular with
southern Pro Mod competitors hungry for an
affordable points series, however, that the duo
was convinced to go forward in 2016 with the
CXPM as a regional touring series.
“The first year we had eight races, but with
all the other Pro Mod series like PDRA and
NMCA and a few others, it seemed like we were
all scheduled too close together, so to go forward
we actually had to take a step back and went to a
six-race schedule this year (2017) and that seemed
to work out a lot better,” Vanbeek says.
With legitimate Pro Mod legends Charles Car-
penter and Tommy Mauney buying in alongside
modern-day heroes like 2016 champion Tylor
Miller and this year’s champ Jeremy Ray, the
Carolina Xtreme Pro Mods deliver plenty of star
power each time they roll into town. Vanbeek
says a total of 30 cars entered CXPM events in
2017, with an average turnout of 13 entries vying
to qualify for each eight-car field.
Vanbeek expects to hold “six, maybe seven”
CXPM races in 2018 and revealed plans are in the
works to add Top Sportsman and Top Dragster
classes to the mix. “Right now, Darlington (SC)
and Piedmont (NC) are the only for-sure tracks
that we’ll be going to and we’re just watching
where everybody else’s schedules line up before we
finalize our dates,” he continues. “We should know
everything soon and have an official announce-
ment before the end of the year. No matter what,
though, I want to thank my family and friends,
and the racers and tracks, for all their support and
help because we couldn’t do any of these things
without them.” – IAN TOCHER
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LYLE BARNETT
A
fter suffering a devastat-
ing fire at Lights Out 6 at South
Georgia Motorsports Park in his
Radial vs the World Corvette, Lyle
Barnett could have walked away
from the sport to never again step foot in the seat
of a race car. Given the terrifying nature of his
accident and the resulting third-degree burns
that covered 15 percent of his body, no one would
blame Barnett for finding something else to do.
But Barnett did the exact opposite, refusing to
let his injuries keep him from pursuing his pas-
sion. He became a safety advocate, urging racers
from the local bracket scene to the outlaw world of
drag radial racing to change their sometimes-lax
safety equipment standards.
“Wear as much as you can take; there’s no such
thing as too little,” Barnett says. “There’s been
three major fires (in the drag radial world) in
the past two years, and every single person that
was in those cars, the first thing they said to me
was ‘Thank you.’”
One of those fires happened at Lights Out 8
this spring, where Barnett triumphantly made
his Valdosta return to Radial vs. the World and
Leaf Spring competition behind the wheel of
Jason Digby’s single-turbo ’69 Dodge Dart. Bar-
nett was in the staging lanes when fellow RVW
driver Steven Fereday experienced a significant
fire down track, bringing back a series of painful
memories.
“You can only feel for how they felt, because
even though they weren’t on fire