JAY COX
The crisp cackle of a big-inch
nitrous motor reverberates off the walls of the
small shop that houses Jay Cox’s Butner Con-
struction ’69 Camaro affectionately known as
“The Pumpkin.” Cox brings up the rpms for a few
seconds, cracks the throttle on the 959ci Buck
Racing Engines powerplant and clicks it off. “All
right boys, let’s load it up,” Cox says. “Time to
go to Ohio.”
Cox and his Smithfield, North Carolina-based
team are buttoning up the RJ Race Cars-built hot
rod in preparation for its trip to the fifth stop on
the PDRA’s eight-race tour, the Northern Nation-
als at Dragway 42 in the rural town of West Salem,
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I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
Ohio. The perennial top 3 finisher in Switzer
Dynamics Pro Nitrous is chasing down some stiff
competition from the No. 4 spot after missing the
qualified field at the Summer Nationals at South
Georgia Motorsports Park.
“We’re not where I want to be in the points, but
I don’t think the points really represent a season
or how well you do, honestly,” Cox says. “PDRA
and Pro Nitrous, as tough as the competition
is – and it gets tougher every year – I don’t think
you can judge a season by the points or by the
wins. Every year we pick up one or two cars, and
the cars we pick up ain’t no slouches. The people
there get a little better and a little smarter. When
you’ve got this many cars that are that good and
the caliber of cars and people and tuners out
there, it’s tough to go in there and dominate like
we had in the years past.”
Cox and his father, Lloyd, made the move up
to Pro Nitrous in 2015 after a handful of years in
Top Sportsman and the Renegade class at Pied-
mont Dragway’s Big Dog Shootout events. The
no-holds-barred personality quickly became a Pro
Nitrous star, battling with 2013 ADRL Pro Ni-
trous champion Stevie “Fast” Jackson and Tommy
Franklin with much success – three victories – in
2016. He’s continued to excel, adding another
three wins in 2017 and one in 2018. He kicked off
the 2019 season with a record-setting 3.637-sec-
ond pass and runner-up finish at his home race,
the East Coast Nationals at GALOT Motorsports
Park, before winning the North-South Shootout
at Maryland International Raceway.
Armed with his Buck power, nitrous and fuel
injection systems from Switzer Dynamics and
a “bulletproof ” transmission from M&M Trans-
mission, Cox is chasing even bigger things this
season. He has his eye on becoming the first driv-
er to break into the 3.50-second range with a
nitrous-assisted doorslammer and he’d like noth-
ing more than to deliver a world championship
for his group of sponsors, Butner Construction,
Smithfield Collision and Lester’s Body Shop. He’s
well-equipped to complete both tasks, but as
Cox has realized, he’s not alone in his pursuit for
nitrous doorslammer racing supremacy.
A lot of people might not realize that you ha-
ven’t been racing your whole life, and certainly
not at such a high level.
My professional career in PDRA only started
in 2015. That’s all the professional racing I’ve
ever really done with a nitrous car. All we’ve
done, we’ve done it in a short amount of time.
It ain’t like a lot of other guys who’ve done it 10
or 15 years. I grew up playing baseball, and even
though I was a gearhead then, my dad kind of
kept me away from racing and cars until I was
done with pro ball.
You’re racing against guys who’ve done this
for many times longer. How rewarding is it to
go out there and be competitive against those
guys and run at the front?
Issue 147