Dirt
Q & A
Nicole Liberty
By Nate Van Wagnen
Nicole Liberty rolled into the NMRA / NMCA Super Bowl of Street- Legal Drag Racing at World Wide Technology Raceway near St . Louis merely hoping to have a fun weekend with her team . They tested at U . S . 131 Motorsports Park in Martin , Michigan , ahead of the race after making some changes over the winter , most notably a complete rewiring and some extra horsepower . All the effort paid off , as Liberty scored her first NMCA trophy in Nitrous Pro Street with her Khoury Racing Engines-powered ’ 99 Firebird .
“ I cross the finish line and my dad ’ s like , ‘ You just won the race !’ over the radio and I ’ m sitting in the car like , ‘ Wait , say that again ?!’” says Liberty , a design engineer at Liberty ’ s Gears , the family business . “ I couldn ’ t even register it in my head . It ended up being a much better weekend than we were anticipating .”
Following the NMCA victory , Liberty spoke with Drag IllustrateD for an interview with topics ranging from her racing program in Nitrous Pro Street and Outlaw 632 to her work at Liberty ’ s Gears , where the 26-year-old uses her mechanical engineering degree to design new drivetrain components .
You obviously had a great start to your season with the NMCA win . What are your plans for the rest of the season ?
Normally we run a series at our home track , Milan Dragway , but they ’ re closed for this year . So that kind of forced us to get out and travel . We ’ ve wanted to travel since we built this car , but it is also hard because the business is our No . 1 priority , the car is No . 2 .
We ’ re going to hit PDRA Norwalk and the rest of the NMCA races . We may go to one more PDRA race depending on how we run at Norwalk . We ’ ve never had the car near that light . We ’ ll actually be able to get down to minimum weight but we don ’ t know how it ’ s going to act or what we ’ ll need to do to get it to go from point A to point B .
Your car is set up to run in NMCA Nitrous Pro Street , PDRA Pro Outlaw 632 or Outlaw
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF NMCA
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