THE ORIGINAL “ FIREBALL ” ’ 10 CAMARO STILL SEES ACTION ON THE STREETS AS MARTIN ’ S RIDE FOR SHOWS LIKE AMERICA ’ S LIST . IT ALSO RUNS IN THE OUTLAW BIG TIRE CLASS AT NPK EVENTS , AND CARRIED MARTIN TO VICTORY AT OUTLAW ARMAGEDDON 7 .
To me , the people who put in the work and hustle and use the right parts and get the right engine builders and test their ass off and all that stuff , those are the people who are going to be at the top of any class .
gers out there that will go , “ He ’ s the best there is and he ’ d wipe the floor with y ’ all .” I wouldn ’ t be scared of him . There ’ s a lot of us that wouldn ’ t be scared of him .
On a similar note , are there other places to race that peak your interest ? Like do you see NPK as a potential stepping stone to NHRA Pro Mod , Pro Stock or Top Fuel , Funny Car ? Or are you exactly where you want to be ?
Not right now . I ’ m where I want to be right now . Pro Mod doesn ’ t appeal to me . To me , that ’ s a class that the spectators can ’ t support it because there ’ s not enough people that watch it . Everybody watches what we ’ re doing , for whatever reason . It doesn ’ t matter if it ’ s because people like all the characters or they think we ’ re the fastest cars alive . None of that really matters . The only thing that matters is that people watch what we do . Right now , I ’ m going to tell you , in my opinion , No Prep is the hottest thing going , NPK especially . If I move to any of those other classes , I think it would be a step in the wrong direction .
With No Prep being such a hot commodity right now , where do you see room for growth ? Is there room for a series that isn ’ t a TV show ? What about a handful of major independent events – like a Lights Out or Snowbird Nationals – specifically for No Prep racing ?
I don ’ t know if just No Prep racing survives fantastically without the television show . A lot of people are scared to do No Prep racing . A lot of people that are doing it now were always scared to do it . A lot of people that are hating on it are talking about how it ’ s dangerous and people wreck and blah , blah , blah . We don ’ t have any more wrecks than anybody else has . But if you take the money and the TV out of the equation , I feel like there ’ s too many people that would be scared to do it .
Does it support its own series ? Could there be another series that could be better than NPK ? I don ’ t think so because everybody ’ s going to want to do NPK . These races pay $ 40,000 a piece . When you have payouts like that , it ’ s really hard to want to go anywhere else . If you build a No Prep car , do you want to go to the A group or the B group ? I think NPK is probably the A group and any other series would be the B group .
Now could it support one big race or two big races a year like Lights Out or something like that ? Yeah , I think it could . I think you open that thing up to anybody – to the Stevie Jacksons or the Todd Tutterows – and you can probably have a hundred cars on the property to race No Prep . DI
86 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated . com Issue 174