THE RISE OF LIL GANGSTAS
“ We’ re doing a Bear Shit Only Lil Gangstas at Big Jake’ s race,” Poland says.“ The only way to get into that is you have to win a Lil Gangstas race. We’ ve got 32 winning cars coming. It’ s basically going to be the most competitive Lil Gangstas class to ever go down.”
Other 2025 Lil Gangstas appearances include Shadyside Dragway’ s King of the South race earlier this year, as well as Justin Swanstrom’ s Swanfest at Rockingham Dragway and Donald“ Duck” Long’ s No Mercy 16 at South Georgia Motorsports Park, both in October.
“ Over the years, you’ ve seen people competing with each other, whether it be this promoter competing with this guy or this race competing with this guy,” Poland starts.“ That doesn’ t help the racing community as a whole if you’ ve got two people competing.
“ FOR SOMETHING TO BE SUCCESSFUL, YOU’ VE GOT TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE IT COOL.”
It splits the racers up, it splits the sponsors up, it splits everybody up. Lil Gangstas has really been able to show that people can collaborate.”
The success of Lil Gangstas has also spawned spin-offs that aren’ t exactly endorsed by Gunner and Poland. Tracks and promoters have adopted the Lil Gangstas ruleset for their own events, and while many of them come around and get Gunner and Poland involved, others don’ t.
“ We get knocked off, right?” Gunner says.“ I think it’ s going to be really hard [ for other promoters ] to build the same loyal following because of our track record of big payouts and well-run events. Our average car count for a decent event is 40 cars – 50-60 on the high side and 22-25 on the low side. The races that knocked us off, you can see their car count suffer.” On the note of collaboration, Poland
In juxtaposition with the polished world of Pro Mod, the cars competing in Lil Gangstas are gritty with unique combinations and creative nicknames.
128 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated. com Issue 196