JACK ROBERTS may not have grown up in drag racing like so many of the other honorees who appear on the 30 Under 30 List, but he’ s become fully entrenched in the sport as a rising star tuner, specifically in the world of small-tire no-prep racing. Roberts and his Squirrel Tuned brand have put drivers like Chase Womack into the winner’ s circle at major events in recent months, and if Roberts has his way, he’ s just getting started.

Roberts, now 28, first got interested in cars in 2014, but his interest was limited to street cars and roll racing. It wasn’ t until 2017 that he took his father’ s Jeep SRT down the dragstrip for the first time. When the high-end motor let go in the elder Roberts’ Corvette ZR1, Jack decided he needed to learn how to tune so he could fix or know when something was going wrong. He dove deeper into the drag racing world when he built a Fox body Mustang powered by a stock bottom

end 4.8 LS engine.“ I pretty much entirely built that car just to learn how to tune on my own stuff,” he says.

Roberts admits he was starting from scratch when he got into making high-performance upgrades and tuning cars.“ Whenever I first started, I would’ ve been nervous to bolt a cold air intake on a car just because I’ d never messed with anything like that,” Roberts says.“ I was always interested in tuning and thought it was super cool, but it was kind of black magic to me.”

Roberts gradually gained knowledge through guidance from mentors like Chris Delgado and classes like High Performance Academy, and of course, through taking his Fox body Mustang to the track and getting real-world experience.

At TX2K19 in Houston, Roberts put radials on his Mustang and set the record for a stock bottom end 4.8 in the quarter mile with a 7.91-second pass. That marked a turning point in Roberts’ career.“ That was the first time I really did anything like that and proved to anybody that I was able to do something like that,” he says.“ That’ s where my career started as a tuner. I had done some stuff on friends’ cars before then, but after that is when I actually

started advertising and tuning for other people and charging for it.”

Most recently, Roberts’ proudest accomplishments have come as the tuner for Chase Womack, who purchased Bobby Ducote’ s No Prep Kings car and converted it to run on 28x10.5s. Earlier this summer, Womack won two of the three nights at Outlaw Armageddon in Tulsa driving the“ Hitman”’ 00 Firebird powered by a ProCharger-boosted Hemi further enhanced with nitrous.“ On the third night, we ended up taking a rod out the block in the burnout, so we’ ll never know if we were going to be able to clean-sweep it, but we were really happy with that performance,” Roberts says.

Along with working with his Squirrel Tuned customers, Roberts takes pride in helping racers who need a nudge in the right direction, paying forward the assistance he received early on.

“ I’ ve been lucky to have a few people that have helped me along the way, and I’ ve been lucky to have the opportunity to tune on a lot of cars and make a lot of passes down the track,” Roberts says.“ I try to share that knowledge because, ultimately, I think we’ re all here just because we’ re having fun and enjoying our cars.”

As of this writing, Roberts and Womack are preparing for what Roberts describes as their biggest challenge yet: competing in the new True 10.5 class at the three-race Drag Illustrated Winter Series at Bradenton Motorsports Park. With some of the biggest names in small-tire no-prep set to compete, it’ s yet another stage for Roberts to show what he’ s learned.

“ I’ m looking forward to that and hoping that we can have a good showing there,” Roberts says.“ I just want to continue to push the 28x10.5 stuff and do whatever I can – keep working on nice combos like [ Womack’ s ], getting to learn more, improve more, and just push the limits of what’ s possible.” – NATE VAN WAGNEN DI

PHOTOS: BRITTANI WOMACK