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Street Outlaws and NPK stuff, that you take that away from us for a month and we get bored very easily. So last winter, when I was doing the Winter Series stuff, Ryan was putting on small-tire races. How many did you have?
Ryan Martin: I think we ended up with five during the winter time.
SE: It worked out really well. I ended up doing one of them with him in the OG Nova and it was an amazing time. I’ m gonna be honest with you – it was laid back, it was simple, it was small-tire stuff with my favorite car of my fleet, and it felt like I was just racing with my buddies again. It wasn’ t my way of living. It wasn’ t my livelihood. When Ryan asked if we wanted to think about doing our own smalltire series, I said I think that would be amazing. It’ s a good way to make some money, it’ s a good way to meet the fans, it’ s a good way to just go out and spend some time with fans and racers and family.
RM: I think also, just to be truthful, there’ s a few different sides of racing. One of them that we all know is the super awesome, enjoyable side that’ s everybody’ s pastime, and you
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“ We’ d worked so much... that you take that away from us for a month and we get bored very easily.”
— Shawn Ellington
go do something fun and hang out with the family and go race one of my favorite cars. But for us, it was also like, on the business side of this, we stepped out of something that we were able to make a living doing, and I think me and Shawn kind of sat back and said, how do we continue to make a living with what we’ re good at? So we said let’ s see if we can make some money on the promotional side of it. We know how to drag race, we know how to do well, we know how to win championships. Let’ s see if we can be promoters. We’ re hoping that with our popularity and following, which showed
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during our test run of those five races we did last year, helps springboard this series. So while Shawn’ s correct – we love it, it’ s enjoyable, we love the small-tire deal – we wanted to get into the business side of drag racing, and here we are.
You mentioned the laid-back atmosphere at these races. Talk a little bit about what went into putting this schedule together – there
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seems to be some different and / or smaller tracks that give new fans an opportunity to see you. SE: So it’ s not just me and Ryan. We have a third guy, Carson Baker, who drives the orange car that looks a lot like the Fireball Camaro. Him and Ryan became buddies, and he wanted to be involved in this with us. He’ s the type of guy who wants to pull his own weight, so we continuously hear from him and he told us,“ I can’ t bring things to the table like |