LETTER from the EDITOR
This year’ s U. S. Street Nationals – featured extensively in this issue – was a memorable one for me. My son, Callum, was born just a few days before the 2025 edition of the race, so I watched that one from home. I also covered the World Series of Pro Mod and the Snowbird Outlaw Nationals from home, so this was my first Drag Illustrated Winter Series race back on the grounds of Bradenton Motorsports Park since the 2024 Snowbirds. I cherished the time at home with my wife and our new baby boy and wouldn’ t trade it for anything, but I also missed being at the track and being a part of these races.
I watched Friday morning’ s Pro Mod qualifying session from my Southwest direct flight from Indy to Tampa, or what few glimpses of it that would load on the in-flight Wi- Fi. With the seemingly endless barrage of passes in the 3.50-second range, I could tell we were about to see history unfold.
Sure enough, by the time qualifying concluded on Saturday, all of the drivers in the 32-car qualified field had run in the 3.50s – the first all-3.50-second field in Pro Mod history. It was only a couple years ago that a low 3.60-second pass would put you in the top three at the World Series of Pro Mod. But with stellar atmospheric conditions and a field full of dozens of the most competitive drivers, tuners, crew members, and team owners in doorslammer racing, it should come as no surprise that we’ ve arrived at this point.
Probably my favorite part about being back at the track for the Winter Series races was working with Winter Series Race Director Gavin Carter and Senior Editor Craig Cook on the random chip drawings before each round of eliminations in Pro
Mod and Pro 10.5. Through the apparent magic that surrounds these events, we end up with compelling matchups round after round.
In the first round alone, you had Spencer Hyde, who won the first Bradenton edition of WSOPM in 2023, taking on 2025 WSOPM champion Steve King in the first pair out. Are you kidding me? Several pairs later, Jason Harris and Jim Halsey, two of the best to ever do it in PDRA Pro Nitrous, paired up. A couple pairs after that, Shawn“ Murder Nova” Ellington and Stevie“ Fast” Jackson, who’ ve traded blows online, squared up on the track. These are the kinds of matchups that make our job as storytellers fairly easy.
Aside from a challenging third round that saw just about every driver have to pedal their way to the finish line, we saw side-by-side racing through to the final round, where Derek Menholt – who raced his way into the very first WSOPM at Bandimere Speedway in 2017 by winning the Wild Card Shootout – went red by. 006 seconds. I could say that gave the $ 75,000 win to Stevie Jackson, but with a 3.566, he was ready to take it anyway had Derek left on time.
I could go on and on about everything else that happened throughout the race weekend, but you’ ll have to flip the pages to read more from the U. S. Street Nationals. Craig interviewed Stevie late into the evening following the winner’ s circle celebration, and the resulting Q & A serves as this issue’ s cover story. Stevie breaks down what it took to win the event and explains why you’ ll likely see much more from him this season.
I’ m peeling back the curtain a bit here when I say the DI Winter Series finale, the World Series of Pro Mod, had even more incredible storylines, and we’ ll explore as many of those as possible in the WSOPM Issue – DI # 200! – next month. DI
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Nate Van Wagnen Editor-in-Chief
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8 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated. com Issue 199