JASON COLLINS
PAUL GARGUS
Ken Quartuccio winning last year’ s Winter Series championship, Aaron Stanfield winning the WSOPM, Derek Menholt winning the Gatornationals – how proud are you of this entire group?
It’ s no surprise to me, because the plan all along was to assemble people that are capable of that. The same exact car that won World Series of Pro Mod with Aaron got swapped over and won Gainesville with Derek driving and Brandon tuning. Before all this, I don’ t even know how many radial records in LDR and Pro 275 we set with Paul Gargus driving. Then we had Jason [ Collins ] in Pro 275 and set the record and won all the races but a couple for two years with it. We won a championship and should have won another one. We were really in the hunt for the NHRA [ Pro Mod ] championship with Ken the year before last.
As far as Aaron driving for us, he’ s a great kid, a great driver. Me and Richard had separate cars, and Justin Bond was driving for me. When Justin had other obligations for the World Series, it opened up that car. Richard had the car Aaron had been in sold already, so we talked and moved him over. Aaron can drive anything with wheels. He don’ t care, just put him in it. Growing up around his dad, Greg and I bumped heads through Comp and Pro
KEN QUARTUCCIO
Stock Truck. So there’ s no surprise that Aaron is what he is – the family he comes from, they’ re all racers at heart.
Chris Terry was the crew chief for him, and he did a really good job. A lot of these guys try to show more of their hand than they need to, make mistakes, and knock themselves out. Chris is really good at not doing that. He solidified himself
DEREK MENHOLT in everybody’ s eyes by winning the World Series of Pro Mod, but he didn’ t need to do that for me to already know he’ s a next-level kind of crew guy. And he’ ll be the first to tell you that being part of this team with Steve Petty and Brandon Stroud hasn’ t hurt his cause.
At this point, your legacy in drag racing is already pretty well cemented, but looking ahead, what are some goals you’ d still like to achieve as an owner?
We’ ve got to get Paul back out. Our intention this year was to get Paul into a Pro Mod. He’ s never driven one; he’ s run all the fast radial stuff. That’ s still our intention, we just gotta get it done. These cars get to performing at a certain level, it makes you not want to take them apart. But we gotta get him back out racing. He’ s very much part of our team. He’ s been staying home so much, he probably don’ t feel like it right now, but he is.
And then, everybody asks me about driving. Everything I did previously was as a driver. But I never loved driving. I loved competing and making the cars fast. I’ ve looked at Comp and some other things, but there’ s a lot of family and business obligations that take priority over the thrill of wheeling a car. It’ s not that we’ ve got nothing left to prove – we haven’ t won an NHRA championship at this level yet, and we very much want to do that – it’ s just that once we assembled this team, I was done proving anything to anybody.
There’ s not a team in drag racing working harder than this one, I can promise you that. I’ m not cracking no whip on them, but I’ m letting them know daily that we need to be better, and we got the people that know how to do that. You can’ t buy it. That’ s something that a lot of people miss. You gotta put the work in and make it happen. We’ re not a bigger or smaller team in my eyes. We’ re just a team. That’ s the deal DI. DI DI
DI DI DI DI DI DI DI
May / June 2026 DragIllustrated. com | Drag Illustrated | 123