One of Gunner and Poland ' s biggest accomplishments came with the addition of Lil Gangstas to the World Series of Pro Mod in 2025 and then to the entire three-race 2025 / 2026 DI Winter Series.
adding Lil Gangstas to all 16 SCT events spread out from coast to coast. It’ s all part of their mission to take the brand to new heights.
“ Everybody feels competitive. The payouts are insane,” Poland says.“ We just keep trying to evolve and create new things, whether it be paying back eight spots or six spots. If some guys show up with 200 bucks and they leave with $ 2,000, they’ ll show up to every single one. It’ s just continuing to evolve that and make everybody feel like there’ s a home.
“ I say it all the time: with Lil Gangstas, it’ s a family,” Poland adds.“ We call them the OGs of Lil Gangstas, but there’ s probably 50 to 60 of these guys that, if they can make it, they’ re traveling around the country to run Lil Gangstas whether we’ re in California or Florida. It’ s a whole community that’ s really been created, not just the class itself.”
As the class has grown, Gunner and Poland have had to evolve on the business side. As Lil Gangstas started to take off, the duo charged tracks a flat fee to add Lil Gangstas to their event. That included the right to use the name, logo, rules, and so on. Now, with backing from Strange Engineering and Brian Tooley Racing( BTR), the conversation has shifted to collaborating with as many tracks as possible to protect and expand the brand.
“ My goal is to work with every track in the country that I can to run real Lil’ Gangstas races at no charge to them,” Gunner says.“ I don’ t want to charge the tracks a dime. I don’ t want to charge the promoters a dime. Now, there’ s things that I expect to be done to save the name and save the class and how it’ s ran, but I want to work with all of them because that gives the companies that are supporting us more juice. Strange and BTR are getting more coverage by us having that business model. We believe support from companies that believe in grassroots drag racing at this level is where I think Lil’ Gangstas will stay indefinitely. We will use that to push the class to every track in the country.”
Gunner and Poland are doing all of this for a lot of reasons, but one of them is to simply leave the sport better than they found it. They saw a gap, came up with a solution, and grew it into something bigger than they could’ ve imagined when they started out.
“ I hope that we’ ve done something special enough and unique enough that when people want to get into drag racing, especially your small-tire, heads-up-style drag racing, we’ ve given them a benchmark and an easy rule set to adapt,” Gunner says.“ Because if you can race Lil Gangstas and you can get to that point where you’ re running 5.30 on a 28x10.5, which is a phenomenal goal for anybody starting drag racing, then guess what? You’ re competitive in a lot of True Street races across the country. You can run so many things if you can get to that benchmark of the Lil Gangstas 5.30 cap. So I think that’ s it. I think giving the sport a clear benchmark of where people can start drag racing is a huge deal because I didn’ t have that growing up.”
“ When I came into the sport, we were in this weird dance of roles and there really wasn’ t a whole lot of racing going on like there is now,” Poland adds.“ There’ s races going on every weekend. I feel like racing’ s at a really good place at this exact moment. There’ s still arguing and bitching all the time, but I say it all the time: just leave it better than I found it. Looking
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