Well it has been a crazy 2024 season and we are about midway through the series now, so I figured I would post a little update/recap about our year so far...
If you have followed us for a bit, you know that we had to switch/step up classes for the 2024 season, jumping up to Renegade/Ultra Street from Limited Street. Building a car like this and making the required changes usually takes most a year plus to complete, however we had less than 3 months to finish everything. Rolling into the first race in February 22 all the way down in Gainesville, FL, we had too much to do and it literally came down to the wire. The 3 days before the race we were all working on absolutely no sleep and made the drive straight through from Michigan down to Florida showing up to the track with things still to finish on the car working nonstop in the pits on exhaust fumes for energy. But we were able to make our very first pass with the car. We had things and bugs to work out like any new car, but being able to make a pass after months of nonstop sleepless work, made it all worth it!
Rolling into Rockingham, NC on April 13th for the NMRA/NMCA race at The Rock...we continued to work through the new setup and were battling a very tight converter, but each pass we continued to make improvements and go faster and faster making our first official 4 second pass with a 4.97 at 150mph on our last run, which isn't fast for the class, but it was good progression on a brand new build with only a few passes under our belt.
The next race came up quick on May 3rd at Gateway in Madison, IL. We made some changes to the car and continued on our improvements making a 4.86 run at 147mph with the help of a converter change, the car was now doing power wheelies that we had to control. As we began to finally start working on suspension changes for each run, I noticed a weird EGT number during Q1 in cylinder 3 at the top of the run. Between rounds, I did a quick leakdown test on that cylinder and looked at it closely without finding any issue so we sent it for Q2, doing another power wheelie but no improvements on mph or ET. Again, the data didn't look good in that cylinder and showed that the cylinder was "gone" nearly the entire run...digging into it further I found a broken rocker, hurt cam, and bent valve ending our weekend early.
Not only did our race get cut short due to breakage, but on our way home from the track as I was driving my truck/trailer, a semi rear ended us pretty hard...long story short, insurance declared my trailer a total loss which left me without a trailer for the upcoming race. On top of this stress, I had to thrash to get the motor pulled from the car and rebuilt quick for the upcoming June 6th NMRA race at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, OH.
And instead of typing out the entire story that happened before the Norwalk race, I decided to just copy and paste my post from Facebook...
"Relentless! We won’t quit! We may not be the fastest car by any means cuz we still have a lot of work to put into the new combo, but one thing we won’t ever be is quitters… I haven’t had a minute to sit down and post about the last few weeks until now so here goes, get ready for a long post…
Well as most of you all know, while driving home from the St. Louis race, we were rear ended by a semi pretty hard, and long story short, insurance told me that the trailer was a total loss. So I had to juggle insurance junk, emptying the old trailer, trying to find a new trailer, setting it up, blah blah thrashing on that whole ordeal trying to jump through hoops to get transportation to even get to this Norwalk race…luckily everything worked out but it was a ton of work and sleepless nights, cuz if anyone has ever had to deal with it knows how much work finding a trailer, unpacking the old one and packing/setting up a whole new trailer is. It’s a lot. And I’m ocd which doesn’t help lol.
To top it off, as I posted previously, we had broke the motor in St. Louis in the Mustang as well…so in the midst of all the trailer fuckery, I had to get the motor pulled out asap and torn down etc. As we tried to fix the old motor, we discovered more and more issues/concerns with the old block and at the end of the day it was just done. That block got me thru like 4 years of racing so it didn’t owe me anything, I knew it was tired going into the year and was hoping to get it thru this season but at this level it just didn’t last. Knowing that I eventually needed a block and had plans in motion for a new motor, those plans now had to be pushed up and rushed lol so I need to put out a big thank you to Timothy Eichhorn at MPR Racing Engines for race prepping and getting our new gt500 block ready to rock. This one is epoxied and set up for alcohol so I don’t have to deal with running water thru the block anymore. Tim got that shipped as quickly as he could to us and it was suppose to be here Friday the week before the race, however R&L shipping (like every shipping company) dropped the ball…Monday (week of Norwalk) came around and 4pm ticked by and the block was still sitting at their hub with no schedule to deliver. So I hopped in my truck and drove all the way to the hub just in time before they closed w 10 minutes to spare, loaded up the block and drove it to Holbrooks…thankfully one of his guys stayed late to help me unload it so they could get to work on it Tuesday…
Now another important giant enormous shoutout needs to go to Chris Holbrook and Holbrook Racing Engines for getting the impossible done…they started working on the engine, having to make clearances for the new aluminum rods, oring it etc etc, then assemble the entire thing…that’s a lot of work and a lot of hours and very little time to do it. While I was waiting to hear the words “come get your motor” lol, I got the trailer as packed and prepped as I could, anticipating but not knowing if we were actually going to make it…at this point I knew we were going to miss Thursday test session…but I kept pushing forward and trying not to lose hope. Luckily Chris finally told me, come get this thing, so I hauled ass to his shop Thursday night at around 7pm, again his guys stayed late to finish the motor and help me load it. They seriously pulled off a miracle for me, so again giant thanks to Chris and all his guys at Holbrook Racing Engines. You are all amazing!
I got back to my shop around 830 ish -9pm and went into full thrash mode…Dan helped me set the motor into the car and then I did my thing, headphones full blast full thrash lol. At around 3am Friday I was almost done, minus a few things, and we decided to get the trailer loaded. Now remember we never used this trailer yet, and I set it up without having the car or anything in it but tried to lay it out and plan everything around measurements and guesses and luckily I was really close on everything and we were able to load up my toolbox, golf cart and car without any major struggles or drama. Then I drove thru sunrise, arrived at the track and started to setup…and then continue to finish the car. We finally got heat into the pipes for the first fire up just after Q1 ran, so we missed that. But…did not have one issue or hiccup in the process. We continued to thrash and Q2 was called but me being me and wanting to be sure/not rush/do something stupid, I skipped Q2 to be safe.
Everything was looking good so we prepped and made the call for Q3! Not gonna lie, I was nervous, had not slept in days, and was running everything thru my head hoping I didn’t forget anything…I let go of the button on the car with a guess/safe tune up in the car…it spun, but I got back into it for data. Note that this motor is totally new, block/rods/crank/pistons/cams etc so the combo was different than previously and obviously it was now making more power down low so we adjusted the tune for the motor and suspension and tried again for Q4 Saturday morning…car left and then spun again. Frustrated cuz I took a ton of power out of it and it still spun, now I had to pull something out of thin air for E1 coming up. And to be honest, I knew we had very little chance of getting past E1 because we were paired up with one of the fastest cars on the property, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to make a clean hit without spinning, that was my goal now lol!
E1 comes up and I let go of the button, did my job right on the tree, the car left, didn’t spin (honestly I took toooo much out of it this time but whatever), and made a full hit running a new PB of 4.830 at 149mph with a safe safe “not ready to blow up this new motor yet” tune in it…now we had DATA!!! I was so happy, even tho I lost, I didn’t care because I was proud of us for doing so much in so little time with everything going on that we had going on. The simple fact that we had made it there and made a clean hit made everything worth it. And thru the whole thrash of everything, we did not have one issue with the car mechanically, nothing blew off the car, nothing leaked, nothing nothing-ed!! Which was awesome as well looking back on it.
We have a ton of work to do on this car still as far as ironing it out, but given the circumstances and everything that had happened, I couldn’t be more proud of our team and what we accomplished. When the trailer got totalled, I thought about bailing…and when the motor was as bad as it was, on top of the trailer, I really considered taking a time out for the rest of the season…because all of that is a lot to handle just in itself plus other stuff going on in life and with family, I was probably the closest I’ve ever been to quitting or taking a time out with racing. But I just can’t, idk it’s something inside of me that won’t let me stop…and I want to say thank you to all of my family and friends who stood behind me, encouraged me and supported me. As well as to all of my sponsors who pitched in and helped, thank you!!
Relentless. 
that name continues to reflect and define us."
And thats where we are at now...the next upcoming race is July 18th at US-131 Motorsports Park in Martin, MI.
