HOT ROD Magazine’s insanely popular Drag Week horsepower marathon is still a few months from hitting the open road, but preparations are already well underway in shops not just here in the states, but overseas for that much-talked-about annual event.

The week-long tour brings together some of the finest street and strip cars the world has to offer and could be well considered the “Ironman” of our sport, and if anyone hopes to unseat Larry Larson, the dominant overall winner of the last three consecutive Drag Weeks and the first competitor to record a six-second lap last year, they’ve certainly got their work cut out.

As they were last year, the challengers to the throne will be throwing the kitchen sink at their machines to take down Larson, and one driver considered to be a legitimate threat to unseat the champ is 2007 winner Denny Terzich and his wicked Project “Sick Seconds” ’69 Camaro.

To reclaim his glory and take aim at the champ, Terzich has enlisted the services of a 2,000-plus horsepower, 589 cubic inch big block boosted by an F3R ProCharger and a full Aeromotive belt-drive fuel system. With that kind of power harnessed under the hood, these ghastly beast ought to fly, but even sitting still, Terzich’s machine turns some heads, having garnered multiple awards for its detail and craftsmanship. Among them are “Best Engineered” and Best in Class” awards at the Pittsburg Autorama and another “Best in Class” at the Detroit Autorama.

Terzich and the ProRides team intend to hit several races across their Northeastern home region this spring and into the summer to get the supercharged combination finely tuned for an all-out assault on Drag Week and, more specifically, the world-beater Chevy II of Larson. As an illustration to the “Sick Seconds” name, Terzich and company intend to light up the scoreboards with six-second laps at each stop on the Drag Week 2011 tour, and with the way the competition is expected to be at the top of the pack, they’ll need every bit of that.