No matter how well you think you know your race car and how it handles and reacts, it can still wander off with a mind of its own, and when you start really turning up the juice and putting some power down, things can escalate pretty quickly, and Top Dragster racer Jamie Hotard just about turned a quick trip down the track into a short flight in his very unique, turbocharged 1999 Racetech digger at the No Problem Raceway down in Louisiana.

Hotard is no stranger to wheeling fast race cars as he once ran a boosted Outlaw Drag Radial Mustang that made 7.8-second laps down the quarter mile like a bracket car on the Fun Ford Weekend Circuit. Soon, that lost its appeal for Hotard and he got out of racing, but like so many others, he got the itch and made his way back to racing in a big way. 

After purchasing the Racetech dragster, Hotard decided to go a different route than most of his peers and stuck to his boosted Ford roots, mounting up a pair of 72mm Precision Turbos to the engine. Powering the dragster is a 427 cubic inch Windsor that has a Scat crank for a backbone, GRP rods, and custom Aries pistons. Topping off this nasty blue oval short block is a set of Trick Flow high port heads that were hogged out by TEA then finished with an Edelbrock Super Victor intake. The fuel comes from a set of 160 lb./hr. injectors that get their orders from a FAST XFI system and tuned by none other than X275 kingpin DJ Loiacano. Taking all that power is a Powerglide transmission that Hotard built himself, which is mated to a Neal Chance bolt-together converter.

During the process of trying to get the car down the track, Hotard was experiencing some nasty tire shake, so a wheel speed sensor was added to remedy this. The wheelstand was not done on purpose, but came from a two-step that failed, a whole lot of horsepower, and a track that hooked really, really well. Even with the attempt at a short flight the dragster laid down a 1.20 60 foot with the back tires. Hotard is looking forward to getting the car dialed in and making some uneventful six-second passes soon.