The Evergreen Energy of Street Outlaws

The Evergreen Energy of Street Outlaws’ Larry “Axman” Roach

What does it mean to meet a challenge head-on? What does it mean to lend one’s self completely to those moments, and that process? If you listen to Larry “Axman” Roach, it means an exhilaration just in the doing of it, and sheer joy when those goals are reached.

And being young in rural Virginia, watching his father and uncles work in the logging business – a field which he also entered – the deck would not appear stacked in your favor, out there in the world. That’s hard to appreciate as a child, but hindsight lends perspective. As Larry recalls, “Growing up where I grew up – living on a mile dirt road – we were poor, looking back. When you grow up as a kid you don’t realize you’re poor, and that you don’t have the money. I mean, we ended up playing barefooted; we didn’t have a clue! We were living it up! We had family, that’s all we had. So we lived it up!”

“Axman” Larry Roach.

As it turns out, during those years his extended family played a key role in instilling the competitive drive – an imperative, almost – which would define his future success. He explains, “Growing up, I had a couple cousins that were about seven years older than me – I was around seven or eight and they were sixteen – and just watching them play with their cars on the street, it kinda got me, wanting to outrun them. I think that’s where I got the fever from.”

Indeed, that urge to out-run, out-hustle, and overall out-compete those in his sights is what has defined Larry broadly, in both racing and business. As he says, “I was watching my cousins race, and just wanting to beat them, drove me to working harder, to figure out how to get money to compete with them.” Perhaps coincidentally, it was in those cousins’ garage that Larry began to teach himself the skills and know-how necessary to make that happen. “By the time I was 15 years old, I was working on their cars, in their garage,” he explains, continuing, “I would go to [their] garage, just trying to figure out how to make cars faster. I would pull engines down, rebuild them, try different things, call people, and try to learn everything I could about engines. And that’s where the bug really started.”

When my car turns sideways on the track, and I get out, I get an adrenaline rush! I’m excited. Even though it wasn’t the pass I wanted to make, or that my car didn’t go as fast as I wanted, it gives me that ‘scary’ adrenaline rush, and I taste it.

And as so many racing-obsessed people can relate, it quickly becomes an extremely…well, “focusing” activity. As he recalls, “I wasn’t really worried about anything in life but racing. All my friends would go out to parties and do stuff. With me, it was nothing about that – it was all about racing.”

While he spent the next few years building and working on an ever-increasing number of cars, his cousins had gotten as fast as the 6’s in the eight-mile. And as he simultaneously accumulated parts for his own build, to try to outrun them, Larry met Brent Austin, a fellow Virginian and owner of the much-feared Megalodon car. Brent offered to help put the new build together, and as Larry describes, “For the next two years I spent every dime I made – lived with my parents – and bought parts and bought parts,” in order to make that happen. And Brent came through, building Larry (then just 19) a Nova.

That Nova, in its first outing, went low 6’s on the first pass and had reached 5.60’s on only its third trip down the track. This was in the early 2000’s, when those numbers meant a little more than they do today. But they were far more important to Larry than just a performance threshold – they marked his first major victory. He explains, “So my cousins, when I made those passes, they basically quit drag racing. They have a couple cars now – they don’t race ‘em. I mean the competition was over with, as soon as that car came out.” Having proven his ability to claw away at, gain on, and ultimately overtake those he identifies as benchmarks, Larry set his sights a bit higher.

Around that same time he had noticed and gotten more into heads-up racing, and in those years (early 2000’s) 10.5W racing was the hot thing. So into the local 10.5W ring he went, and in short order proved he was competitive as a racer. “I raced [in it] until I got to where I could outrun everybody that showed up with 10.5W’s,” Larry says. And to win with consistency in that series was particularly improbable. As he explains, “The tracks that we raced on were just crap. I mean I hate to say that but it was back-woods… some of the worst tracks in Virginia.” But all throughout that, “We always heard about all these ‘fast’ cars, in North Carolina,” he recalls, “And about how everybody had these fast cars in North Carolina.” So, when he first put together the car in which he really began to build his reputation, a black 1964 Chevy II intended specifically for no-time grudge racing, with a big screw-blower through the hood and 275 drag radials at the back, he of course went down to the Carolinas to test his mettle. And it wasn’t long before he showed himself, and quite a few others, that he was more than capable of passing that test.

Axman hopes the switch from turbos to Procharger will be enough to cut through the competition.

At Shadyside Dragway in 2016, for example, a semi-finals birth and commensurate top billing with the likes Barry Mitchell and Ziff Hudson – the “top dogs of 275 drag radials” in the mid-2010’s, per Larry – certainly sparked some respect for his name. And then at another race meet, an outright win against Ziff in the finals cemented it. In his words, “That was really where my name in racing took off. When I outran Ziff. I started noticing more people were paying more attention and taking me seriously, once that race was over.”

Larry’s impressive performances on 275’s continued at Keith Berry’s inaugural Wooostock, in April of 2017 at South Carolina’s Darlington Dragway, where he chased Ziff across the 4.00-second barrier to become the second person in the threes on 275 drag radials. Larry’s finals-winning 3.99-second run was made against Ziff himself, who had achieved the record earlier in the event.

With his new setup, Axman is going rounds and looking more and more dangerous the deeper he goes.

However, keeping up with those records runs requires resources that very few in racing possess. As Larry puts it, “Once I was in radial racing for a while, I realized [it] was basically…comparing wallets. When the track was right, it was whoever wanted to throw enough money at it and blow his stuff up every pass to outrun the next one. And I knew then, that was not the type of racing I wanted to do.” And so he sought out a new frontier for himself, his next challenge to overcome.

And at the time, there was a certain television show about street racers and street racing, being aired on the Discovery Channel. “Watching TV with my kids, and being a diehard racer, I just love the drive – the competition – when someone thinks they’re bad, to try to outrun ‘em,” Larry says in reference to his first impressions of the Street Outlaws franchise. The first season of Street Outlaws: No Prep Kings was already in-progress and headed to GALOT Motorsports Park in Benson, North Carolina, and Larry knew that his car would fit big tires.

“I just decided – we were gonna’ load up, take our car down there, and just race it ourselves. And just try to have a good time,” he explains of that first step into the scene. He lost to Larry Larson in the race-your-way-in competition, “But we had probably the best time of our life,” he says of the experience. Larry knew then that No Prep Kings was where he wanted to race. “I’d been watching [Street Outlaws] on TV, and seeing all the Street Outlaws guys were all at No Prep Kings, and how they all talked about how fast they were…that was my next goal. To outrun them.”

Axman performs a burnout before his race against Russell.

And so, as the next season of NPK was about to commence at Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka, Kansas, Larry packed up and hit the road to begin his new challenge, on this new journey. Knowing that he could accumulate points over the first two events – even if he was not a regular Street Outlaws cast member – and possibly make the points cut-off to be included in the invitational field thereafter, Larry understood he had to take advantage of the opportunity. Indeed, even after arriving too early in his enthusiasm — and being kicked off the property and told to camp at the Walmart parking lot — he returned to the track and began to stake his claim in the NPK field. And he was successful in that, earning the points necessary to lock himself into the field of invited drivers for Season 2 of No Prep Kings.

…this brings out my real roots, where I came from. At three o’clock in the morning, standing on the side of a street? Well, it’s a little different person – a little different animal – in you.

Asked how he was able to so seamlessly make that transition from radial tire racer to no-prep competitor, his answer came easily: “It all started when I raced 10.5W’s, years ago. We were at tracks that were asphalt – so it was worse than no-prep. The tracks we raced at were ten times worse than no-prep. So on 10.5W’s, when we would leave the starting line we were skating, from the time we left, to the finish line. And that’s just the type of driver I’ve been my whole life. I’ve always driven over the edge.” Not only does he have that innate ability to do so, Larry keeps looking for it, and coming back for it. As he explains, “So that’s what caught my eye on no-prep. When my car turns sideways on the track, and I get out, I get an adrenaline rush! I’m excited. Even though it wasn’t the pass I wanted to make, or that my car didn’t go as fast as I wanted, it gives me that ‘scary’ adrenaline rush, and I taste it. I love the experience of driving over the edge, and not being able to predict the car. So that’s what No Prep Kings, and no-prep racing, has brought to me – that excitement.”

The street action that’s come with his involvement in the Street Outlaws: Fastest in America spinoff has only amplified that energy. And you can hear it in his voice as he speaks from the show’s filming in Nebraska. “I don’t even know how to describe how much I love this. Because this brings out my real roots, where I came from,” he begins, and continues, “At three o’clock in the morning, standing on the side of a street? Well, it’s a little different person – a little different animal – in you.” It’s to the extent that he finds excitement even in his encounters with the local authorities, while testing illegally. “Standing out there in the middle of road, doing burnouts and the cops pulling me over…being an adrenaline junkie, that makes my adrenaline pump, when I’m doing something like that,” he says. “Because I’m not into anything else but drag racing. So, with me illegally street racing? I knew then, I had found my niche – what I want to keep doing.”

But, if you disparage or doubt him, just do yourself a favor and don’t say it to his face. Because when you tell him that he can’t do something and you give him that challenge? You had better be ready to see it done.

See Axman compete against the nation’s top street racers on Street Outlaws Fastest In America, currently airing Mondays at 8 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.

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