The challenge presented by no-prep drag racing is finding the hook. Clay Busby, who goes by the handle Thug Nasty, definitely lived up to his moniker at the Dirty South No-Prep Finals at Hub City Dragway in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Clay’s 1993 Mustang launched hard, went up on one wheel, landed on its side and bounced back on all four tires. He only had bruising from his safety harness and the car suffered minor damage.

“She decided to get a little crazy on that run,” he said. “It never scratched the car. It caved the front spindle cover in, but it never scratched the car. I don’t know how it didn’t flip over sideways, but everything was just right.”

You can see the run play out in the highlight from Speed Video’s livestream coverage of the race. You might expect that the damage would be far worse than it really was. We reached out to Clay to find out more about the pass, and it was far less dramatic for him inside the car than it looked on video.

“I left off the transbrake, come up into the lights, short-shifted, pedaled and about that time everything started dropping and it went right,” Clay explained. “I never did feel it go left.”

He ran in the True Street class and found that kind of hook running Mickey Thompson Pro drag radials. Yeah, scraping the bumper on street tires is nuts. The rest of the combo is pretty basic too. It’s a 5.3-liter LS engine fitted with a hydraulic-roller cam and an Edelbrock intake fed by a Nitrous Outlet Stinger II plate.

“It’s got a nice size pill on it and I’ve got a jamb-up, bad-ass tuner, Neal Smith, who makes everything happen for us,” Clay elaborated.

That nice size pill is a 275 shot, which is eased in on launch via a progressive controller. As you might imagine, softening the launch is key at a no-prep track.

“We run a Daytona Sensors progressive controller, which makes it where we can control the hit,” Neil, of Wicked Racing, said. “It’s just a nice cam, the right kit and a good combo.”

Apparently Clay asked Neil to turn it up right before this wild run. Neil did so and told Clay to “hold on.” He meant the should run a number, not land on it side. It turns out the front suspension travel limiters stretched and broke, letting the suspension travel a bit too far. That will all be fixed before Clay goes grudge racing again on December 3.

“We called it quits. I probably could have run it, but safety-wise it just didn’t feel right,” he told us. “We already unloaded the car this morning, tore it apart and ordered what we needed and it’s headed to the chassis shop right now to get some more safety measures.”

Be safe out there, Clay, and keep the shiny side up.