It was big news when word got out that Jeff Lutz was making his return to drag-and-drive competition with his Mad Max Camaro Pro Mod at Sick Week, and the veteran Street Outlaws cast member was all to eager to get back into it.

“I’ve been trying to do it the past couple of years, but my schedule never allowed,” Lutz explains. “Once I found out we would have the winter off, I told Tom [Bailey] I would try to make it. He always leaves a spot open for me every year.”

Lutz last drag and drove at Drag Week in 2016, where he won the class and lowered the average to 6.19 for the week. With an opening in his schedule, Lutz dusted off the 2012 Jerry Bickel Race Cars-built chassis and its Westside Machine Racing Engines-built, 540 cubic inch, big-block Chevy engine that’s built from a Trick Flow Specialties block with 12-degree Profiler cylinder heads and has been fitted with a Comp cam, Isky lifters, and T&D rocker arms.

A pair of Precision Turbo 88mm turbochargers provide the pressurized atmosphere while an Aeromotive fuel system supplies the fuel to a set of Billet Atomizer injectors. Jeff Lutz relies on a Rossler Turbo 400 transmission with a Gear Vendors overdrive unit and a ProTorque torque converter to get the thousands of horsepower back to the Quick Performance rearend housing that is packing a Strange Engineering center section. The Pro Mod-style chassis is suspended by a set of Penske struts and shocks and wired with Speedwire products.

One upgrade Lutz made to CRC Brake Clean-sponsored, Mad Max Camaro prior to the event was a new FuelTech FT600 ECU.

“It makes it so much easier to switch from gas to alcohol,” Lutz says of the new engine management system. “I was the first guy to run dual fuels in drag-and-drive with Evil Twin and now everyone is doing it.”

On check-in day, Mad Max made its presence known with a 6.19 at 239 mph run and backed that up with a 6.12 at 232.

It wasn’t a surprise when Jeff Lutz set the pace in the Unlimited class on day one with a 6.15 at 247 mph, but the tacky, radial-prepped track surface at Bradenton Motorsports Park on day two proved to be tough to get a handle on and he only managed a 6.93 at 213 mph.

Moving on to Gainesville Raceway, Lutz reclaimed the overall lead with a 6.28 at 229.70 mph performance, but that would come at a cost.

“On the third day, it kept sneezing in the run,” Lutz tells us. “Every run it would cough and we couldn’t put our finger on it. We had the best tuners logging in and trying to figure it out, but with 40 pounds of boost, it took its toll on the timing belt and bent all of the valves.”

Lutz and his drag-and-drive co-pilot Scott Murray stayed late that night to refit the engine with eight new connecting rods, a new timing belt, and another set of cylinder heads before getting on the road to South Georgia Motorsports Park.

The problem that caused the damage at Gainesville, however, would rear its ugly head once again at SGMP.

“In Georgia, on the first run the [oil pump] mandrel broke and it lost oil pressure because it shook and sneezed,” Lutz recalls. “We checked the oil for shavings, but it was clean. On the second pass, it didn’t sneeze until the end and bent two rods and torched the head. It was catastrophic.”

Despite the carnage, Mad Max clocked a 6.31 at 205.47 mph, but Lutz decided to throw in the towel.

“I could have had it fixed and made it back to Florida, but I couldn’t see the point in it since we couldn’t figure it out.”

He, along with Murray and Lutz’s son, Jeff Jr. swapped in a new engine on the Sunday following the event in the Orlando Speed World pits. Lutz then headed north to FuelTech in Georgia, where Luis De Leon, Anderson Dick, and other FuelTech staff bolted Mad Max to the company’s hub dyno. They eventually found the issue and were able to make the changes to remedy it.

“We thought the intake gasket was leaking and the injectors were shutting off, but we couldn’t figure out why,” Lutz notes. “It kept dropping the number two cylinder and made 3,000 horsepower on seven cylinders.

Mad Max is back,” Jeff Lutz exclaims. “It made mad horsepower on low boost — she’s ready! It plagued us all through Sick Week,” he says of the issue. “The 6.15 was not fast. I put five more passes on it on day one and it kept sneezing every run. I kept on going and had so much fun. It was nice being with everyone that I used to drag-and-drive with. I went into Sick Week thinking going fast would be easy and the drive would kick my ass, but it was the other way around.”

Tom has taken drag-and-drive to the next level. I watched them tech in 330 cars super-quick. It’s been eight years since my last one. I was blown away by the drag prep and how it caters to the drag radials, so I’m taking notes and maybe next time I’ll show up on drag radials.

Mad Max has run as quick as 5.78 at 246 in Pro Mod trim, essentially the same trim just without the Gear Vendors overdrive, at the Street Car Super Nationals in Las Vegas, so there is plenty of performance to be had from the Camaro. We queried Lutz as to him competing at more drag-and-drive events this year, and it once again comes down to his schedule.

“I don’t know if there is more in my future. The NPK (No Prep Kings) schedule is coming out real soon and I need to wait for that before I book anything else.”