Joey Martin And Neal Wantye Making Pro Extreme Debut With New Cars

At the end of the 2013 ADRL season, Joey Martin decided he didn’t want to race anymore — the days of chasing his payouts and giving his all finally rubbed him the wrong way. Enter fellow competitor Neal Wantye, who picked Martin up, dusted him off, and commissioned him to build a pair of brand-new Camaros for  2014 season. Not only that, but Wantye wanted him to drive one of the cars and was willing to pay him for the task.

It’s safe to say that Martin and Wantye will be on the right path by racing with the new Professional Drag Racers Association, which kicks off this weekend with the series’ inaugural event at the Rockingham Dragway. We caught up with him while he was on the way to the event with both cars in the trailer – amazingly enough, Joey Martin Race Cars took on the task of building them in a four-month timeframe and pulled it off.

“My name Hero comes from gettin’ work done in a hurry – I work fast and endless when I have to. Both cars are as identical as I could make them. They have 521 cubic inch Brad Anderson Hemi engines, PSI C-rotor screw blowers, Neal Chance billet-aluminum torque converters, and Lencodrive transmissions. We’re testing them on Thursday for the first time,” he says. 

As Martin has been a chassis builder for quite some time, we were curious as to what goes into an eighth-mile terror like the Pro Extreme machines he creates. You may remember his famous LOWMAD wagon, which was built in his shop and ended up as the world-record speed holder at the end of last year’s ADRL season. 

The cars have a 2,275-pound minimum weight, and Martin’s expertise is getting them to cross the scales exactly where necessary. “These eighth-mile cars aren’t built to go hanging 500 pounds of lead off of them – the chassis are built ultra-light. They’d break in half under tire shake with that much weight on them,” explains Martin. 

Both cars are built just like the LOWMAD car, and Martin is expecting to pick right up where he left off and get into the low 3.60’s and possibly the 3.50’s if the conditions are there this weekend. He feels that the aerodynamic advantage of the Five Star Race Cars Camaro body should allow him to get more out of the platform over where the LOWMAD left off. 

Interestingly enough, Martin makes scant use of lightweight materials like titanium in the build process, just a great attention to detail. The only titanium on these cars are the throttle and brake pedals, driveshaft enclosure, and driveshaft loop. When Martin built the last LOWMAD car, he weighed every single component before he put it onto the car in an effort to be conscious of the weight. 

“People don’t think about the extra accessories that go onto the car. I lighten up the rack and pinion when it comes out of the box, if a bolt sticks up out of the nut by five threads and only needs to stick out by one, I remove the excess. If you remove ten to twelve ounces 30 times around the car, you have 25 pounds that isn’t on it. My theory is to look at it, assess the situation, and if it doesn’t need to be that beefy, modify it, and if it doesn’t need to be there at all, it’s not there,” he says.

He wouldn’t be racing at all without the help of teammate and car owner Wantye, and was very appreciative of the opportunity he’s received.

“He owns both cars, and he’s paying me to drive the one and tune both of the cars. Before I was racing just for the love of it, and it’s nice to be getting paid to run these cars. Neal owns Flagship Transportation in Louisville, Kentucky, and he’s actually looking for drivers. Anyone looking for a good trucking job, he’s one of the highest-paying companies out there,” says Martin.

Building two brand-new cars in four months is a tremendous undertaking, and one that Joey Martin and JMRC pulled off with room to spare. The only thing left to determine is how successful they’ll be in 2014 and beyond.