After 25 years of a seven day work week, entrepreneur Mike Maggio has traded his desk in for an Extreme Pro Mod. He’s not messing around either. Maggio, a newcomer to the sport, is running for the top right out of the gate .It’s a case of Top Alcohol meets Door Slammer and a lover of extreme sports at heart.

Rumor’s had spread through out the pits about a massive Top Alcohol engine. It was more impressive up close than rumors had given credit. Maggio explained that he had recently purchased a Brad Anderson 521 Hemi Top Alcohol engine for his Pro Mod Corvette. “We just got the engine and have about seven passes. Our best out of the car so far is 220 mph.” Maggio said the engine makes around 3300 hp and that the team is having to take power out just to get it hooked up and down the track. “At this point we are trying to figure out where we need to be with the horsepower and get the right amount of power to the ground.” With nearly 40% of the power out of the engine, Maggio managed to get his first time number one qualifier spot with a 6.571 @ 220.15 mph and ran to semi’s at the PSCA’s Fall Nationals event.

Maggio like others has wisely hired the expertise he needs to do the job. O’Bannon racing was on hand to take care of tuning the engine and clutch. The O’Bannon racing team is certainly no stranger to this type of set up. The team is currently number one in the NHRA’s Top Alcohol Funny Car class with a long prior history of racing Top Alcohol dragsters. Maggio has hired the O’Bannon team for the remainder of 2009 and all of 2010. “It’s been a real learning curve for us, since we started racing last year with a blown alcohol combination, explained Maggio. We know we need help. Several month’s ago we had Pro Stock Champion Mike Bell come out and tune our chassis.” Maggio is running a 9 person crew including his son Wade, who is also working on the clutch and good friend, Martin Charles, master fabricator and top end man. One of the challenges has been to simply organize a team process with so many people involved.

As an extreme sport enthusiast, Maggio has also been busy setting records at Bonneville while not at the drag strip. In August of this year, he set a new record in the APGU class with a stock non- fairing four cylinder custom made V-Quad Harley at 164.172 mph. Maggio stated he had previously been 154 mph on the Harley and that he has set a goal to push the bike 180 mph before the end of 2009. Maggio said that the whole family is into something. His wife Holly and daughter Meghann race horses and support both his drag racing and Bonneville speed record efforts. Maggio raced dirt bikes as a kid and then went to work building his Magco Drilling business. Now at age 53 , he is ready to relax and enjoy some extreme drag racing.