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…
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