$10K Drag Shootout 3: Team Homegrown Wins Final Spot!

$10K Drag Shootout 3: Team Homegrown Wins Final Spot!

Radial-tire racers Jim and Amanda Howe are set to lead their uber-talented Team Homegrown squad into the Horsepower Wars $10K Drag Shootout: No Prep Edition presented by Lucas Oil Products after earning a decisive victory in the popular vote deciding the final entrant in the four-team drag racing showdown.

Howe, a bail bondsman by day and a racer by night, hopes to seize victory and the $10,000 that goes along with it, with his wife — an experienced racer in her own right — Amanda “Puddin” Howe at the controls. Howe’s team also includes his father, Jim, Sr., along with Bret Moore and highly-accomplished chassis builder and no-time and radial-tire standout David Reese. The formidable crew is looking forward to the challenge of building their next race car over the course of 10 days and with $10,000 on the Lucas Oil $10k Drag Shootout later this year. 

Amanda Howe

Jim is the reigning Limited Drag Radial national champion, behind the wheel of his supercharged 1968 Camaro, and Reese, a dominant figure in no-time racing in recent years, set the small-block doorslammer world record in February in his supercharged Radial Versus the World Camaro. Together, and with the other members of the team, they’ve assembled, Howe is confident they have the tools and talents to win.

“I’m really excited. I think our team can accomplish the goal. I know it’s going to be a tough undertaking, doing it in 10 days, but we’ve all worked together as a functioning team, so I feel like we can do it. And I think we’re better at it. There are some really good teams there, and it’s like any raceday…you never know until you’re there. I don’t think we’ll have a difficult time, but then again, the show could make a liar out of me. We may not even get off home-plate, but we’re all excited about it.”

Jim Howe, Sr.

Amanda, who grew up street racing and later graduated into the drag radial scene in its earlier years, will take center stage as one of the four drivers who will face off in a winner-take-all, elimination contest on a no-prep surface once the ten build days elapse.

“We have a three-year-old, which is a full-time job for her, but the funding also hasn’t been there to run another car at the level we want to,” Jim says of his wife and his mission to put her in the limelight. “That, combined with some health problems she’s had, she just hasn’t gotten to race in the last few years, so this is a great opportunity to get her behind the wheel and let her have some fun. She works her ass off, too, so it will be a good thing for all of us.”

Howe adds, “I enjoy working on the car as much as I do driving it, so it’ll be a lot of fun for me.”

“My dad has been everything to me throughout life; he’s taught me a lot, and I grew up around him doing his own racing, and now he travels with us and helps us work on the car,” Jim says as he continues introducing the team’s roster. “He’s never really had any limelight for what he’s capable of doing — he was focused on raising us kids and providing for his family, and so this is a great opportunity for him. He’s my go-to, even today, when we need to make something work that doesn’t exist — he’s the one I go to. 

David Reese

“Bret is a machinist and fabricator and can do anything,” he says of Moore. Jim, Jr. and Moore are both skilled engine builders — Howe previously operated an engine-building business for customers, but other endeavors reduced that to doing engine work on a lesser scale. Nevertheless, it will pay huge dividends as the team sources, machines, builds, and fires an engine in just 10 days.

“And David, he will absolutely be a key part of us winning this,” Howe shares. “He is a big part of our success with the drag radial car, and I don’t think anybody out there works faster or more efficiently than he does. This show and what tools we have at our disposal are obviously going to take us out of our normal element and force us to adapt, but in his shop, David would have no problem building a car in the timeframe. And Bret and I, with our tools in our hands, can absolutely get the job done.”

Bret Moore

The entire team, Howe says, has experience racing on dicey public streets at various points in their lives, and in recent years, Howe has raced his Camaro at select no-prep events, all of which gives them the knowledge they’ll need to set up and navigate a car on a racing surface 180-degrees removed from what he and Reese are accustomed to in the radial scene.

“It’s not something new for us. Amanda spent a lot of time in her younger years street racing in Tampa, I grew up in Detroit in the street racing scene. I street-raced most of my life and still do at times with the Camaro. We’ve done our share of no-prep and street racing, so we can make a car go down a gravel road…I’m not worried about that.”

As with any team coming into the $10K Drag Shootout, the unknown serves as one of the great challenges. Many teams begin planning and preparation for their engines and drivetrain components, but they never know what vehicle they’ll be blessed with or saddled with.

Jim Howe

“We don’t know what we’re going to get. I’ve been posed that question probably 50 times since last Thursday. We might show up and be given a school bus, but rest assured, if that happens, we’re going to build the baddest school bus they’ve ever seen. But when I go race, I want the best to show up — I don’t ever worry about what the other team is doing. My thing is being able to put this car, whatever it is, together in the timeframe we have. We never know what we’re going to be up against, but we’re not worried about the other teams,” he says.

“Bret and I make a lot of horsepower and David builds a great car. I just don’t think there’s anybody that’s better than we are,” Howe adds. “We want to represent not only our team and our abilities, but also the people that made it possible for us to be here. I want to show people that we can do what we say we can do. That doesn’t necessarily mean we have to win, because I think every team in this is a winner, so now it’s time to show what we can do, and that’s go out there and drag their asses with something we put together.”

** TEAM HOME GROWN ** TOP 10 FINALIST - 10K DRAGS SEASON 3 - NO PREP EDITION

** TEAM HOME GROWN ** TOP 10 FINALIST - 10K DRAGS SEASON 3 - NO PREP EDITION ANNOUNCED TOP 10 FINALISTS ➡️ https://bit.ly/2JifXPb “I feel I can bring something to the show that’s not been seen yet: a family team with a passion to go fast and no-quit attitude. I’ve raced my entire life with less than the rest, so this is right up my alley,” says Howe. Let us know how you think they'll do in the next season of $10K Drag Shootout No Prep Edition! Special thanks to Lucas Oil, Summit Racing Equipment, and many others for their sponsorship of the 10K Drags Season 3!

Posted by Horsepower Wars on Thursday, April 2, 2020

Team Homegrown will face off against returning champions Team Enemies Everywhere from Australia and its driver, Jamie Farmer, Team Free Form, with its driver Ryan Saiki, and Team Mid America Kustomz, with driver Nick Taylor in the Lucas Oil $10k Drag Shootout No Prep Edition.

Horsepower Wars Season 3 and the $10k Drag Shootout will be made possible by its title sponsor Lucas Oil as well as ARPBMR Suspension, Comp Cams, Dyna-Batt, E3 Spark Plugs, Holley, Kooks Header, Lucas Oil, MAHLE Motorsports, Moroso, Moser Engineering,  NOS, PROFORM PartsPRW IndustriesQA1Ron Francis, Summit Racing, SpicerTotal Seal, Victor Reinz, Tuff Stuff Performance, Mickey Thompson Performance Tires & Wheels, B&M, Impact Race Products, and more.

About the author

Andrew Wolf

Andrew has been involved in motorsports from a very young age. Over the years, he has photographed several major auto racing events, sports, news journalism, portraiture, and everything in between. After working with the Power Automedia staff for some time on a freelance basis, Andrew joined the team in 2010.
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