Jason Lee is just getting started. After working around the clock to rebuild the car that was so badly damaged after last fall’s wreck that the front fender was pushed into the windshield, he loaded his rig and headed to the season opener at Bradenton, where he qualified in the top spot, won the race, set a record as the first NMRA Drag Radial racer to run 7’s in competition and accepted the $1,000 bounty from Team Z Motorsports for doing so.

But the well-known and well-respected racer from Maumee, Ohio, is the first to say those achievements were stepping stones to the championship he has his sights set on and there’s no time to kick back now. “I think he’s going to have a really good year,” said Trace Meyer, friend and fellow Drag Radial racer. “He’s earned a lot of respect with his persistence the past couple of years because he just doesn’t quit. He’s had engine problems to where he was pulling the engine out and putting it back in all the time, and this was really one of the first races that he went all the way through without some sort of mechanical issue. The car ran really well with his NMRA engine and he’s going to leave it in and concentrate on one combination.”

Lee knows it’s just a matter of time before other Drag Radial racers pick up where he left off and put a string of 7’s on the board, so watch for him and his 360-cubic inch, ProCharger F1R-equipped Mustang to visit the oh-so-sweet 7-second zone again soon. After all, the word “content” just plain doesn’t come up when his friends talk about what kind of racer he is. “Over the past four or five years, I’ve watched Jason get better and better,” said Dave Zimmerman of Team Z Motorsports. “He has worked his butt off.”

PowerTV: I really don’t know which hard-earned accomplishment to congratulate you on first.

Jason Lee: Well, running 7’s on that tire is definitely a tough achievement. There have been a lot of people under NMRA rules who have tried to do it over the years, and it’s a hard feat and I feel privileged to be able to do it. It’s like you’ve accomplished something that everyone has tried to do. I just hope I can keep it up.

PowerTV: The word is you and Sean Lyon ran the fastest side-by-side passes in NMRA Drag Radial history.

Jason Lee: Yeah, that was in the finals when I ran 7.974 and Sean ran 8.053. I ran an 8.001 in qualifying, and I was thinking to myself, “Are you kidding me?”, because I couldn’t get the 7-second pass. All I needed to do was duck down and I could have gotten it, but on Sunday, the air stayed good going into eliminations and I went 7.974 and also 7.987.

PowerTV: Which do you consider more of a personal achievement between winning the race or running a pair of 7s in competition?

Jason Lee: I liked that I backed up the 7-second pass, but what was most impressive to me was how consistent the car was after bouncing off the wall at about 150 miles per hour during testing last fall at Milan Dragway.

PowerTV: Were you injured in that wreck?

Jason Lee: I had some bruising throughout my chest area from the belts and I had a dent in my helmet from hitting the roll bar, but I was more in shock than anything else.

PowerTV: What do you remember about it?

Jason Lee: Typically, Trace Meyer and I run together for test passes, but for whatever reason, for that pass, we had decided not to. That was a good thing, because when the rear end came out from under the car and the car went left and crossed the center line, it was right where Trace’s car would have been, so it definitely would have been a multi-car accident.

I remember being blacked out for a moment, and when I came to, it was strange, because Trace’s car was facing me and all I could think of was, “I hope I didn’t hit him.” But he had just made a pass in front of me and he had got back in his car and drove down the track right after I wrecked.

I was still pretty shaken up, but there were a bunch of guys there from the minute it happened.

Trace and his brother (Andy Meyer) and another guy I didn’t even know helped put my car in the trailer and Trace’s brother dropped my rig off at home and helped me unload the car, which was kind of hard to do considering it didn’t even have a front rim on it after the wreck. Before this happened, I thought nothing would ever happen to me.

When something like that happens, you’re in shock and it doesn’t even sink in. I was thinking I could get it in the trailer and fix it, but when I got home and the shock of it started to wear off, I was thinking it was a mess and it was going to take more than just me to put it back together.

PowerTV: Has the cause of the wreck been determined?

Jason Lee: It’s pretty hard to say, but the track was really cold. As a drag racer, when the air is perfect, you’re thinking, “I just need to get a pass in,” and you’re not thinking about moisture on the track, or that it’s getting cold or that it’s making too much horsepower and you shouldn’t do it. I shouldn’t have gone down the track.

PowerTV: You had quite an outpouring of support from friends and supporters on message forums, including nmradigital.com, yellowbullet.com and others.

Jason Lee: People were sending wishes and offering to donate things and offering their Mustangs to use. These were friends as well as people I didn’t even know. It was very flattering.

PowerTV: You surprised a few people by getting back to the track so quickly after the wreck.

Jason Lee: A lot of people stepped up to help me get the car back together. It’s a pretty expensive deal to get it fixed in such a short amount of time. I spent the next couple of days stripping the car down to nothing. Greg Chandler, who has a body shop in St. Albans, West Virginia, offered to put the car on a frame machine and see what the damages were and to see what we’d have to put in it.

We determined that it needed 90 percent of a front clip. Another NMRA Drag Radial racer, Mauro Vitale, donated the front clip for the car and shipped it to the body shop for me. The rims that were on my car in Bradenton were off of John Kolivas’ car. Trace Meyer lives nearby and came over to help plumb the fuel system and he was offering fittings right off of his car.

Another buddy from up in Michigan, Mark “Junior” Southwell, had fenders for the front of the car that he offered and a lot of people donated things they could have sold to someone else and gotten money for. Jason Smith from PA Racing and Dave Zimmerman from Team Z Motorsports both offered front suspension components.

Enzo Pecchini offered everything short of the clothes off of his back. He called me immediately to talk about the wreck and about how he got his car back on the road after his wreck, and reiterated everything I needed to know. It was definitely appreciated. Dennis Bell offered support as well.

Everyone came together as a whole to make this happen. As soon we got it straight and the front clip replaced, the car went to Jeff Rolfes at JR Racecraft. He had other cars in his shop, but he put them aside for a little bit to help me get ready for Bradenton.

PowerTV: What all did Jeff Rolfes at JR Racecraft have to do?

Jason Lee: We had to re-do the motor plate, the mid-plate and the exhaust. After that, I took the car to get painted and then took it back to Jeff’s and we built a custom 9-inch rear-end for it and he built upper and lower rear control arms for it and also the front water cell and he mounted the radiator in the car.

We pretty much got all of the fabrication work done on the car about three days before going to Bradenton. If it wasn’t for Jeff, there is no way in heck I would have ever made it. He bought a house six months ago and he hasn’t moved into it yet. Every time I smash a header tube doing wheelies, he stops what he’s doing and rebuilds it. He doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough for the amount of work he puts in and the stuff that he does. If he didn’t do it, I wouldn’t be out there running right now.

To be able to have the car as consistent as it was in Bradenton speaks volumes for Jeff’s ability to put it back together and do things like make sure the motor and trans are straight. Everything was literally new. The only thing that was the same was the color of the car.

PowerTV: Who had your back at the Bradenton race?

Jason Lee: Cope Cusumano was basically the crew member who worked with me that weekend. We just got in the rig and headed to Florida. We left that Wednesday at 6 p.m. and drove straight through to get there. I’ll tell you, we drank a lot of energy drinks. If he hadn’t been there, I would have been dying trying to make that drive. He lined the car up and lent me a hand all weekend, too.

PowerTV: The Drag Radial class is so exciting to watch because the cars can be so unpredictable. As a racer, what attracts you to that class?

Jason Lee: Seeing how fast I can go with a limited, truly street tire. You can’t just let go of the button and go with one of these things. You have to know what you’re doing and how to manage it. Radial tires are a challenge to hook up and there are only a handful of people who can do what we do on these BFGs. I wish every outlaw radial class would be on a tire that was limited like this. I think you’d really see who knows how to do this and who doesn’t. It becomes a tuner’s race instead of a pocket book race.

PowerTV: Take us through a pass in a Drag Radial car.

Jason Lee: With a Drag Radial car, you need to be on your toes, because if the tires spin, it’s going to blow the tires off. You need to be quick at pedaling so the car can recover. Once you get through the critical power points, the car is very stable and it’s like driving to the grocery store. At that point, there’s no swaying back and forth and you could drive with one finger on the wheel. Of course you wouldn’t, but you could.

PowerTV: How hard is it to get a Drag Radial car to hook?

Jason Lee: It’s very difficult. You can tell the guys who have been doing it for a couple months versus the guys who have been doing it for a couple of years because they’re the ones you see going down track.

PowerTV: What makes you choose a supercharger over a different power-adder?

Jason Lee: I like how it sounds and looks, and I like the product and the support from the company. ProCharger really supports their racers and they’re at the events getting feedback from the racers and making a better product if they need to. Every time you turn your back, the guys from ProCharger are there. Anyone who is at the track and wants to learn, that’s whose product I want to run.

PowerTV: How is the new gear drive on your supercharger working out?

Jason Lee: I think it has helped out. There is a little horsepower gain. When we get into racing at Joliet and Milan, we’ll see if the gear drive made a difference. The gear drive also adds a safety feature that eases your mind when you’re racing. When you’re sitting there, before you let go of the button, you don’t have to think about whether your belt is going to go flying off or whether your crank is going to break.

As hard as we spin the blowers and pulling on the crank shaft as hard as we do with the cog belt, belts are flying and going through hoods and things like that, so from that perspective, I like the fact that they allowed the gear drive this year.

PowerTV: What’s your game plan for the season?

Jason Lee: My main goal is to attend all of the NMRA races and do as well as I can against some of the best racers in the country and see if at the end of the day, it’s good enough to win a championship. I’ve raced NMRA since 2004, but I’ve always done it in a show up and see what happens kind of way, and then when I’d get home, I’d always change combinations and race other stuff.

This year is the first year that I’m going to dedicate the whole season to NMRA and not change the car and the combination around so that when I show up and race, everything is ready to go. I kind of learned that you can’t win a championship racing 14 different things. You have to stay dedicated to doing what you’re doing. You take yourself out of the opportunity to win when you’re all over the country doing different things. If I can win the championship, that’s when I’ll know I’ve achieved something.

PowerTV: Your impressive start to the season is reason for your sponsors to celebrate.

Jason Lee: I’m a budget racer, just like most people, and I need all of the help I can get, so I really appreciate the help I get from ProCharger, MCRP, Fall Automotive Machine, Fel-Pro Performance Gaskets, JR Racecraft, Diamond Pistons, Trick Flow, BigStuff3, TCI, Stainless Works, The Supercharger Store, Custom Wire Sets – FireCore 50, Shark’s Art, Tireman, Team Z Motorsports, Tubing Jon, World Products and Part Time Performance and Patrick Barnhill, whom we call Barnyard.

PowerTV: Tell us about Part Time Performance, which you co-own with Patrick Barnhill.

Jason Lee: It’s based in Worthington, Ohio. We specialize in fuel injection systems, turbos, blowers. If someone is building a car, they should be able to call us and get just about everything they need. We tune cars, too. (877-566-RACE).

PowerTV: Any plans to run in any other classes in the future?

Jason Lee: I have some interest in doing some Super Street Outlaw stuff, but I don’t know that I’ll have an opportunity to do that this year. I like that class as well because of the limited size tire, but right now, my heart is with the radial racing. My trailer does hold two cars, so if I can financially figure it out, I’ll have a Super Street Outlaw car at some point, too.

PowerTV: You mentioned earlier that your family is very supportive of your racing.

Jason Lee: My wife, Julie, and kids, Morgan and Jordan, are very understanding. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to do this. I spend a lot of time out in the garage and in the shop, and when I was getting the car ready for Bradenton, I might have seen them a total of five hours a week. This takes a patient wife who knows this is your dream and what you want to do. She knows I want to go out and try to compete for a championship.

PowerTV: Last season, you and Trace Meyer treated us to a few grudge races at Milan Dragway. A group of us sitting in the stands didn’t know who to pull for because we like both of you so much.

Jason Lee: It was a lot of fun. It was a friendly, competitive thing to see who could go out and go the fastest and put on a show. Neither car was 100 percent at the time, but we got a kick out of everybody wanting to bet on our cars. We were just talking a bunch of crap. I think he blew my doors off.

PowerTV: What’s it like to see people walking around wearing the event T-shirt from Milan Dragway that features your car hanging the skinnies?

Jason Lee: Anytime your car is used in any type of advertising, it’s pretty cool to see, but what’s really cool is when you hear kids with their dads say they can’t wait to see your car next time out.