Sick The Magazine started our print magazine in 2021 as a way to cover and highlight the drag and drive lifestyle, cars and people.
Recently, our flagship event, Sick Week Presented by Gear Vendors Overdrive, has been nominated by USA Today 10Best as a ‘Best Motorsports Race in the United States’ finalist.
“When we started the magazine in 2021, I knew an event would be the next step,” said Tom Bailey, founder of Sick The Magazine. “What I didn’t expect was how quickly Sick Week came to fruition, and the support of the community.”
“From the competitors that continue to amaze us with their performances, to the staff and volunteers that run the event, Sick Ward participants and the thousands of fans that come out to watch the action and cheer on their favorites, it means so much to so many.”
The Sick Wildcards program is launching, providing invites to Sick Week 2026 Presented By Gear Vendors Overdrive for the top drag-and-drivers this year.
They started their seasons with a bang at Sick Week Presented by Gear Vendors Overdrive, when Graham Hayes and the team of Devin Vanderhoof and Josh Davis not only won their classes, but finished in the top three overall.
Both of these powerful rides now set their sights on Rockingham Dragway, and the Sick At The Rock event Presented by Motion Raceworks.
With all four of our major Sick The Mag events sold out for 2025, next month's Sick At The Rock is one of your last chances to compete in a Sick The Mag drag and drive in 2025.
The announcement of Cleetus McFarland purchasing half ownership in Bradenton Motorsports Park recently didn’t come as a shock to many, as Cleetus currently owns the Freedom Factory circle track right next door in southwest Florida.
Cleetus is known for some radical ideas, but when he got together to discuss ideas with track co-owner and friend Victor Alvarez, they came up with a simple concept involving street cars and a top ten list.
“We’re doing this top ten list because I realized our cars are getting really fast,” said Cleetus. “Although it is fun to make a killer fast pass, it’s one of the most stressful forms of racing you can do. Everything has to go right.”
So, a plan was put together to get back to basics: using a test and tune night at Bradenton Motorsports Park instead of a big race, real street cars that needed to be driven in the gate, and creating a top ten list.
“I wanted to do something to make test and tunes more fun again for myself and my buddies,” Cleetus said. The initial race would be a 16-vehicle roster, and races would be paired by random chip draw each round, and a four-tenths pro tree start would be used, with no transbrakes allowed. A floating break out to keep a reasonable gauge on attainable performance would be used (meaning cars can’t run quicker than the accepted limit).
After four days of cold temperatures, insane racing action and sizable crowds at South Georgia Motorsports Park, some recognizable names and repeats winners led the storylines at one of the biggest drag radial tire themed races, Lights Out 16.
After two days of qualifying, eliminations got underway on Saturday, February 22nd, and were completed on Sunday, February 23rd, 2025, by crowning winners in thirteen different classes.
As we covered on Thursday’s first qualifying session story, the Radial Versus the World class grabbed headlines when Paolo Guist reset the class record with a 3.479 pass. The other half of that pair, Ken Quartuccio, clocked a 3.49 on that run, but would return on Friday, February 21st, to drop the record further with a 3.743 run.
Quartuccio employed that performance through eliminations, using a pair of 3.4-second runs to score his third final round appearance in as many events.
Nearly two decades ago, Donald ‘Duck’ Long noticed that one of the biggest groups of heads-up racing, Outlaw Drag Radial, wasn’t being given the amount of attention he felt they deserved. So, he did something about it, and sixteen years after the ‘Lights Out’ event debuted at South Georgia Motorsports Park, it remains a destination race for racers and fans where the wild and unpredictable happens, as well as many a record are set.
Paolo Guist would be the lone car to dip into the 3.4-second range in the top tier Radial Versus The World (RVW) class during the first session, clocking a 3.498 at 213.60 MPH blast for the top qualifying spot. The impressive run was just twelve thousandths of-a-second off the world record of 3.486 at 213.83 MPH from ‘Stevie Fast’ Jackson, set last March at Alabama International Dragway. But Guist wasn’t done yet.
With the sun all but gone and track temperatures dropping quickly, the entire list of heads-up classes had completed their first session of qualifying. But the decision was made for one more round of RVW qualifying. Guist would be in the first pair of cars out of the staging lanes, lining up alongside a former Lights Out event winner, Ken Quartuccio.
The scoreboards would show history less than three and-a-half seconds later, and for more than one reason!
