Jason Collins turned his second career start in the nhra-pro-mod-drag-racing-series" rel="tag">JBS Equipment NHRA Pro Mod Drag Racing Series into a win Sunday at the NHRA Southern Nationals at South Georgia Motorsports Park, beating Mike Thielen in the final round with a 5.731-second pass at 252.99 mph.
Collins qualified second for the event and then worked through Mason Wright, Sidnei Frigo and Lyle Barnett before taking the final. The result gave him a breakthrough on one of drag racing’s bigger stages, even though he said the day felt like the latest chapter in a much longer career. “I’m like, man, I’ve been doing this stuff like 30-something years,” Collins said.
That history runs through the Southeastern outlaw drag racing scene, where Collins spent years in Mountain Motor Pro Stock, Local Pro Mod, Drag Radial racing, test sessions and match races before this NHRA opportunity came along. Long before Sunday, Scott Tidwell had given him chances to test and drive cars, and Collins said that connection started after Tidwell bought one of his old Outlaw 10.5 cars, the red car that later ran in Pro 275 for a while. “He actually bought one of my old Outlaw 10.5 cars from me, which was the red car that they ran in Pro 275 for a while. And I don’t know, I started just doing some driving for him, just testing really,” Collins said.
Collins also drove Tidwell’s blue Camaro during the radial racing boom, and he said the pairing clicked almost immediately. “For whatever reason, it all worked,” he said. “The very first race, we didn’t even test before we got it going and run it up at the first race.” Collins said he and Tidwell won every race but one that year in the radial class, a run of success that now looks less like a surprise and more like a preview.
Sunday’s finish answered the biggest question around Collins after his second-series appearance: the win was no fluke. He arrived at South Georgia Motorsports Park with the kind of hands-on experience that never always shows up on an entry list, and he left with a Pro Mod victory built on years of seat time, one steady opportunity from Tidwell and a final round run fast enough to settle it.
