“Dude, don’t worry. If you wind up in prison, you just establish dominance. Find the biggest dude in the place and whoop his ass. Nobody will mess with you then.” Oh, to be young and dumb again. That conversation happened numerous times between middle school and the day I left the Army. The premise was always the same…establish dominance before you get treated like a punk. Make a grand show of your arrival and let everybody in the lockup know that you are the one they shouldn’t mess with. Every one I knew that said they’d be down to actually swing on the big guy in the yard would find themselves hammered into the ground like a tent pole, if they were lucky. Prison is not the place to establish dominance.

The dragstrip, on the other hand, is the perfect place to establish dominance. It’s part of the game: who is first? Who is the best? That’s how racing works! Get in the car, run your engine, and let’s see who can outrun who. Just one thing: once you start getting honestly fast, you have to be licensed. Not just a driver’s license, but a real-deal, approved to haul this much ass license. You have to make laps proving that you know how to run a quarter-mile, and that you are capable of handling your machine properly. That’s what Carter Pelletier was doing with this turbocharged 5.3-powered Chevrolet LUV at Byron Dragway. His first couple of hits look like licensing passes…launching, half-tracking, all of that. But when it’s time for him to cut the street-legal little truck loose, well…nothing says “I run this” quite like hanging the hoops in the air.