Piston-less and rod-deprived, that's how the engine in Justin "Red" Martin's Limited Drag Radial (LDR) '72 Nova arrived at South Georgia Motorsports Park (SGMP) early last week prior to the hot, humid and sticky, rain-soaked marathon better known as promoter Donald "Duck" Long's No Mercy 9.

"We freshened the engine up and went and tested before No Mercy and hurt the engine from a bad call on the tune, then tore it down a few days before we were to leave to Donald’s race, only to find a piston was damaged," Martin explained in a recent Facebook post. 

"My spares were not coated, so we overnighted them to Line2Line Coatings and Brian Neal got them coated and back to my engine guy Peter Harrell at Harrell Engine and Dyno (HED), who overnighted the other parts to meet us at SGMP," he added. "That’s right folks, Cody Ashley and myself hauled a race car with no rods and pistons to SGMP for No Mercy fully confident that we could pull it together!"

After reassembling the engine on Wednesday, that confidence paid off the next day, as Martin qualified his turbocharged Chevy second with a stout 4.14-seconds at 184.40 mph in the 20-car LDR field. Only Daniel Pharris in his unique turbo-boosted 2015 Lexus ran quicker with a 4.13 at 188.07 over the SGMP eighth mile. 

Fittingly, that pair was destined to meet in the final, but not before Martin took out Mark Campbell, Jim Howe and Paul Gargus before laying down the pass of the event, lowering his own class E.T. record with a semi-final competition single of 4.09 seconds at 189.20 mph, which also held up as fastest speed of the meet for LDR.

Martin later admitted that although he was not actively going after the record, he did want to send a message to the rest of the class.

"We just knew we had some left on the table and just wanted to make sure we went as fast as we needed to go to win this race," he said. "But I definitely wanted to throw everybody off their game. This is chess out here; it ain't checkers, we all know that. Everybody in this class is tough, so you gotta' get them off their game and get 'em on yours."

When Alex Laughlin decided he was going to venture into the volatile world of Radial vs. The World competition it made perfect sense to retain a Madman to call the shots. https://t.co/OBYerrZN6H

— Competition Plus (@competitionplus) October 1, 2018

Meanwhile, Pharris opened with a solo run after Mike Jones broke, easily overcame a big holeshot by "Flaco," enjoyed a competition bye in the quarter finals, then doused the hopes of Richard Reagan in the semis.

When the green lights flashed, Martin left first by just three-thousandths of a second. However, by the time the two combatants reached the 60-foot mark the race was already over as the white Lexus had nosed over while Martin streaked to another solid 4.12 pass--and the race win--at 188.60 mph.

"To know we had to face Daniel Pharris and Shane T (tuning wizard Shane Tecklenberg) and Grant O'Rourke in the finals was the ultimate stress test for us, but we pushed and were able to get by the heaviest of hitters in this class," Martin said. Still, everything didn't go quite as smoothly as it may have appeared, he added.

"After the last round (semis), it was all just a blur. With the rain coming again, we were kinda' rushed, so I pulled some people over from Lyle Barnett's team to come and help us get cooled down," Martin said. 

"We also had a door break on that record run, so we were busy fixing the door and barely got it towed up here in time. But we knew what we wanted it to go; it went; got the win; so I don't know what else there is to say. Just an awesome day!"