It didn’t take much convincing to make it happen.
Shane Gray hadn’t raced an NHRA national event since walking away from Pro Stock at the end of 2017. Since then, he’s spent most of his time at the track watching his sons, Tanner and Taylor Gray, race.
Indianapolis was different for the five-time NHRA Pro Stock winner. This time, Gray brought his own race car through Elite Motorsports.
“Never figured I’d ever be driving a Pro Mod car, but I’m truly having a good time and no stress, no pressure, and just living my best life,” Gray said.
Gray’s Pro Modified return wasn’t supposed to happen until 2027. A screw-blown Camaro and the NHRA U.S. Nationals changed the schedule.
He didn’t qualify for the 16-car field at Indy. Judging by the smile on his face, somebody forgot to tell the second-generation drag racer he was supposed to be disappointed.
On the second day of qualifying, Gray could be found inside his transporter working on the steering wheel of his Camaro. It was tedious work requiring his undivided attention, and he looked perfectly content doing it.
Nine years earlier, Gray came to Indianapolis as a Pro Stock driver. This time he was inside the trailer working on the steering wheel of a Pro Mod he freely admits he hasn’t figured out yet.
Pro Stock eventually became a job. Gray isn’t looking for another one this time around.
Gray stepped away from driving after the 2017 season, following a Pro Stock career that included his final victory that year at the NHRA Gatornationals. After 2017, most of Gray’s attention shifted to Tanner and Taylor.
Tanner and Taylor went oval-track racing, and Shane went with them. For years, his sons wore the firesuits.
Somewhere along the way, watching his sons have all the fun wasn’t enough. Gray found a form of racing that didn’t require him to sign up for another full-time job.
“It was time,” Gray said. “I wanted to go do something and have a little fun, and this Pro Mod deal is the perfect thing for me. It’s 10, 12 races, something like that.”
Pro Modified grew out of the same doorslammer DNA as Pro Stock, but the family resemblance ends pretty quickly once the throttle goes down.
“This is the funnest car I’ve ever driven,” Gray said. “It’s a blast. I mean, when you take off, it just never stops,” Gray said. “It pulls all the way to the finish line.”
Gray spent years driving naturally aspirated Pro Stock cars where leaving the starting line was a violent exercise. His screw-blown Pro Modified Camaro has enough horsepower to make even somebody with Gray’s experience reconsider what deserves respect.
“You definitely got to treat these Pro Mod cars with a little more respect, that’s for sure,” Gray said. “So yeah, they got a lot of power, and they’ll hurt you. They’re just a completely different beast, you know?”
Pro Modified has never been a class known for forgiving mistakes. Gray knows enough about these cars to know he doesn’t know everything about them yet.
“They’re a lot of fun,” Gray said with an ear-to-ear smile. “I’m a novice at this deal and shoot, I’m just a student of the game here, and I’m learning a lot.”
Gray doesn’t seem bothered by being the rookie again. At 53, he’s found something in drag racing he still has to learn. He didn’t climb into the Camaro cold. Before Indianapolis, he had made roughly 10 to 15 runs while gradually working his way toward full passes.
The first trip wasn’t about seeing how brave he was as the team tuned up the car a little at a time.
“We didn’t do much,” Gray said. “We just went up, did some burnouts and backed her up and went 60 foot, and brought it back to trailer and cooled it off. Went 330, went eighth mile, went a thousand foot, went home. Then we came to Indy, tested two weeks ago, I guess, and made some pretty good runs here.
“I don’t know, I think we went, I don’t know, we made some 5.70 runs here, and then went back home, and we went over to Rockingham again. So yeah, I got a few runs in it, but it’s been a learning curve. It’s definitely something different.
“I mean, with the steering input to what you do in the car and stuff, it’s a little different.”
Nobody has to explain a hard-leaving race car to Gray because Pro Stock taught him that reality.
“This thing here is 60 foot,” Gray said. “I mean, this thing here, in ideal conditions, crap, I think this thing here will run nine flats.”
Gray was referring to the car’s potential 60-foot numbers. A screw-blown Pro Mod gets your attention at the hit and he doesn’t need a technical term for it.
“Eight tenths or so,” Gray said while comparing the numbers with a fuel car. “But no, this thing, I think they’ll like decent tracks, they’ll run, .919s to the 60. So they’re a beast. When they’re right, they are a Pro Stocker on steroids.”
Gray is quick to point out that he isn’t trying to recreate his Pro Stock career with a blower sticking through the hood. He’s already done the national-event grind, won in Pro Stock and spent years chasing hundredths of a second in one of drag racing’s least forgiving categories.
Gray came to Indianapolis as a Pro Mod rookie and left without making the field. He also left wanting more. That’s a pretty good indication the experiment worked.
“It was time to give this a try,” Gray said. “I wanted to go do something and have a little fun, and this Pro Mod deal is the perfect thing for me.”
