“If you told me a year ago that I'd be standing here winning this race, I would’ve told you that was crazy.”

That was longtime Pro Stock veteran Jason Collins not long after beating Brylon Holder in the Pro 275 final for Lights Out 14, Mar. 27, at South Georgia Motorsports Park.

With a 3.75-seconds pass at 200.68 mph, Collins qualified Scott Tidwell’s ’69 Camaro 4th in the 32-car P275 field. Manny Buginga took the top spot at 3.71 and 203.06 mph, with defending race champion Mo Hall 2nd at 3.73 and 201.46, and Marcus Birt 3rd just three-thousandths back with another 3.73 at 200.23 mph.

Collins said he doesn’t know who originally built the car, but credited Chris Terry Racing for recently front-halving the chassis to accommodate the Proline Hemi topped with a giant screw blower.

“Putting this combo in there changed a lot of stuff,” Collins said. “And Chris, he's the one that does most of the suspension work and things of that nature on it. When we pulled in down there (at Bradenton for the U.S. Street Nationals in January), I mean, the thing was fast right off the trailer.” 

Tuned by Steve Petty, Collins made short work of No. 29 starter Robbie Vander Woud and his 2000 Camaro in round one of racing with a 3.79 at 206.67 mph. Round two saw Heath Littrell and his Hemi-powered ’69 Nova in the opposite lane, but Littrell redlighted while Collins laid down a 3.78 at 205.82-mph pass. 

Saturday night at SGMP, Collins took on No. 5 qualifier Charlie Cooper and his late-model Mustang and needed a holeshot to punch his ticket to the semis on Sunday morning. Cooper left with a .104 reaction and ran 3.73 at 209.59 mph, his quickest and fastest pass of the event, but with a .025 light leading into a 3.75 at 207.91-mph run, it all added up to a win for Collins by .056 at the eighth-mile stripe.

That left only Sunday’s semis and final round, with California’s Holder taking the win with a 3.82 at 197.77 mph in his Procharger-equipped 2015 Camaro over Hall, who lost traction off the hit. 

Collins then faced off against 9th-place qualifier Tim Dutton with his ’19 Corvette out of New Hampshire. Dutton left first with an outstanding .008 light, but also encountered trouble and slowed to a 6.51 at 99.33 mph while Collins streaked to lane choice for the final with a 3.74 at 200.44 mph, his quickest pass of the event.

“This combination makes good power and Steve (Petty) is one of the best tuners there is and he's just instantly got a handle on it,” Collins said. “I mean, working with Steve Petty, that's a big deal for anybody. You just got to do your job and this car is going to perform one way or the other. I mean, it went down the track every run on race day.”

It did go down the track one more time for Collins, as he left with a .009 advantage on Holder, who made it no farther than the tree before his car nosed over. The race was over at that point, as Collins turned on the win light in 3.81 seconds at 204.94 mph.

“So we're running Holder and I mean, we felt like we had a little bit of a performance advantage there, but when the sun starts coming out on these radial cars it's a tiptoe act. It's not like a big-tire car,” Collins said later. “This thing here, they had the front end off the car twice sitting in the staging lanes moving weight around. I mean, they'd watch one car run and they’d make a change. And then they were trying to figure out exactly where they wanted to be. These things are just different, and you don't have any wheelie bars. It’s tough.”

Regardless, back to not believing he actually won at Lights Out 14, Collins said he called his father, who he raced with side-by-side in Pro Stock for years. 

“When I talked to my dad I told him, ‘Man, as far as radial racing goes, this here is the Indy, the U.S. Nationals of radial racing. I mean, this is as big as it gets,’” he said. “It's pretty cool. I mean, it's kind of really helped me because I’m so used to just running my own car. It's a lot of work. I don't have this help, this kind of team. 

“The main thing I want to do is thank Scott Tidwell and Greg Posey for putting this deal together,” Collins said. “I mean, this is a real team, a great team, this is a good deal.”

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