The side of Lex Joon’s dragster is adorned with the iconic Hot Wheels logo, but his sponsorship deal isn’t exactly what everyone might think at first glance.

It represents the line of Hot Wheels™ Americana Series™ Premium Car Care Products, the EPIC SHINE 3 Second Detailer in particular. AmericanaPRO Detailing line features professional-premium grade, made-in-America products, including Wash and Wax, All Wheel Cleaner, Pro Tire Cleaner, Pro Tire Finish, Leather Cleaner, Leather Guard, Interior Trim Cleaner, and Trim Guard. The company has licensing rights from Mattel to use the Hot Wheels label.

Joon, the Top Fuel owner-driver who immigrated with crew chief wife Gerda from The Netherlands said, “It’s a great company that makes great Made in America products. We can’t wait to showcase them in front of NHRA drag-racing fans across the country and across the world. We’re excited to have them on board in these challenging and rough times.”

Joon, who lives and runs his race shop in Brownsburg, still has extensive ties overseas and is hoping to raise awareness for the Americana Pro product line throughout Europe. And Daniel Pikarsky, founder and president of AmericanaPRO Detailing Products, LLC, is elated with the association.

“AmericanaPRO is a company built on passion from the roots of Americana car culture and auto racing,” Pikarsky said. “Drive to retail is what this experiential brand awareness partnership is about for the Hot Wheels™ Car Care Product line as we feature EPIC SHINE™ 3 Second Detailer & Coating with Lex Joon Racing for [this race]. Lex Joon Racing shares our commitment to excellence through our mutually beneficial retail programs for our dedicated fans, consumers, retail partners and distributors.”

Gerda Joon, the owner-driver’s wife and longtime crew chief (who also manages the Advance Auto Parts store at Danville, Ind.), said, “Our early numbers are really good. As long as we now can get past the eighth-mile, we’re going to skip the 3.90s and we’ll go straight into 3.80s. We have the Three-second Epic Shine™ on our race car, so that would be really good.”

Joon had problems Saturday early in is first run and ended up with an 8.431-second elapsed time at 83.80 mph.

His career-best E.T. is 3.93 seconds from the 2009 Las Vegas race. Gerda Joon remembers it well. It was when the NHRA still had the ‘top-12 rule,’ whereby the top 12 qualifiers got to carry their Friday-best elapsed times into Saturday, while those in the provisional 13th and lower slots lost their times and had to start fresh during the final day of qualifying.

“Urs Erbacher ran a 3.933. We ran 3.9339. We were No. 13 and we just missed it,” she said.

But here this weekend, she said, “We try to keep the streak alive. You have to start somewhere.”

For the Joons, seeing T.J. Zizzo and Justin Ashley in the final of the previous race, the Lucas Oil Summernationals, was a sign of hope. She said, “I think that is the best thing ever. You can pull for the underdog. And now you’ve got a new underdog. We’ve got full fields. We’ve got to fight to qualify. It’s a dogfight, and we want to be in the show.”

Lex Joon qualified 16th but lost Sunday in Round 1 against first-time top qualifier Terry McMillen.