Driving a twin-turbo, 3,000-plus-horsepower car down the track on a set of 295-wide drag radial tires — and standing tall against your peers — is an exhilarating task, one that motivates Oklahoma racer Justin "Red" Martin to outwork his competition. Martin is a huge proponent of the Limited Drag Radial class, which uses power-adder restrictions, weight additions and subtractions, along with a tight rules package to keep the racing action tight between a multitude of combinations.

Achieving his goals comes first, before capturing round wins and chasing championships, though, and it is those goals that keep him neck-deep in a class that can require a substantial budget to have the latest and greatest technology.

The fortitude to do so requires an internal drive, one that Martin has honed over a two-decade career racing this very same car. As his budget has allowed, he’s stepped up classes, honed his talents, and purchased better parts to help him achieve ever-dropping elapsed times.

"You just set personal goals, and as you overcome those goals, you set more goals, and then you start to get to work with some of the really good people in the industry. You develop a friendship and a drive that's almost unexplainable. It's a drive to see if, 'Hey, we can make that work.' Or, 'Hey, we can make that work better than those guys,'" he explains.

That underdog-ish mindset has served him well so far. As the car's performance has increased in the fan-favorite LDR class, Martin has been able to strike up relationships with people and companies who have stepped up to provide him with the level of support he needs to compete against better-funded teams that have more time to test and iron out new parts, or simply accumulate more data on their chosen combination. During non-race weeks and weekends, Martin tends to his busy shop — Professional Auto Care, in the blink-and-you-missed-it town of Pocola, Oklahoma, right on the Arkansas border — which means that time he has available to go racing can be limited.

"We race with a couple of real heavily funded teams as most people do in radial racing. You know, these guys don't have to go to work almost. They could go from race to race and go to test and back and forth. I wish that I could race like that, but it just ain't in the cards. We try to make the best of it," he says.

Of course, no racing program's success is linear, and even with the support he receives, Martin still has races where he's unsatisfied with the results of the team's efforts.

"Whenever we leave a race like Duck's (Editor's Note: the Duck X Productions races, like the No Mercy series), something that takes a week of our time, when I leave, I tell my crew guy, I'm like... 'Let's take this truck and trailer somewhere where I ain't going to look at it for a long time. I'm just so tired of this thing, whooping us all week, you know?' Then within a few days, all you can think about is that next race and what we could have done differently to make the program come together. If I had to give one thing that drives me to keep racing, it's probably just got to be the mindset of me being as goal-oriented as I am when it comes to that race car," he says.

As the information age is upon us regarding the sheer level of data that can be captured from a racing program, there seems to be no downtime for some racers who have the financial means to race year-round at a variety of tracks different types of conditions. That data accumulation is helpful, but Martin also stresses that fostering relationships with people who can help push a program in the right direction is crucial.

One of those people is Ryan Witte, Electronic Systems Specialist at Holley Performance Products, along with his engine builder and tuning guide, Pete Harrell of Harrell Engine & Dyno. If Harrell is available, then he'll come to the track to help get the car going in the right direction that weekend. But if he can't be there, Martin has become — with Witte and Harrell's help — well-versed in the Holley EFI software to run the car on his own, knowing he has those to that he can lean on the event of an issue.

"I think that says something when a person can purchase an EFI system, wire it up, make it work as good as it works without feeling that you have to have a professional tuner or somebody that's a software engineer, and get up in the winners circle with it," he says.

It takes the right equipment to get there — or even go a couple of rounds on elimination day — and it has taken Martin several years to gather up the necessary parts and pieces to turn this show-stopping hotrod into what it is today.

Strobel Race Cars built Martin’s '72 Nova around a Strobel Race Cars 25.2/25.3 dual-cert chassis, which features a Mark Williams floater-style rear axle and Carmack Engineering billet center section. Transmission duties are handled by a Turbo 400 from Mark Micke at M&M Transmissions in Missouri. The twin-turbo big-block Chevrolet engine, built by HED, utilizes Energy/Visner billet cylinder heads and billet intake manifold to suck down the boost from a pair of 88mm Garrett turbochargers. And, of course, a Holley Dominator EFI system controls it all. Martin also installed the MSD Pro 600 ignition system and dialed it all in with Witte and Harrell's guidance. Weld wheels sit at all four corners, with Mickey Thompson 25 x 4.5 front and 295/65/15 ET Street R radial rear tires rounding out the rolling stock.

"The one crew guy that goes with me, Cody Ashley, we've been friends forever, and he just fricking loves drag racing and loves the people that we've surrounded ourselves with. I don't pay him to miss work. He takes vacation days and personal time to go wherever we go, whenever we want to go. He's got a little girl at home, and he's got a wife, and he leaves his family to come to help me accomplish my goals. That is just fricking humbling. That's all I can say. If Cody were to call me and say, 'You know what, man, I just can't go anymore,’ it would be hard for me to feel like I could continue," says Martin.

"You get out there, and you try to have success with your program, and it gives you some punches in the mouth along the way. It just depends on how you spin that to make the situation better. I wouldn't have it any other way. I've got a very, very good support system from my family aspect. I've got a business partner who is an outstanding supporter of what I do. You wake up, and you think, ' ...I got it pretty good. I probably ought to go racing.'”

It's the people like his wife Deedee, Cody, and Pete Harrell, and Ryan Witte. It’s the companies who sponsor his efforts like Motion Raceworks and Holley Performance Products, along with the racers in the other lane who collectively push him to be at his best when he shows up to the dragstrip. That’s the kind of motivation you just can’t buy.