Stevie “Fast” Jackson, two-time NHRA Pro Mod world champion, had unfinished business at the World Series of Pro Mod. Known for his relentless drive behind the wheel of his screw-blown “Shadow 3.0” ‘68 Chevrolet Camaro, Jackson had faced an unusual streak of misfortunes, from foul starts to mechanical failures, in previous WSOPM appearances.
Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in DI #194, the WSOPM Issue, in May/June of 2025.
This year, however, even fate couldn’t slow Jackson down, who was more than ready to capitalize on the semifinal finish he recorded at the 2024 edition – the furthest he’d ever advanced in WSOPM competition.
His journey to the WSOPM finals began with a near miss. During the Radial Outlaws Racing Series Lights Out event prior to WSOPM, the “Shadow 3.0” suffered extensive damage, tearing the engine apart and splitting the car’s front end into five pieces while Jackson and his team were chasing the Radial vs. The World record.
Jackson and his team had essentially thrown in the towel when an encounter with a young fan, whose mom had waited all day to pick him up from school to see his favorite car, the Shadow, changed everything. Inspired by the boy and not wanting to let him down, Jackson and his crew pulled together every resource they had to repair the car, making it race-ready.
Then came the time to make the pilgrimage to Bradenton Motorsports Park for the WSOPM. After switching the Shadow from radial tires to big tires, every qualifying run was critical.
Jackson knew he had no margin for error, carrying just one spare engine and a car patched together with primer and tape. Yet he adopted an aggressive yet controlled approach.
“Going up for Q1, you can’t be conservative, and you have to go fast in the right run. If you have a night session and you don’t haul tail, you’re not going to make it in,” he says. “I told my guys when we got there I was not going to miss one time. I’m not going to abort one run. We can’t make big swings, so we’re going to be smart, and we were. We started qualifying with the intent to get high enough in the ladder to have lane choice, and that’s tough against the competitive field that you have there.”
After qualifying in the top half of the ladder at the No. 10 spot, Jackson drew Stan Shelton as his first-round opponent. Clocking his lowest E.T. of the day, Jackson raced to a 3.614 to overtake Shelton’s 3.655 pass.
Momentum continued to build through eliminations. Jackson continued his stride after a hard-fought victory over respected competitor Ty Tutterow.
“The WSOPM seems to be my nemesis,” Jackson confesses with a laugh. “When I got past first round, that’s always tough because I hadn’t been out of the first round in the Winter Series. But when I beat Ty Tutterow, who’s my hero and an awesome driver, I was like, ‘OK, this is our day.’ I’ve won a lot of races, and I know how it goes, and I know what it feels like, and this is exactly what it feels like. Things just start happening, there’s no pressure, everybody’s having fun, and then you just start knocking them down. We just made smart decisions.”
In round three, the Georgia native squared off against NPK star Scott Taylor and secured the victory after Taylor broke on the starting line. Then, Jackson’s semifinal face-off with Mike Bowman turned dramatic when a starting-line staging duel ensued for more than two minutes.
“What we did is well within the rules. Those turbo guys are free to stage that car anytime they want to, and we’ll follow them right in,” Jackson states. “We don’t burn people down. We respect the fact that it’s hard for those guys to stage the car, but they have to respect the fact that it’s hard for us to cut a light when they blink the bulb at us. So, we sat there for a minute.”
Although he survived the quarterfinals, Jackson confessed that he sat on the starting line too long, which led to his engine overheating and would later contribute to his demise in the final. Nonetheless, defeating Bowman’s 3.675 in his turbocharged Chevelle with a 3.632 to advance felt like a significant hurdle to overcome.
“We were expecting to get annihilated by Mike Bowman. So, we had a tune-up in there that I thought would go down the racetrack and not tear the engine up,” Jackson says.
In the final against Steve King and his “Savage” 2018 Corvette, Jackson confidently believed he had the winning combination.
“Those guys were pitted beside us, so we saw how hard they worked all weekend,” Jackson remembers. “They got [tuner] Jon Salemi over there working on that thing. When you get to a final round, gloves are off because the car doesn’t have to make another run.
“I’ve been in hundreds of final rounds,” Jackson continues. “There are final rounds where nerves defeat you, and this was not that. I was calm. We’re sitting there, and Wes Buck’s got the rock music going on. So, every round we made before we started the car, I was singing whatever song was blaring in my ear on the speaker. I don’t remember what song that was, but I’m singing it to the guys to loosen them up and everybody’s joking around. You know it’s a real-deal team, and you know that you got a shot.”
With nearly identical screw blower setups between them, Jackson was first off the line with a .029 reaction time compared to King’s .052 and felt victory was within reach until mechanical disaster struck once more when a connecting rod broke mid-run. King’s 3.629 at 204.82 mph was just enough to edge past Jackson’s 3.653 at 203.55 mph by a minuscule .001-second margin, marking the closest final round in WSOPM history.
“When I staged that car against Steve King, and I left the starting line, I was like, ‘You’re dead, son. Like that’s it. I’m cruising away into the sunset,’” Jackson shares. “The thing breaks a rod at 3.50 into the run, and he beats me by a thou. I can see that thing coming, and my engine’s blown up, and it’s the most terrible feeling in the world. I still had the gas pedal down even though it wasn’t running, and then they come and getcha.”
Reaching the WSOPM final wasn’t just redemption – it was proof positive that even the toughest racing luck can turn around.
“We got a really bad hot rod that can win, and we got a group of folks around us that are second to none,” Jackson says.
“Yes, it gives me motivation. I want to win one of these things. They’re hard – to compete against 80 of the best people in what you do and just to be the last two cars standing, that’s a win, and that’s a win for our team,” he adds.
Finally, Jackson recognizes that no racer does it alone, and thanks Motion Raceworks and Doug Cook, RIFE Sensors, and TBM Brakes.
“They have stood behind me when nobody else would. Doug brought me back from the dead, and a big portion of the success you see at KTR is because of Doug Cook,” Jackson says. “He’s poured a lot of money and resources into our sport. Folks like that who are on the way up and not the way out are the ones we need to support.”
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