With victories under his belt at both Bandimere Speedway and Bradenton Motorsports Park, Jeff Pierce is one of the most accomplished tuners in the history of the Drag Illustrated World Series of Pro Mod and the broader Drag Illustrated Winter Series presented by J&A Service. He led the late Scotty Oksas to the $100,000 win at the final WSOPM at Bandimere in 2019, tuned Kye Kelley to an unlikely Snowbirds Pro Mod win worth $50K in 2024, and most recently guided Stevie “Fast” Jackson to the $75,000 U.S. Street Nationals victory. Now, he’s ready to tackle the $150,000-to-win WSOPM presented by Red Line Oil this weekend.
The sport of Pro Modified drag racing has evolved immensely since Pierce’s early days following in the footsteps of his dad, Dave Pierce, who campaigned a nitrous Pro Mod for years. Even since Pierce won the 2019 WSOPM in Denver with Oksas and his twin-turbo Mustang, Pro Mod has taken leaps and bounds.
Looking at WSOPM alone, the event moved from a quarter-mile, NHRA-legal format at Denver from 2017-2019 to an eighth-mile, “outlaw” format at Bradenton beginning in 2023. Those changes drew a significantly larger racer base, opening up a 32-car field with many, many more cars left outside the field once qualifying wrapped up.
At the first Bradenton edition of WSOPM in 2023, Johnny Camp qualified No. 1 with a 3.626-second pass and eventual winner Spencer Hyde famously qualified No. 32 with a 3.682.
Last year, WSOPM became the grand finale of the new DI Winter Series, which brought the longstanding Snowbird Outlaw Nationals and U.S. Street Nationals together into one official three-race points series at BMP. With Pierce tuning, Street Outlaws star Kye Kelley won the first Winter Series race, the Snowbirds, driving his steel-roof-and-quarters ’85 Camaro originally intended for No Prep Kings competition. The performance shocked the Pro Mod world, as Kelley used a combination of holeshots and passes into the 3.50-second range to knock out Pro Mod veterans driving purpose-built Pro Mods.
Fast-forward to the most recent Winter Series race, the U.S. Street Nationals, where Jimmy Taylor topped the qualifying sheet with a 3.555 and 2017 WSOPM champion Mike Bowman sat on the 32-car bump spot with a 3.596 to anchor the first all-3.50-second eighth-mile Pro Mod field in history. The 3.626 that Camp used to qualify No. 1 at the 2023 WSOPM would’ve put him No. 52 on this qualifying sheet.
Pierce has been a part of it all as a tuner for numerous customers with various power adders, engine combinations, and chassis builders.
“It’s like Pro Stock,” Pierce said. “When I was a kid, we’d look at Pro Stock fields that were within a tenth of a second and think, man, that’s really tight. Now we’ve got Pro Mods where the entire field is within four hundredths – and there are 32 cars, not 16. This is the most competitive class you can race. You have to get the efficiency of a Pro Stock car while managing power levels that are starting to approach Top Fuel, and it’s all done with a suspended chassis. It’s by far the coolest class. It’s relatable to fans, and it’s been an honor to tune these cars for people.”
As the crew chief for Jackson, Pierce enjoyed his latest Winter Series winner’s circle celebration in January when he tuned Jackson’s screw-blown Motion Raceworks “Shadow 3.0” ’68 Camaro to victory over that record-setting field. Jackson ran a 3.566 at 210.80 mph in the final round to get the win over a red-lighting Derek Menholt, who ran a 3.570 at 211.36 but went red by .006 seconds. Pierce said consistency was the key to coming out on top over the most competitive group of Pro Mods ever assembled.
“Stevie’s been the most consistent driver on the property – reaction times, doing everything exactly the same every run,” Pierce explained. “We’ve just been picking away at it, trying to find a little bit more because we feel like we’re a little behind the centrifugal cars. We kept chipping away at it. We gave it everything in the final and luckily it paid off.”
Now, Pierce is focused on chasing another WSOPM victory as well as a Winter Series championship. Jackson moved up to second in the points standings behind Snowbirds winner Jason Harris with his U.S. Street Nationals win. Sidnei Frigo, who races out of Jackson’s Killin’ Time Racing camp and is also tuned by Pierce, is also less than a round out of the points lead thanks to his runner-up finish to Harris at the Snowbirds.
Matters are complicated a bit, though, as Jackson parked his “Shadow 3.0” Camaro after the last race and swapped it over to NHRA-legal trim to compete for a third NHRA Pro Mod world championship starting at the Gatornationals in Gainesville next weekend. The Pierce family’s “Purple Heart” ’68 Firebird will serve as Jackson’s WSOPM ride after receiving a new SF-1 engine at KTR headquarters. Numbers from pre-race testing have already suggested it will be a contender out of the gate when qualifying kicks off on Thursday.
“We’ve got great momentum,” Pierce said. “Stevie brought out his new engine platform at the end of the NHRA season and we knew it would run well on 92 over [overdrive]. Sidnei’s car ran well right away. We were fighting a few small things on the Shadow, but we got those sorted out. To be in the final of the first race and win the second, we’ve got a ton of momentum. We’re going to come into the World Series of Pro Mod swinging and try to win the championship.”
This story was originally published on February 25, 2026. 
The post From Bandimere to Bradenton: Tuner Jeff Pierce Chasing More WSOPM Success first appeared on Drag Illustrated.
