The final Pro Mod qualifying session has just concluded at the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway in Concord, N.C., and Scott Tidwell is taking a much-deserved rest back at his rig. The 52-year-old team owner from Alabama has had as much success in the class as anyone in recent years, whether his Scott Tidwell Racing cars are competing in the JBS Equipment NHRA Pro Mod Series presented by Elite Motorsports, or the Drag Illustrated Winter Series presented by J&A Service.
Tidwell started his own companies, J. Scott Enterprises and Dixie Trucking, beginning in 1989 with just one truck that he drove himself, and has built them into premier businesses. Likewise, he had humble origins in drag racing as a bracket racer and over the years has built a Pro Mod empire.
With rain moving into the Charlotte area and eliminations set for the following morning, Tidwell sat down with Drag Illustrated to reflect on how he first got interested in the sport, finding the right individuals to have success, and becoming one of the most prominent team owners in all of drag racing.
[Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in DI #200, the World Series of Pro Mod issue, in May / June of 2026.]
You have an extensive drag racing driving background. How did you first get involved in the sport?
Just by going to the racetrack at Huntsville way back when. I had a ‘69 Camaro we cut up and made a bracket car out of. The first car I ever raced in NHRA was that car in Super Street, and then eventually we got a tube-chassis car, moved up to Super Gas, then Super Comp. Comp is where we did most of our winning. We won a lot of stuff in Comp over the years – we ran a truck there, we ran a 2002 Camaro, a Grand Am. We had a ‘97 Pontiac Trans Am that we won a championship with, won several divisional and national events. But we ran a bunch of different cars. We had three or four different trucks, and about that many Comp cars. Then we had a Pro Stock Truck. It was right at the end of Pro Stock Truck before we really had the parts and pieces to be competitive. We were finally making headway when they moved it back to Comp. We went back to Comp and raced one more year, then I gave it up. I came back in 2014-15 with a good friend of mine, Paul Gargus. He had a radial car and I came back to help him with it. We got to fooling with the radials and then worked our way back up to Pro Mod.
Were you a big fan of Pro Mod back when you were bracket racing? What got you into it?
Not really. I liked Pro Stock, and we did a little bit of that. I did more driving for people testing than I actually did in my own car. Pro Stock always had my attention, but it just doesn’t excite me as much as it once did. Richard Freeman’s a really good friend of mine, and me and him have kicked it around back and forth about me driving for him. I just haven’t done it. We’re pretty busy with these Pro Mod teams. But the Winter Series stuff is probably my ultimate favorite, and then NHRA. I just like the organization. There’s an organization over there for NHRA Pro Mod, it’s a group of people that’s hard to beat. And then Wes [Buck] has a really good, solid program down in Bradenton that he’s put together too. It’s just one of my favorite things.
As both a business owner and a team owner, what are some similarities and differences in how you run them?
I’ve told my people all along, we need to assemble the right people and do it right, or I didn’t want to do it. Through the years, we have done that. We’ve got Steve Petty, Chris Terry, Brandon Stroud, some of the best crew guys in the industry. It’s not me. I assembled the people, but it’s the people we assembled that have made the success for this team. ProLine being a partner of ours is a bigger piece in this puzzle than people realize. We also run other people’s cars, like the RvW car that we’ve had so much success with the last couple of years that belongs to Ken [Quartuccio]. We race it out of our shop, maintain it and show up to races for him. Steve tunes it, Chris is the assistant, and Franny [McCarthy] takes care of everything in the shop. Chris and Franny are taking care of this new screw car we debuted this weekend. Derek Menholt has his own Corvette that he raced at the Winter Series, and we plan to bring it out in NHRA. We just help him take care of it all and race together. That’s the kind of team we’ve put together. We’ve got a lot going on in a positive way.
You talked about putting the right people in place. To see the recent success you’ve had – Ken Quartuccio winning last year’s Winter Series championship, Aaron Stanfield winning the WSOPM, Derek Menholt winning the Gatornationals – how proud are you of this entire group?
It’s no surprise to me, because the plan all along was to assemble people that are capable of that. The same exact car that won World Series of Pro Mod with Aaron got swapped over and won Gainesville with Derek driving and Brandon tuning. Before all this, I don’t even know how many radial records in LDR and Pro 275 we set with Paul Gargus driving. Then we had Jason [Collins] in Pro 275 and set the record and won all the races but a couple for two years with it. We won a championship and should have won another one. We were really in the hunt for the NHRA [Pro Mod] championship with Ken the year before last.
As far as Aaron driving for us, he’s a great kid, a great driver. Me and Richard had separate cars, and Justin Bond was driving for me. When Justin had other obligations for the World Series, it opened up that car. Richard had the car Aaron had been in sold already, so we talked and moved him over. Aaron can drive anything with wheels. He don’t care, just put him in it. Growing up around his dad, Greg and I bumped heads through Comp and Pro Stock Truck. So there’s no surprise that Aaron is what he is – the family he comes from, they’re all racers at heart.
Chris Terry was the crew chief for him, and he did a really good job. A lot of these guys try to show more of their hand than they need to, make mistakes, and knock themselves out. Chris is really good at not doing that. He solidified himself in everybody’s eyes by winning the World Series of Pro Mod, but he didn’t need to do that for me to already know he’s a next-level kind of crew guy. And he’ll be the first to tell you that being part of this team with Steve Petty and Brandon Stroud hasn’t hurt his cause.
At this point, your legacy in drag racing is already pretty well cemented, but looking ahead, what are some goals you’d still like to achieve as an owner?
We’ve got to get Paul back out. Our intention this year was to get Paul into a Pro Mod. He’s never driven one; he’s run all the fast radial stuff. That’s still our intention, we just gotta get it done. These cars get to performing at a certain level, it makes you not want to take them apart. But we gotta get him back out racing. He’s very much part of our team. He’s been staying home so much, he probably don’t feel like it right now, but he is.
And then, everybody asks me about driving. Everything I did previously was as a driver. But I never loved driving. I loved competing and making the cars fast. I’ve looked at Comp and some other things, but there’s a lot of family and business obligations that take priority over the thrill of wheeling a car. It’s not that we’ve got nothing left to prove – we haven’t won an NHRA championship at this level yet, and we very much want to do that – it’s just that once we assembled this team, I was done proving anything to anybody. There’s not a team in drag racing working harder than this one, I can promise you that. I’m not cracking no whip on them, but I’m letting them know daily that we need to be better, and we got the people that know how to do that. You can’t buy it. That’s something that a lot of people miss. You gotta put the work in and make it happen. We’re not a bigger or smaller team in my eyes. We’re just a team. That’s the deal.
The post Built, Not Bought: Scott Tidwell on What it Takes to Build a Successful Team first appeared on Drag Illustrated.
