NAPA’s relaunched tool brand is chasing the same thing the 30 Under 30 is: the next generation. Senior Product Manager Joe Sabo explains why that made the partnership an easy call.
When the Drag Illustrated 30 Under 30 class of 2026 walks across the stage at the PRI Show in Indianapolis next month, Carlyle Tools will be in the room, and Joe Sabo, the Senior Product Manager who led the brand’s relaunch, plans to be standing near the front of it.
Carlyle Tools, the professional tool brand of NAPA Auto Parts, is among the sponsors backing the 2026 Drag Illustrated 30 Under 30, the annual program that has honored more than 300 young drivers, tuners, crew members, fabricators, promoters and industry professionals since 2015. For Sabo, the decision to put Carlyle’s name behind it came down to a problem he spends every working day trying to solve.
“I think the one thing that we always want people to know about Carlyle Tools is we are dedicated to helping bridge that barrier of entry for the next generation of automotive technicians,” Sabo said in a phone call with Drag Illustrated Founder and Editorial Director Wes Buck. “So when we think about all of the auto care centers and the service centers, the dealerships out there, we’re facing a nearly one million technician workforce shortage in our industry. And Carlyle wants to provide high quality, high performance, affordable tools so that people can come to work in our industry.
“But what’s equally important to Carlyle, and myself personally, is getting that same generation, that Gen Z generation, involved in motorsports in some way, some fashion, whether it’s driving, whether it’s working on the cars. Hell, even if it’s working at a racetrack. Our motorsports industry is in just as much dire need of the next generation as our automotive repair industry. So this was a perfect fit for Carlyle Tools, and we couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with Drag Illustrated and supporting the 30 Under 30.”
Sabo is not new to the subject. He grew up in a blue-collar household working on cars with his dad, came up through vo-tech programs and spent years selling to both do-it-yourselfers and professional technicians before landing at NAPA, where he led the ground-up reinvention of Carlyle. The brand had been in the NAPA system since 2012, named for Carlyle Fraser, the man who founded Genuine Parts Company in 1928. It grew from roughly 3,000 hand tool part numbers into a full line of specialty service tools, air tools, lifting equipment and storage, then plateaued. Beginning in 2022, Sabo and his team spent the better part of a year and a half in shops and focus groups, and the data pointed one direction: a technician spends somewhere around $100,000 of his or her own money on tools over a career, and most of it goes out the door in the first 10 years, when the paycheck is smallest.
The Carlyle that came out of that research was unveiled at NAPA’s 100th anniversary celebration in Las Vegas in April 2025, stripped of the blue and gold and dressed in black and “venom green,” with redesigned tools, a transferable lifetime warranty on its 3500 Series toolboxes and a price point aimed squarely at a kid walking into a shop for the first time. Two months later came the Carlyle Tools MAX Impact Scholarship with the TechForce Foundation, which hands a student $2,500 and a Carlyle toolbox every month. Then came drag racing.
Carlyle signed on as official tool supplier to Ron Capps Motorsports, put the venom green scheme on Capps’ NAPA Funny Car at the 2025 Gatornationals and, at last year’s SEMA Show, announced it would back 21-year-old Maddi Gordon’s rookie Top Fuel season in the team’s second car. The 30 Under 30 partnership is the next step in the same direction.
That direction lines up with what Buck has been saying about the program since it started. The 30 Under 30, now in its 11th edition, is not a vote and it is not a popularity contest. Nominations pour in every September from racers, team owners, parents, crew chiefs and past honorees, and the Drag Illustrated editorial staff sorts through them looking for on-track results, trade skills, work ethic, attitude and the ability to represent the sport well. This year, Buck said, the program drew more than 6,600 nominations.
“Some of them are, ‘Hey, vote, my kid deserves it,’” Buck said. “But some of them are thousand-word tomes from a mom or a dad or a brother, a complete diary of this person’s accomplishments, and it’s like this thing has really become something big. We’ve been doing this for 10 or 12 years now, and we’ve highlighted 300-plus kids, many of which have become the Maddi Gordons. Our track record on this is killer, and I’m proud of it. And we never really thought it would take off the way that it has.”
The point of the list, in Buck’s telling, has never been the drivers alone. It is the kid who tunes the car, the one who wrenches on it, the one who shoots the photos, drives the rig or works the tower. Nobody hands those people a trophy on Sunday, and in most cases nobody hands them much of a paycheck either.
“I didn’t get a letter jacket when I was in high school for doing the clutch on my dad’s Pro Stock car,” Buck said. “These kids need some sort of little badge of honor. And when I go to PRI or throughout the course of the race season, I see these kids walking around with those 30 Under 30 jackets. They wear it like a badge of honor. Like they are super proud.”
Sabo, who has spent the past two seasons with a front-row view of what it takes to run a nitro team from inside the Capps camp, didn’t need convincing.
“Absolutely. Encouragement, validation, support. They need all of that,” Sabo said. “There’s going to be those Alan Johnsons and those Guidos from time to time that rise to that top premium tier and are probably going to be compensated well for that position. But listen, on any given Sunday at an NHRA national event, you’re going to have 32 pro fuel drivers. But there’s 320 to 400 mechanics that are preparing those cars and getting them ready to go on track. And those are really the people that we need to be supporting and encouraging and lifting up as the champions of our sport.
“So I absolutely feel that they need to be recognized. And if it’s Drag Illustrated recognizing 30 at a time, if it’s Carlyle Tools stepping up to help support those efforts, every little bit is going to help advance our motorsports ahead in the future.”
The 2026 Drag Illustrated 30 Under 30 class will be revealed in the November/December issue of Drag Illustrated and introduced in person at the annual 30 Under 30 press conference and induction ceremony, Friday, Dec. 11, at 1 p.m. in the Sagamore Ballroom 6-7 at the Indiana Convention Center during the PRI Show. Buck expects 28 of the 30 honorees to be in Indianapolis for it, along with a crowd that in recent years has topped 400 people, which he calls the best-attended press conference at PRI. Honorees receive a custom 30 Under 30 jacket along with gift certificates and products from the program’s sponsors.
Sabo has already told Buck he’ll be there, and he may end up at the microphone.“Whatever my schedule is, I will work around to make sure that I’m there for you,” Sabo said.
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