At 30 years old, Devin Grace has already lived several lives in drag racing: racer, fabricator, tuner, and business owner. He’s won major no-prep and small-tire events, built one-of-a-kind race cars from the ground up, and earned the respect of his peers through work ethic and ingenuity. But ask him about it, and he’ll downplay it all. “I can’t say that I’ve done anything fantastic in my opinion,” Grace says. “But I think I’ve done a few cool things.”
Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in DI #197, the 30 Under 30 Issue, in November/December 2025.
Those “few cool things” started when he made his first passes in a Jr. Dragster around eight years old. It took him some time to get the hang of it, but he ended up winning a pair of track championships at Knoxville Dragway and one at Crossville Dragway, along with a divisional title at Darlington Dragway. He continued to win races when he moved into a big car in No Box, but the allure of heads-up racing led him to build a drag radial car, a ’79 Cutlass. He won a couple races in that before going to college, where he studied CNC machining.
After graduating, he went to work for a well-known shop to get his feet wet, then he launched his own business, Nexus Machine and Fab. “Around 2018, I decided I was ready to build full chassis cars,” Grace says. “Honestly, that was probably a mistake, but I think the best way to learn is to jump off the deep end and learn to swim.”
That hands-on approach became his signature. He wasn’t afraid to experiment, fail, and rebuild, sometimes literally. “I bought an F-body Camaro, and we ran it hard and won a ton of races,” he says. “But it burnt in my trailer, along with everything else. I rebuilt the burnt junk just to make it raceable – not presentable – and went no-time racing on 275s.”
What followed was a string of hard-earned successes. Grace transitioned the same car to no-prep racing, where he quickly made a name for himself. “We ran it for two or three years and won quite a few local events,” he says. “We went to eight cars at the Quarter Million and had a couple strong showings at Dig or Die.”
As an R&D partner for Holley, Grace decided to try some experimental stuff with a twin-turbo, 282-cubic-inch, LVX-based V6 engine in his 2002 Camaro. Riding on 28×10.5 slicks with stock-style suspension, the car set the record at the time for quickest and fastest eighth-mile LVX series engine at 5.234 seconds at 140.4 mph.
“The build included dry decking the block and cylinder heads, modifying a set of billet steel rods to work in this combination, six custom sleeves, modifying a Holley high ram intake to fit the v6, a custom ground camshaft from BTR, custom copper head gaskets made in-house, custom top fuel hoops in the cylinder heads,” Grace explains. “Everything was machined in-house, with the exception of the camshaft.”
Word spread about Grace’s abilities, and fellow racers started asking him to tune their cars. Before long, Grace had more customer cars than he could deal with. He tuned customers to success throughout the Southeast, but after years of helping others, Grace decided to pour his energy into his own dream car. “I flew to Oregon from Tennessee, bought a body and a start for a chassis, shipped it home, and got to work.”
The result is his current machine, a 1936 Ford five-window coupe dubbed “The Witch Doctor,” powered by a roots-blown big-block Chevrolet. “I ended up with what’s, in my opinion, a really nice car,” he says. “And in SFI’s opinion, it’s a class-legal Pro Mod.”
In its first full season, the Witch Doctor proved nearly unbeatable. “In the last year, we’ve won nine out of 11 races entered,” Grace says. “We runnered-up at a $20,000 race and just won Gangster’s Paradise and War in the Woods. It’s by far the best car and combination we’ve ever put together.”
Grace credits his family and crew for the foundation that makes it all possible. “My parents, Mark and Sharon Grace, have always been my biggest supporters and believed in me since day one,” he says. “My crew helps nonstop with this car and the others – I can’t name them all, but they know who they are. And Ryan Witte has helped me for years with EFI, tuning, and power management.
“Moving forward, my goal is simple,” he says. “To keep racing, and push my program to the next level, even if I don’t know where that road leads.”
The post DI 30 Under 30 2025: Devin Grace first appeared on Drag Illustrated.
