At 30 years old, Devin Grace has already lived several lives in drag racing: racer, fabricator, tuner, and business owner. He\u2019s 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\u2019ll downplay it all. \u201cI can\u2019t say that I\u2019ve done anything fantastic in my opinion,\u201d Grace says. \u201cBut I think I\u2019ve done a few cool things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: This story originally appeared in DI #197, the 30 Under 30 Issue, in November\/December 2025.<\/em><\/p>\n Those \u201cfew cool things\u201d 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 \u201979 Cutlass. He won a couple races in that before going to college, where he studied CNC machining.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cAround 2018, I decided I was ready to build full chassis cars,\u201d Grace says. \u201cHonestly, that was probably a mistake, but I think the best way to learn is to jump off the deep end and learn to swim.\u201d<\/p>\n That hands-on approach became his signature. He wasn\u2019t afraid to experiment, fail, and rebuild, sometimes literally. \u201cI bought an F-body Camaro, and we ran it hard and won a ton of races,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it burnt in my trailer, along with everything else. I rebuilt the burnt junk just to make it raceable \u2013 not presentable \u2013 and went no-time racing on 275s.\u201d<\/p>\n 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. \u201cWe ran it for two or three years and won quite a few local events,\u201d he says. \u201cWe went to eight cars at the Quarter Million and had a couple strong showings at Dig or Die.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u00d710.5 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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,\u201d Grace explains. \u201cEverything was machined in-house, with the exception of the camshaft.\u201d<\/p>\n Word spread about Grace\u2019s 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. \u201cI flew to Oregon from Tennessee, bought a body and a start for a chassis, shipped it home, and got to work.\u201d<\/p>\n The result is his current machine, a 1936 Ford five-window coupe dubbed \u201cThe Witch Doctor,\u201d powered by a roots-blown big-block Chevrolet. \u201cI ended up with what\u2019s, in my opinion, a really nice car,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd in SFI\u2019s opinion, it\u2019s a class-legal Pro Mod.\u201d<\/p>\n In its first full season, the Witch Doctor proved nearly unbeatable. \u201cIn the last year, we\u2019ve won nine out of 11 races entered,\u201d Grace says. \u201cWe runnered-up at a $20,000 race and just won Gangster\u2019s Paradise and War in the Woods. It\u2019s by far the best car and combination we\u2019ve ever put together.\u201d<\/p>\n Grace credits his family and crew for the foundation that makes it all possible. \u201cMy parents, Mark and Sharon Grace, have always been my biggest supporters and believed in me since day one,\u201d he says. \u201cMy crew helps nonstop with this car and the others \u2013 I can\u2019t name them all, but they know who they are. And Ryan Witte has helped me for years with EFI, tuning, and power management.<\/p>\n \u201cMoving forward, my goal is simple,\u201d he says. \u201cTo keep racing, and push my program to the next level, even if I don\u2019t know where that road leads.\u201d<\/p>\n The post DI 30 Under 30 2025: Devin Grace<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At 30 years old, Devin Grace has already lived several lives in drag racing: racer, fabricator, tuner, and business owner. He\u2019s 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\u2019ll downplay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}