{"id":90807,"date":"2023-12-31T03:18:25","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T03:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/damon-merchant-rogue-driver-goes-from-street-scene-to-the-no-prep-king\/"},"modified":"2024-01-20T23:50:30","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T23:50:30","slug":"damon-merchant-rogue-driver-goes-from-street-scene-to-the-no-prep-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/damon-merchant-rogue-driver-goes-from-street-scene-to-the-no-prep-king\/","title":{"rendered":"Damon Merchant: Rogue driver goes from street scene to The No Prep King"},"content":{"rendered":"

Damon Merchant seemingly came out of nowhere to take season 6 of <\/span>Street Outlaws: No Prep Kings<\/span> by storm. Driving Rogue, his 1968 Camaro, Merchant finished first in Invitational points in his rookie season, making it to five Invitational finals and winning two of them. He also won a Great 8 event in two final-round appearances. After the conclusion of a breakout debut season, the \u201cpeople\u2019s champ\u201d sat down with <\/span>No Prep Racing<\/span> to reflect on both his accomplishments and his future plans.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\u00a0<\/span>After a grueling season, how are you making the most of a much-needed winter break?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Once we finished up in Ennis \u2013 and we tore up a lot of stuff \u2013 the car was tired. We were beat up and tired from working our asses off. The last couple months [of the season] had been this obsession of racing week after week. We just needed a little time to collect our thoughts and get our stuff together; not really shut down, but put it all on the backburner. I had to get a little time with the family, and wrestling season started so the kiddo\u2019s doing that now. So I\u2019m just putting in some time with them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\u00a0<\/span>You had arguably the best season of any rookie in NPK history \u2013 what are some of your biggest takeaways from this season?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Going into it, I didn\u2019t spend all this time and money and effort to not be competitive. That was my whole goal \u2013 come in, be fast right out of the gate, and do something nobody else had done prior to this season, which was wreak havoc on the competition. Once we had success early in the season, it became, \u2018How long can we sustain this?\u2019 After those first two points races going to back-to-back finals, we had a taste of what it was like to know that we belonged there. It\u2019s no secret that I didn\u2019t have a backup motor or transmission; I feel like it was a bit harder for us to make it week after week. It\u2019s pretty taxing to do it that way, but I think it showed our determination and skill. It was cool to show that we could compete on this scale.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\u00a0<\/span>While you finished first in Invitational points, you did not win the Individual points championship. Was that a difficult situation, knowing that in any other season you would\u2019ve been crowned champ?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>We knew where the points were, and we knew where the money was going to be presented. The thing is, you had to race hard both days \u2013 Friday for the individual points, and Saturday to stay in [the Great 8] the next week. I was under no illusion that I was going to be awarded the championship by staying the Invitational points leader. I raced hard both days. I wasn\u2019t trying to focus on one or the other. But I\u2019ve been pretty open that we had never traveled and raced like this, ever. With our new combination, I feel like we took what we knew and tried to do the best we could on Friday learning what made the car happy. And then you would see us on Saturdays go rounds every weekend. We were right there on Friday nights, but we just fell short a little bit.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\u00a0<\/span>Would you like to see the format \u2013 either with the Great 8 or team championship \u2013 altered for season 7?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>I\u2019m not a fan of the five-man team. I\u2019m not a fan of the Great 8 being the individual championship. I would like to see it go back to the individual in the main event be the champion, just like it\u2019s been in years past. Not because I\u2019ve done it, but because that\u2019s what seems right. That\u2019s why it\u2019s been that way for so long. I get why production does what they do \u2013 they\u2019ve got to do something different. It\u2019s going to be different all the time. That\u2019s what\u2019s cool about <\/span>Street Outlaws<\/span>. It\u2019s not just one thing, because people get bored with that. But I would like to see it go back. And I\u2019m not really against the team thing, I just don\u2019t like teams of five. You can always see cliques of 2-3 guys, and I think that would be the most genuine. I don\u2019t feel like you\u2019re gonna get what people really want to say when there\u2019s four other people in the room. But you might get it with a buddy or two. And let it naturally evolve. That would make for some interesting TV.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

\u00a0<\/span>What are your plans heading into season 7? Any big changes or upgrades coming for Rogue?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We came into this season heavy for the combination we picked. My initial idea was to get weight out of the car. Now, as fast as we were, and as many people bitching and griping, I\u2019m hesitant to do that. It costs a lot of money for carbon and titanium, so I\u2019ll probably put Rogue\u2019s diet on the backburner until I find out about the weight issue. Also, we learned a lot about this engine combination while racing. We didn\u2019t have a whole lot of time testing before the season started. So we found little things throughout the season that we want to change on the engine, and see how fast we can really make this combination go. But I don\u2019t see myself changing a lot on the car. It works really well. We feel like we\u2019ve got a lot to prove. And when this thing\u2019s healthy, she\u2019s hard to beat. I\u2019m going to be just as aggressive on the light as I was this season and give \u2018em hell. I want to prove that last season was no fluke, and I\u2019m going to show up with the same determination in season 7. I feel like we\u2019re going to be a big problem for a lot of people.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\u00a0PHOTO CREDITS: RICHARD ROWE, DEAN IMAGES, MILISSA MARTINI<\/span><\/h3>\n

Special Thanks to Russell Thompson of Dean Images for capturing all of the great shots for the season\u00a0 -Damon Merchant<\/h4>\n

Fans can watch the brand new season of <\/span>Street Outlaws: No Prep Kings<\/span> beginning Monday, January 8 on Discovery Channel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The post Damon Merchant: Rogue driver goes from street scene to The No Prep King<\/a> appeared first on No Prep Racing<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Damon Merchant seemingly came out of nowhere to take season 6 of Street Outlaws: No Prep Kings by storm. Driving Rogue, his 1968 Camaro, Merchant finished first in Invitational points in his rookie season, making it to five Invitational finals and winning two of them. He also won a Great 8 event in two final-round […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,78117,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-race-pages","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90807","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=90807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91109,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90807\/revisions\/91109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}