A week back, we brought you a look at the first half of the field for the 2023 Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge Grudge Match. Today, we bring you the second half of the field, giving us a look at who will be participating in the Grudge Match program – but we still don’t know what they will be driving or what criteria they have to meet in terms of their build.
If you missed our piece detailing the first three mentor-rookie teams – Team Corruptt, Team Sick Bastards and Team Dahminators – click here for a look at those teams.
The second half of the field consists of Team Truck Yeah, Team Throtl and Team Soul Snatcher.
Team Throtl is the most experienced team in this year’s Roadkill Nights Grudge Match, with mentor Rickie Fernandez having served as the driver for Team Throtl in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, he drove a yellow Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye and in 2022, he drove an early Dodge Viper with the SRT Hellcat Redeye engine mated to a 6-speed manual transmission.
Fernandez will use his two years of experience to help Team Throtl rookie Quinn Clark, who is a builder for the Throtl YouTube channel. We don’t know anything about Clark, but the bio states that he is a drifter and a “true rookie drag racer”, so Fernandez’s experience will be crucial in the rookie getting down the track on Woodward Avenue cleanly.
Next up, we have Team Soul Snatcher, which begins with mentor Herman Young – better known online and in the modern Mopar community as the man who runs the Demonology channel. Young competed in the 2022 RKN Grudge Match with specially prepared Challenger that was powered by a Redeye Hemi mated to a 6-speed manual transmission (shown below), but he has made countless runs all over the country in his 2018 Demon.
The rookie on Team Soul Snatcher is Lee Carter, a YouTuber who builds performance cars and exotics from the inventory at his high end salvage yard. Carter appears to favor Porsche and GM builds, but he is working on a manually-shifted 2018 Demon. His does not appear to have any drag racing experience, but in mentor Herman Young, Carter has as much knowledge on this racing program and the modern Hemi engine architecture as anyone.
Finally, Team Truck Yeah is another team with no experience in modern Mopars or Roadkill Nights, but mentor Justin Keith knows plenty about drag racing. He founded the Street Car Takeover series and has the world’s quickest and fastest 6th gen Chevy Camaro – along with some other built GM products. In short, he knows plenty about street-based racing, and his teammate is likely to need it.
Team Truck Yeah’s rookie is named Lacey Blair. Blair owns a powder coating shop in Texas and builds high riding show trucks, including her Ford Super Duty and Hummer H2. She doesn’t appear to have any modern Dodge engine building experience or any drag racing experience, so she is another true rookie – but she has a very experienced racer in her corner.
As a reminder, the 2023 Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge event will be held on August 12th in Pontiac, Michigan.
