Aston Martin once built a left-hand-drive Vantage — not for America, not for export, but for drag racing. The factory constructed the 1990 chassis as a straight-line testbed for its V8 performance program, then killed the project before it ever saw a timing board. Much like the secret 918 Coupe Porsche quietly shelved, the car passed into obscurity until British racer Joel Kerr acquired it roughly a year ago and decided to finish what Aston Martin started.
The venue: HOT ROD Drag Week 2026, September 13–18, running through four tracks along the Route 66 corridor:
- Route 66 Raceway in Joliet
- Byron Dragway
- Cordova Dragway
- World Wide Technology Raceway outside St. Louis
The class: Unlimited. The attitude: audacious.
521 Cubes, Two 94mm Turbos, One Street Outlaws Tuner
Kerr replaced the Vantage’s big-block Chevy with a 521ci Noonan billet Hemi, then handed the keys to Street Outlaws star Joe “Dominator” Woods — and 2,500 wheel horsepower followed.
Drag Week veteran Lonnie Tibbs helped orchestrate the car’s transatlantic move and shaped the build strategy around endurance, not just elapsed time. The original big-block Chevrolet setup was pulled. What replaced it, according to hotrod.com, is a 521ci Noonan billet Hemi V8 — the all-billet race architecture now common at the sharp end of Unlimited — fed by twin HPT 94mm turbochargers specified by Woods based on his No Prep Kings experience.
Ohio-based Big3 Racing installed the engine, fabricated custom headers, completed the cooling system, and wired a Holley Dominator EFI to manage fuel, spark, and boost control. On Big3 Racing’s hub dyno, the combination reportedly produced approximately 2,500 wheel horsepower at around 20 psi of boost — with headroom still sitting untouched.
The tire choice adds another layer of intrigue. Rather than traditional slicks, the team opted for Mickey Thompson Bubba Radials — a tall drag radial that has been gaining traction in Super Comp and bracket categories — making the Aston one of relatively few door cars at Drag Week configured around this tire. Early testing returned a 1.19-second 60-foot time on conservative boost, suggesting strong launch characteristics before the full power is ever deployed. If reliability cooperates, the team believes the car is capable of 6.60-second quarter-mile passes, according to hotrod.com.
Surviving Is the Point
On a route celebrating 100 years of Route 66, the Aston Martin’s first-year goal isn’t the record — it’s the finish line.
In 2025, Ned Dunphy won Drag Week overall with a five-day average of 6.1754 seconds, per The Intelligencer. Multiple 2026 Unlimited entries are chasing a five-second average. Kerr’s Aston Martin isn’t chasing that — not yet.
First-year priority is survival: five days of drag passes plus hundreds of highway miles between tracks, in a car born for grand touring, not the Illinois flatlands. Finishing Drag Week is harder than it sounds when repeated quarter-mile runs are separated by long highway stints that expose every weakness a race build tries to hide. That tension — between outright speed and simple endurance — is exactly what makes this Aston Martin one of the most compelling entries of 2026.
