Scott Kincaid burst onto the PDRA Pro Street scene in late May 2023 at the PDRA American Doorslammer Challenge at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio. He was a bit of an unknown to anyone who doesn’t keep up with small-tire racing. Those who do follow the drag radial classes knew Kincaid was a proven driver in Ultra Street and X275, and he was driving the car that his father, Tim Kincaid, drove to the Limited Drag Radial (LDR) championship in 2022. But in short order, Kincaid made everyone aware of who he is and what he came to Pro Street to do: win on Outlaw 10.5’s biggest stage.
[Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in DI #191, the 30 Under 30 Issue, in November / December of 2024.]
Kincaid raced Jr. Dragsters from age 10 to 15, at which point he moved up to a Mustang he’d built with his father. He started out running 6.00s, but he wanted to go faster. The father-son team added a little nitrous and got into the 4.80s, then they swapped in a turbocharged small-block combination to move into Ultra Street. That wasn’t fast enough, so they upgraded to a bigger turbo to run X275. In 2021, his accomplishments included wins at the spring Radial Fest and SCSN 8 Radials After Dark, as well as a third-place finish in the Radial Tire Racing Association X275 points.
“We thought we did really good,” says Kincaid, who also works with his father in the family business processing and transporting coal. “Rob Goss and Ron Rhodes were running and we got third in the points behind them, so we were happy about that. But we tore a bunch of stuff up and got out of that and started running some local stuff. Then I got in this thing.”
“This thing” refers to the silver, screw-blown Clinch Mountain Transport ’69 Camaro that won the 2022 FuelTech Radial Outlaws Series LDR championship with Tim behind the wheel. The team planned to run some Pro Street races in 2023, but they had to make some changes to be competitive in the slick-tire class.
“The way the car was set up then, it had a roots on it, and we couldn’t get it to weight with him in it, so I decided to start driving it in LDR just to get some seat time in it,” Scott says. “We ran it and never did a whole lot of good with it. We went fast, just never did win races or anything. Then we put slicks on it and came over in this stuff and wore them boys out for a little while.”
That’s a big statement for the shy, soft-spoken 25-year-old, but he’s not embellishing. Kincaid won in his debut at Norwalk, then won the next race on tour in Maryland. He sat out the next two races, then won the final two races of the season. With just four appearances in the eight-race season, he finished second in points, just 24 points – about a quarter of a round – behind world champion Bill Riddle. He then extended his win streak to five races when he won the 2024 PDRA season opener. The Tennessee native added two runner-up finishes and his first career No. 1 qualifier award to finish second in points again with one absence.
Kincaid’s success was somewhat unprecedented in the class, but he remains humble about his incredible winning record.
“We probably do our best when we don’t know what we’re doing,” Kincaid says. “We came into it and we’d never run slicks on hardly anything that was fast. We didn’t know what we were doing. We were just making it go down the track. It just ended up working out for us. We had some lucky rounds and we had some rounds where we did our part too. It just worked out. Then we started getting a handle on it and started going faster. Then we changed combinations [from roots-blown to screw-blown] and started going a little faster.”
The Kincaids moved to a screw-blown combo midway through the 2023 season because they realized that while they found immediate success, they needed to find more performance to keep up with the class. The move paid off, as the class has only gotten more competitive as existing teams refine their programs and new teams join the fold.
“The class is tight,” Kincaid says. “These last few races, it’s really tightened up. At GALOT, there was probably 10 cars within a tenth. That’s tight. That’s anybody’s game.”
As much as Kincaid would like to continue building on his success by chasing a world championship in 2025, he has bigger things in mind. He’s set to become a father with a baby due in April.
“I’m still not sure what I’m gonna get to do next year,” says Kincaid, who thanked his father for his tuning and support, as well as teammate Richard Reagan and his team. “I may run a few races at the end of the year. Family first.”
This story was originally published on February 10, 2025. 
