With two events already in the books for the Lucas Oil-branded Emmons Motorsports team, a trio of brothers are headed to The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to race their first event of the season on NHRA’s national event tour. Identical triplets Terry, Jerry, and Gary Emmons are heading West from their home in the Houston area to race Stock and Super Stock at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Las Vegas. Their presence at The Strip will extend through the following week, when a Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series double divisional event will take place.
The off-season ended for Emmons Motorsports earlier this year in Belle Rose, La., where the Lucas Oil team raced at the divisional event at No Problem Raceway and then the Laris Motorsports Cajun SPORTSnationals, an event solely for Sportsman racers that is counted as a national event on their overall scorecards. Last season had ended with results that were not what they had desired, and so the team stepped back to determine exactly where and how they could improve their program. Gary, who had been piloting his Lucas Oil SS/HA ’69 Chevrolet Camaro, found himself at a bit of a crossroads.
“Toward the end of last year, Gary was frustrated,” explained Jerry. “He said, ‘You know what, I think I’m going to stay behind and work more at the business [Emmons Autoplex dealership]. You guys can go race.’ ”
But seeing his brother at odds with the sport that they had loved so deeply all of their lives didn’t sit well with Jerry. Racing is something the family had always done together, starting with their father, Harvey Emmons Jr., who passed along the racing bug to oldest son Harvey “Speedy” III; Terry, Jerry, and Gary; and Speedy’s sons, Will, Landon, and Jace. Without Gary, racing wouldn’t be the same, and so Jerry began paging through his brother’s log book and looking at each of the passes that he had made over the course of last year. He intended to unearth the problem and see about righting it, but he found that most of Gary’s runs were good passes that started with a good reaction time. Over the last few seasons, though, the Super Stock field had gotten progressively quicker – and Gary’s high 9-second ’69 Camaro was not producing reliably consistent results that would turn on win lights.
“Last year, we realized we needed to figure out a way to speed the car up,” said Jerry. “But even if we got a new motor, how much would it pick up? We wanted to go 9.30s, not 9.90s. We thought about putting a COPO engine in the car, but that’s a lot of work. At the time, we decided to keep on swinging the bat with the thought that you’ll hit the ball eventually.”
A big move
The pieces that would improve Gary’s position began to fall into place somewhat unexpectedly. Early last year in testing, Jerry was driving his SS/FA ’69 Camaro convertible (powered by a 396-cid big block outfitted with a Holley 780-cfm carburetor) when it threw a rod out. The engine had formerly been run by Sportsman ace Dan Fletcher, and the Emmons team put many more runs on it and refreshed it several times, but it had grown tired. It was time to have the 396 rebuilt.
But when the Vic Penrod-built engine was complete and being delivered, Jerry had an idea. What if instead of putting it back in the Camaro convertible Super Stocker, they upgraded Gary’s ’69 Camaro from a small block to this big block? Jerry consulted good friend Jeremy Duncan, who had changed his own car from a small block to a 396, and determined what it would take to make the move.
Fabricator Rick Stevens was enlisted to help with the transition, which would include new headers and a motor plate. Jerry set it all in motion with the encouragement of Duncan and friend Bobby Gyorke, and only then did he bring his brother into the loop.
“I had Gary come to the shop, and we pulled the motor out. I told him what the plan was, and he kind of said, ‘I don’t know about all this….’ But I said, ‘Nope, I already have the date scheduled to go to the fab shop. I’m committed, and I’m not backing out,’ ” recalled Jerry.
One of the biggest deciders was NHRA’s system of factoring horsepower. The 1969 Camaro convertible came from the Chevrolet factory marked with a significantly heavier shipping weight than the hardtop. It was calculated that if one were to take the complete drive train out of the convertible and put it into the Gary’s hardtop car, it would pick up half a second or more in terms of elapsed time. The team’s No. 1 goal of speeding up with the field would be fulfilled, and their No. 2 goal of having a car with a combination that would qualify at the prestigious U.S. Nationals would also be achieved.
“Worst case, we won’t be any less under the index than what you had with the small block, so what would be a negative, other than a little bit of labor and money? There isn’t one,” Jerry stated emphatically. “Once I gook Gary over to Rick Stevens’s shop, you could see he was getting excited about it. It went from ‘I don’t know if I’m going to do much racing this year’ to ‘We need to get everything ready.’ The whole narrative changed.”
But it wasn’t smooth sailing from there. A small problem showed up, and although they were able to address it, another issue reared its head along the way – one that they weren’t able to initially diagnose. Although they were working nonstop to get the car ready for the Las Vegas event, the Emmons brothers found themselves running out of time. For a moment, it was determined that the team would have to stay home until they could appropriately address what was happening with the car, but while sitting in the race shop – somewhat dejectedly consuming Whataburger and sipping on a Dr. Pepper – Jerry was prompted to take one last look. The Camaro was still on the lift, so he raised it back up, and he and Gary began to dig. Soon, they uncovered a simple glitch in the program that they had previously overlooked, and it was an easy fix. They got right to work, and the race to make Las Vegas was back on.
“We weren’t going to go to Vegas untested, though, so we dodged raindrops and tested on Thursday night, and we were happy,” Jerry continued. “That thing is good to go. The best part is that it really was time for a change for Gary, he needed to go faster, and now he is. I asked him how it was driving the car now; if it was everything he thought it would be, and he said that the best way to describe it was that it was like going from driving a Toyota Corolla to driving a Cadillac CTS-V. He’s ecstatic. No matter what happens this year, a major goal has been accomplished – we got Gary’s morale back up. We can’t wait to get to Las Vegas and get this season on track.”
Emmons Motorsports in Las Vegas
Overall at the national event level, the Lucas Oil/Emmons Motorsports team has a total of 50 event wins split amongst them. Jerry leads with 19 victories claimed; Harvey “Speedy” III possesses a total of 13; Gary holds down 10; and Terry has eight. The team’s most successful racetracks to date are Houston and Dallas at 12 wins at each, but their plethora of trophies have come at 15 different facilities on the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series national event tour.
Specific to Las Vegas, three of the Emmons drivers have won there: Gary and Jerry have both scored division victories at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and Terry was the Super Stock winner at the NHRA Finals in 2020, which took place at the desert oasis dragstrip.
While Speedy, Will, and Landon stay back home to attend to business, Terry (in the SS/BS ’05 Chevrolet Cobalt) and Gary (in the SS/HA ’69 Camaro) will compete for the Super Stock title, while Jerry (driving the B/SA ’69 Camaro in which he won the 2021 championship) and Gary (in his wheelstanding 8-second FS/A ’14 Ford Cobra Jet Mustang) will race in Stock Eliminator, all with the goal of putting Lucas Oil in the winner’s circle once again.
The NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway are set to take place April 11-13, with the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series double divisional event slated for April 16-19.
Emmons Motorsports races with the support of Lucas Oil Products, Hoosier Racing Tire, Lupe Tortilla and Stan and Sheila Holt, and VP Racing Fuels. Follow the team on social media: Facebook.com/EmmonsMotorsportsSince1938 and @emmonsmotorsportsracing on Instagram.
This story was originally published on April 11, 2025. 
