Young gun Gage Llamas made strides in PDRA Super Street competition this season, but after testing on radials yielded surprisingly positive results, he’s plotting a move to Limited Drag Radial (LDR) for the 2025 season. Better yet, he’ll do so with the LDR record-setting engine under the hood of his ’02 Trans Am after purchasing it from Doug Ghant and Ziff Hudson.
Llamas had his best showing of the season at the PDRA American Doorslammer Challenge at Summit Motorsports Park, where he qualified No. 1 and reached the semifinals. He made it through the first round at the other four races he attended, but he sat out the last two races of the seven-race Super Street schedule to test.
“We had some success, but we knew we weren’t where we wanted to be – at the top,” Llamas said. “So we took the last two PDRA races off and we went and tested. We had this theory of putting the car on radial tires and going to see the limits of the car to try to help us for Super Street. We kind of blew ourselves away with how fast we were able to go. We ended up going 4.01 at 180 at a test session in Martin, Michigan.”
Llamas and tuner Nick Chapman quickly realized the car could be a serious player in LDR, especially with plenty of room left for improvement in multiple areas.
“I actually honestly had no intentions on running Limited Drag Radial up until that point,” Llamas said. “I was dead-set on Super Street, and then we went that fast, and we knew in LDR we could be 300 pounds lighter, give or take. We could run a bigger tire and a bigger turbo, and they’re already going 3.90s or so. We knew that we were already really close, so we decided to make that switch, and it all fell in place.”
Llamas went to engine builder Kevin Mullins at TKM Performance to put together a new engine package for LDR, but the TKM group ended up connecting Llamas with Ghant, who was selling his record-setting “ZZ Top” Mustang. Ghant originally didn’t want to sell just the engine, but they ended up working out a deal for the combo that powered Hudson to a 3.818 at the Bama Outlaws event in March.
“I was able to pick up the whole engine, turbo, transmission, converter – the whole package – out of the world record car for LDR,” Llamas said. “So that made up my mind what I was going to do, and really, the reason why I chose this combination was because it’s still a small-block Chevy single-turbo, so it still fits Super Street if I just did a turbo change. It’s a very versatile combo to run.”
Llamas and his team are currently working to get more weight of the car to get it closer to LDR weight. He plans to get in plenty of testing before joining the FuelTech Radial Outlaws Series schedule when it makes sense.
“I don’t want to come out until we’re ready and tested,” Llamas said. “I do know we’ll start testing in February or March, wherever we can. Then we’ll start getting ready for the rest of the season and just go wherever we fit. I’m set on LDR, but I’ll do whatever I can fit, class-wise. We have everything to switch it back to Super Street or whatever, but LDR is my main focus right now.”
It’s been a rapid turn of events for Llamas, but he’s excited about the new challenge and thankful for everyone who’s played a part in his offseason efforts.
“I definitely want to thank my family and grandparents, especially, for helping me make this happen,” Llamas said. “Thanks also to my tuner, Nick Chapman, with CPR Competition, for helping me along the way and for everything that he does, and to Kevin and Jonboy at TKM Performance for making all this happen also.”
This story was originally published on December 20, 2024. 
