When the hit television shows Street Outlaws and No Prep Kings stopped filming after 15 seasons, many fans wondered what would be next for their beloved drivers. Two of its most popular stars – Ryan Martin and Shawn “Murder Nova” Ellington – didn’t waste much time getting back to doing what they’ve always done: Race.
Martin quickly jumped into the Small Tire ring, hosting his own events across the south last winter, competing at large no-prep events such as Outlaw Armageddon, and is currently running the True 10.5 class at the Drag Illustrated Winter Series presented by J&A Service. While testing in Bradenton, he recently became the first driver to record a 3-second pass on 28×10.5 slicks, running a 3.949 at 198.73 mph.
Ellington, meanwhile, has jumped headfirst into the Pro Mod waters, competing in the Midwest Drag Racing Series for most of 2026 in “Blue,” the twin-turbo ‘69 Camaro owned by Keith Haney. He won in just his third career start in the class, and is now racing in his second Winter Series.
If all that wasn’t enough, the two drivers announced the Right Trailers Outlaw Street Series presented by XPEL at PRI, which will take place at select NHRA national events this year.
Now they’re stepping into what is their biggest project to date: the Outlaw Syndicate Small Tire Series, an eight-race series paying $20k to win at each event, with a points champion crowned at the end of the year. In addition to the headlining Small Tire class, Outlaw Syndicate will feature Lil Gangstas, 6.50 Index, Daily Driver, and Jr. Dragsters.
Prior to the season starting, both Martin and Ellington sat down with Drag Illustrated to share how the Outlaw Syndicate Series came about, and what fans can expect.
Since filming stopped for Street Outlaws and No Prep Kings, you guys have been venturing out and trying different things. What made you decide to start your own series?
Shawn Ellington: It all started when Ryan did his own thing last winter to try to stay busy. We’d worked so much, embraced so much for so many years with the Street Outlaws and NPK stuff, that you take that away from us for a month and we get bored very easily. So last winter, when I was doing the Winter Series stuff, Ryan was putting on small-tire races. How many did you have?
Ryan Martin: I think we ended up with five during the winter time.
SE: It worked out really well. I ended up doing one of them with him in the OG car and it was an amazing time. I’m gonna be honest with you – it was laid back, it was simple, it was small-tire stuff with my favorite car of my fleet, and it felt like I was just racing with my buddies again. It wasn’t my way of living. It wasn’t my livelihood. When Ryan asked if we wanted to think about doing our own small tire series, I said I think that would be amazing. It’s a good way to make some money, it’s a good way to meet the fans, it’s a good way to just go out and spend some time with fans and racers and family.
RM: I think also, just to be truthful, there’s a few different sides of racing. One of them that we all know is the super awesome, enjoyable side that’s everybody’s pastime, and you go do something fun and hang out with the family and go race one of my favorite cars. But for us, it was also like, on the business side of this, we stepped out of something that we were able to make a living doing, and I think me and Shawn kind of sat back and said, how do we continue to make a living with what we’re good at? So we said let’s see if we can make some money on the promotional side of it. We know how to drag race, we know how to do well, we know how to win championships. Let’s see if we can be promoters. We’re hoping that with our popularity and following, which showed during our test run of those five races we did last year, helps springboard this series. So while Shawn’s correct – we love it, it’s enjoyable, we love the small-tire deal – we wanted to get into the business side of drag racing, and here we are.
You mentioned the laid-back atmosphere at these races. Talk a little bit about what went into putting this schedule together – there seems to be some different and/or smaller tracks that give new fans an opportunity to see you.
SE: So it’s not just me and Ryan. We have a third guy, Carson Baker, who drives the orange car that looks a lot like the Fireball Camaro. Him and Ryan became buddies, and he wanted to be involved in this with us. He’s the type of guy who wants to pull his own weight, so we continuously hear from him and he told us, ‘I can’t bring things to the table like you guys can, but what I can do is work hard, reach out to tracks, and put this stuff together.’ We told him what we were looking for…not huge venues. We don’t need to get a place that houses 30,000 people and 5,000 people show up. We need smaller venues, places we haven’t been to the last 10 seasons with NPK, closer to people that haven’t gotten to get out and see us race. Carson talked with all the tracks, got us set up, and made the schedule. It’s tough trying to not schedule things on top of other races, and we also have things that could interfere with what Ryan and myself already have going on, which is Midwest Pro Mod and the four NHRA races that we’re planning on doing this season. It took a lot of work, and I feel like where me and Ryan lack, Carson makes up for it.
RM: One thing Shawn’s kind of forgetting is whenever Covid hit, him and I were both used to making money on this TV show, so what are we gonna do now? Covid was an uncertainty – we could go two years or five years without work. We just didn’t know, so we did something pretty close to this same thing and we hit some ridiculous amount…it was like 12 tracks in four weeks. It was all small venues, and we knocked it out of park on every one of them. So when I did my series last year, I went to smaller races that are not too far away from me. We ended up at a lot of tracks in Mississippi and Texas here in the south where people hadn’t seen us 405 guys before, and it was a big hit. We took the list from Covid and we took a list that I did, listed every single track we could think of, and I turned Carson loose with it. I gave him about 25 tracks and we came up with eight that are a good fit for us.
There have been a couple changes to the class line-up recently. What can fans expect to see at your events?
SE: We did change a couple of things recently. We’re going to add a 6.50 Index class and a Jr. Dragster class for the kids. A lot of these tracks that we’re going to cater to Jr. Dragsters. They’re the future of racing, so we wanted a place for them also. So we’re not going to do the All Steel-All Glass because honestly, anybody who could run ASAG can jump in the 5.30 Lil’ Gangstas class.
RM: Yeah, we basically decided to merge those two classes after putting some thought into it. We had a long conversation between the three of us, and we wanted to add the 6.50 Index because it seemed like the most popular index class. We wanted to do Jr. Dragsters for the kids, but we felt like we were possibly shortchanging one of the classes by having those two. We kept 5.30 because it’s obviously the next big thing going right now. I think it’s hot. You could have 40, 50, 60 cars if you’re really trying. And like Shawn said, most all of the ASAG cars can run in 5.30 if they want. We’ll still have Daily Driver. The 28’s class is still gonna pay 20 grand. We think that Lil’ Gangstas is gonna pay $10,000. We’re currently talking with a few sponsors that have asked for that to be their class, so we’re trying to get it up around 10 grand.
SE: We’re gonna have a good time, and we’re gonna run the 5.30 Lil’ Gangstas class with a couple of cars, like our ‘55 Chevy and Ryan’s champagne ‘69 Camaro. It’ll also give Phantom a place to race his truck, and if Aiden’s car is done, he’ll have his Chevelle in it. The Lil’ Gangstas class is just a fun class, and it doesn’t matter who you are, what your car runs. It’s pretty amazing.
There’s been a lot of discussion recently in small-tire racing about whether the clocks should be on or off. Which way will they be at your races?
(Long pause…)
RM: I was waiting to see what Shawn said.
SE: I was doing the same thing.
RM: You know, we haven’t really talked about that a lot. We’re trying to figure it out, watching to see how everything else is going to pan out. We wanted to see how everybody accepted the Winter Series with the clocks being on, and I honestly don’t know how they accept it yet. I’ve seen a lot of mixed opinions. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I truthfully don’t know what to do, whether we should have them off or not. We’re gonna have to make a decision here pretty soon, but we haven’t pulled the trigger on that yet.
SE: And let’s be honest, we realize that we were racers way before we were promoters, so things may change as we go. We may say this is the way it’s gonna be and then figure out at the first race it can’t be like that. We’re new to this and we are open to change. We’re just gonna throw our hats in the ring and see what happens.
RM: I think it’s gonna be great, and if we learn to adapt to what is popular and what people like…sometimes the general public doesn’t agree with that. I think our goal here is to make people happy, give them somewhere they want to go, somewhere they want to race. If we have to make adjustments along the way to figure that out, then that’s what we’re going to do.
SE: And so far, we’ve got some amazing sponsors on board. We haven’t even really written everything down yet. Well, I’m sure Carson has, but if you saw the list of things that the championship is gonna be worth, it’s gonna be huge.
RM: You know, the prize pack…we got Polaris on board for a Razor…
SE: Kicker’s gonna outfit that Razor with a stereo system. There are people like Mark Micke who’s going to throw in a shifter to the winner, all kinds of sponsors who are talking about giving products to the series champion. It’s going to be amazing. It’s going to give somebody a reason to chase this series. Not only for that, but the $20,000 to win is pretty good for these smaller tracks.
There was also talk about the two of you grudge racing throughout eliminations. Is that still on the table?
SE: I don’t know. That’s definitely a possibility and I do believe we’re going to have the cars there.
RM: It depends. I don’t know if it’s feasible for us to bring everything. We’re trying to figure that out. If we focus our efforts on running Lil’ Gangstas, we’re not going to compete with these guys with small-tire cars. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to bring five or six cars to come race 5.30 so that we and our crew guys can enjoy it. We’ve also talked about me or Shawn racing the Small Tire champ at the end of the night for an additional $5,000 at a few races.
Looking ahead – now that you’re both officially jumping into the promotional side of things, where would you like to see this series head moving forward?
RM: One thing we learned from NPK is you can oversaturate things. You can oversaturate yourself for one series – there were a couple times where we raced 16 or 18 times in one season for the NPK series. When you’re chasing a points championship, it’s super grueling to do that to anybody. We’re not gonna do that. I think 10 is the sweet spot for me. In my opinion, if we could stay somewhere between 8-10, that is a fair amount of races for a points champion to try to follow and not get overwhelmed. With NPK, a lot of guys couldn’t keep up with that series because they had to work regular jobs. Guys like me and Shawn, that was what we did for a living. We were fortunate enough that we could go test during the week to stay on top and it showed – we both won championships. But we don’t want to do that to these people. This year we’re at eight; if next year is nine and the following year is 10, that’s probably going to be where we’ll cap it. And honestly, we’re gonna have such a busy year with this series, our NHRA stuff, and Midwest Pro Mod, you’re talking about 30 weekends booked for the year.
SE: Not to mention, we haven’t really discussed going to Canada yet, but the three places we’ve been going to in Canada are likely going to be added at some point also. But 8-10 races is, in my opinion, the perfect number. A lot of these guys coming to these races, especially the locals, I feel that we’ll be fortunate enough to have some people that are chasing the championship. But those same people chasing the championship have regular 9-5 jobs. I think especially right now, it’s gonna take a lot of our attention to try to keep the racers happy, keep the fans happy. That’s one of my biggest things is to be there for the fans. A lot of times in NPK, I heard so many times throughout the years, ‘I couldn’t get to Shawn. His line was too long.’ We want to make ourselves readily available. That’s the reason we went ahead and did the VIP tickets where me and Ryan will have personal time, Q&A’s, things like that.
Martin and Ellington are quick to thank their long list of growing sponsors for helping make the Outlaw Syndicate Small Tire Series possible: ProLine, VP Fuels, Quick Performance, XPEL, M&M Transmission, Isky Racing Cams, Hoosier, ProCharger, OC Raw, Larry Jeffers Race Cars, Nitrous Express, Baker American Cycles, Central Power Systems & Services, Polaris Off Road, Billet Specialties, Motion Raceworks, Forced Inductions, Kicker, MidWest Diesel, and ATI Performance Products.
2026 Outlaw Syndicate Small Tire Series schedule
March 27-28: North Florida Motorplex – Fountain, FL
April 10-11: Brainerd Motorsports Park – Ringgold, GA
May 1-3: Darlington Dragway – Darlington, SC
May 15-16: 710 Dragway – Rowland, NC
June 5-6: Southside Dragway – Mason County, WV
June 12-13: Jackson Dragway – Jackson, TN
August 7-8: Holiday Raceway – Woodstock, AL
August 21-22: US 60 Dragway – Hardinsburg, KY
