Scott Lang and crew chief Lee White returned from consecutive weekends of Pro Mod action feeling invigorated—and convinced that the sport’s true strength lies in grassroots, one-day shootouts. After topping the field at Rockingham Dragway’s new monthly Pro Mod program, they headed straight to Piedmont Dragway and captured the storied Big Dog Shootout trophy, reminding everyone why local racetracks still matter.
“Rick Moore and Tony Wilson, good friends of mine, invited me to come down. A bunch of PDRA guys were going to come, so I said, ‘This would be a good place to get some hits on the car,’” Lang explained of his decision to make the short trip to Rockingham in search of extra laps and valuable data .
Winning at “The Rock” set the stage for Piedmont, where Lang has chased that concrete bulldog for twenty years.
“I grew up in Greensboro. I’ve been going to Big Dog since it started. I chased after that dog for 20 years and finally got one,” he said, the pride still palpable after years of coming close .
That first pass under Piedmont’s lights wasn’t just fast—it was cathartic.
“Concrete bulldog. So it weighs about 50 pounds. If you see me holding that thing, while you’re trying to lift it up and celebrate, you’re trembling at the same time,” Lang recalled, his voice cracking at the memory.
For Lee White, Piedmont represented a return to drag racing’s roots.
“Man, it’s actually like being at home, to be honest. All of what we do now, racing at PDRA and all the NHRA stuff, the tracks are awesome, but they’re like a super freeway. Everything I ever raced and grew up on when I was younger was all little bitty, small racetracks. You just had to be a really good driver,” White said, emphasizing how those narrow lanes test a driver’s track awareness.
He credited his idol, Scotty Cannon, for teaching that hard-earned lesson.
“I’m really good friends with Scotty Cannon. He’s one of my mentors—those guys raced four times a week at different racetracks, and that’s what made them so good. We don’t have that anymore, except for a couple of people doing it. Back then, it was one-day shootouts at little tracks, and the stands were packed because people got to see qualifying and eliminations in a single night,” White explained, describing a bygone era he hopes to revive .
Piedmont’s format—two rounds of qualifying and three elimination rounds in roughly five hours—keeps the pressure dialed to eleven.
“And to put it in layman’s terms, it’s balls-to-the-wall, and you can’t drop the ball on the ground or you go home,” Lang said, capturing the all-or-nothing intensity that makes the Big Dog Shootout so compelling.
Mike Carpenter, a longtime member of the Carolina doorslammer scene, noted how intimate Piedmont feels compared with high-budget venues.
“The prep – it’s just different. They’re using whatever they’ve got at that facility – maybe they have a rotator, maybe they don’t; maybe they’ve got a crew that’s been doing it forever, or they’ve got a guy out there with a hand sprayer. That’s Pro Mod—adapting to imperfect conditions. There’s often two to three thousand people there on a Thursday night, and you barely have room to move,” Carpenter said, underscoring the energy of Big Dog.
Wes Buck, reflecting on the broadcast, observed that Piedmont’s local buzz is the secret sauce for growing any event.
“You go to a breakfast joint Friday morning in that area, and people are talking about what happened at Big Dog the night before—it’s part of the local conversation. The sooner you make your event matter locally, the faster it will matter regionally and nationally,” Buck noted, drawing parallels to other successful events in the drag racing community.
With back-to-back wins and record-setting passes at both venues, Lang and White are already setting their sights on the PDRA Mid-Atlantic Showdown at Virginia Motorsports Park—with confidence that they can parlay this early-season streak into a strong showing at what is historically one of the most competitive events on the eighth-mile drag racing series’ schedule.
Given the surge in participation and the renewed spirit at tracks like Rockingham and Piedmont, it’s clear that Pro Mod’s future is bright—and very much rooted in the same one-day, hometown shootouts that built the class.
This story was originally published on April 25, 2025. 
