There’s a version of the Pro Mod rules debate that plays out in comment sections and Facebook groups, where people who have never tuned a race car tell those who have exactly what needs to happen. “Stevie Fast” Jackson is not one of those people. He’s built the engines, logged the dyno pulls, and spent the money. Now he’s making the important call about where he thinks Pro Mod is heading.
Killin’ Time Racing is going centrifugal. All the way.
“We’re building 13 of these things right now,” Jackson said on a recent episode of the Shake and Bake Show. “We’re converting everyone’s car to centrifugal and building all these motors. We’re developing. I’m spending a million bucks on this.”
That’s not a complaint, it’s a conviction. And attached to it is a very specific request directed at every sanctioning body in the country that runs a Pro Mod program: give everyone one full calendar year with the rules exactly as they are, and don’t touch them.
“I don’t care,” Jackson said. “You can add another hundred to it and leave it alone. Just so we’re fixing to convert everyone’s car and build all these motors…as soon as we get it done, don’t slap another hundred on it because I want to come play in the sandbox that everybody’s in right now.”
The context matters here. The centrifugal combination has dominated Pro Mod qualifying at DI Winter Series events to a degree that is difficult to argue against. Per data Jackson presented on the show, a screw blower hasn’t qualified number one at a Winter Series race since Chip King turned the trick in January of 2023. The numbers behind that stat are just as stark: centrifugal and turbo cars make up roughly 30 percent of the field but have claimed the number one qualifying spot at essentially every race during that stretch.
Fifty pounds was the answer the PDRA offered in the form of a weight addition to the centrifugal combination, a move that divided the community along predictable lines. Jackson’s position is more nuanced than the loudest voices on either side of the argument. He thinks 50 might not be enough. In the meantime, he’s not boycotting or posting manifestos. He’s converting cars and spending money because he believes in where the combination is going, and he’s watched what happens when a dominant combination gets legislated into oblivion long enough to know he’d rather be holding the hot hand than waiting for the rules to catch up.
“If the screw qualified number one and won every race for three years, what do you think they would do to it?” Jackson said. “I mean, it wouldn’t make it two weeks before they would want to put 100 pounds on it.”
The philosophical point underneath all of this is one that Jackson has been making for a while, and it’s getting harder to dismiss. The centrifugal doesn’t win because it makes the most power. It wins, in large part, because of how it delivers that power: a loose converter, less wheel speed off the line, more consistent passes, more data accumulated over more runs. Crew chiefs like Brandon Stroud and Steve Petty are not only brilliant, the data-sharing model that Proline Racing and its network of customers has built-in gives centrifugal programs a structural advantage that weight alone can’t fully address.
“A lot of it has to do with how loose of a converter you can run in the centrifugal deals,” Lyle Barnett explained on the same episode. “It’s just easier to get the motor’s head up and keep it up.”
Jackson went further. He credited Eric Dillard and the Proline operation directly for building not just a fast combination but a fast system – one that shares information across customers and crew chiefs in a way that the screw blower world, historically secretive and individually-minded, has never matched.
“Todd Tutterow is the same way,” said Jackson. “Billy Stocklin, the holder of all notebooks. There’s a bunch of those guys that won’t share their stuff.”
Jackson says KTR has changed that internally, moving to a shared Google Drive model where every crew chief has access to every run from every car going back years.
“Everything’s on a Google Drive. You can look at my orange car ProCharger data from 2011 if you want to.”
The man who arguably lit the current screw vs. centrifugal fire also received genuine kudos from Jackson. It’s worth noting because you don’t hear many competitors say it this way.
“I want to give a huge shout out to Dustin Hart for singlehandedly causing this whole debacle,” Jackson said. “You’ve got a guy who spent a lot of his own money, built a product, came out with a better mousetrap, and he’s crushing folks. And he should be. That’s capitalism, and that’s why I love drag racing in America.”
Hart’s new centrifugal supercharger changed the conversation almost overnight. ProCharger responded within thirty days with an upgraded blower of their own. That’s the ecosystem Jackson is betting a million dollars on – not because the rules favor it today, but because the development curve and the data infrastructure around it are pointing in a direction that weight penalties alone aren’t going to redirect.
What Jackson wants in exchange for that investment is the same thing a lot of people in this sport keep asking for but rarely receive: stability. A rules committee with real representation across sanctioning bodies – the Drag Illustrated Winter Series, PDRA, NHRA, IHRA, Midwest Drag Racing Series, etc. – with an odd number of voting members and a commitment to holding changes for a fixed window. Not because the current rules are perfect, but because the sport is eating itself every time someone posts a fast number and Monday morning brings a new weight penalty before the data has even had time to breathe.
“I’ve told all my customers that we’re converting,” Jackson said. “Do not get mad when they put another 100 pounds on this thing. I’m telling you now. And they’re all okay with it.”
That’s the mindset. Eyes open, money on the table, and one request: let it run for a year and see what these things can really do.
Jackson will be racing this week at U.S. 60 Dragway in Steel, Alabama, the third stop on the Radial Outlaws Racing Series schedule, beginning a stretch that takes him through five consecutive weekends of competition including back-to-back NHRA events at Charlotte and Valdosta.
This story was originally published on April 15, 2026. 
