Despite not appearing at the first two events of the NMRA season, longtime competitor Jason Lee made the show this past weekend at the Maryland International Raceway stop on the tour, competing in the AFCO Street Outlaw class in his familiar red ’86 Mustang GT, which carries backing from Strange Engineering and ProCharger, along with Lee’s own company, Part Time Performance. Lee, who counts amongst his achievements a four-time repeat as champion in the NMRA’s now-defunct Drag Radial class, along with a pair of titles in the NMCA’s Drag Radial class, had toyed with the idea of retiring the car and moving on to greener pastures, but cooler heads prevailed and he showed up to compete at MIR.

The car, which Lee had labored on for years wearing the Drag Radial-spec 360 cubic inch engine, recently underwent a few changes to move it into the 400-inch range. Lee was out testing it and managed to demolish the thrust bearing in the engine before even making it to the race. In true racer fashion, however, he repaired the engine and transmission, swapped to a different torque converter, and proceeded to set a personal-best elapsed time of 7.17 at 193.63 MPH in a semifinal matchup with Phil Hines. Unfortunately for Lee, Hines had the better elapsed time with a 7.15, but this shows him that the new combination will be more than competitive once he gets a bit more time on the laptop.

He took all weekend to sneak up on that performance, as he was nearly a tenth-and-a-half off that pace during qualifying, lighting the boards with a 7.30 to land in the third spot entering eliminations. When we spoke with him at the event, he was tight-lipped about the actual changes he made, not wanting to divulge any information, but by his performance in Sunday’s semifinal round, it looks like whatever he did made a difference. Since Sean Ashe showed the potential of the 400-inch ProCharged combination by ripping off an absolutely insane 7.03 test hit on Sunday, Lee’s got his work cut out for him before the next event.