Radial Grand National Laying Down a Killer Pass at WooooStock!

If you’re a fan of small tire racing, there’s a really good chance you’re already familiar with Chad Henderson’s stunning Grand National. The Alabama native, who runs his family’s farm in Madison, Alabama to fund his racing operation, has been a fixture in the small tire world since the beginning. He started out competing in the Nova his son Jackson is now racing before jumping into the Radial vs the World ranks with the Grand National shown here in this footage from YouTuber JMalcom2004.

At last years inaugural WoooStock event, an innovative hybrid clocks-on/clocks-off event that brought together the biggest names in both class racing and the grudge world for a weekend at Darlington Dragway, Henderson showed up to do a little testing with his big-inch nitrous combo. While turbo Buick aficionados probably faint at the sight of a 700+ CID nitrous engine stuffed under the hood of a Grand National, everybody else in the racing world simply drools over this car. Chad and his family have a tight-knit group of friends that work very hard to keep the car looking as good as it runs, and you can see for yourself the car runs damn good.

There’s not much to say about the run itself, since the clocks were off and we don’t know what he ran. You can see the car hooked hard off the line and made a clean A-to-B pass with only a slight push toward the centerline that Henderson corrected perfectly, keeping the car off the line and in the sticky part of the track. I know at one time this was the quickest nitrous radial car in the world, but with the advent of pro-mod style chassis and monster 900+ cubic inch nitrous engines, Henderson’s stepped back from RvsW and jumped into the world of Outlaw Drag Radial and now Limited Drag Radial, both classes that allow for stock suspension style chassis to be competitive without spending seven figures to run up front.

Eagle eyed viewers may notice another legend in the small tire world behind the car while it’s staging. Chad’s crew chief for most of his career was nitrous guru Monte Smith, who passed away unexpectedly. With a huge hole in their family and team, Henderson reached out to one of the biggest names in all of drag racing, none other the Steve “Stevie Fast” Jackson. While he’s been behind the wheel of blown hotrods for the past few years, Jackson has years of experience driving and tuning nitrous cars in the the grudge world, where going A-to-B as quickly as possible each pass in an absolute must, as many of those races have tens of thousands of dollars on the line.

I hope to see the Grand National out often in 2018, and look for Chad to also spend some time behind the wheel of James Goad new ProCharged Camaro known as Deez Nuts. Goad reached out the Chad to drive the car on radials at Lights Out 8 next month at South Georgia Motorsports Park.