Dirt
Points Taken
Mike Murillo hopes to revamp no-
prep racing in the Dirty South
By Ian Tocher
“It’s just the nature of the beast in grudge rac-
ing, and I’m not taking potshots at any promot-
ers, nothing like that, and I mean, it was kind
of exciting, the outlaw aspect of it, but also a
lot of it was just unorganized and overly risky,”
he says. “I just felt like we could do something
with this, take advantage of the excitement, take
advantage of the crowd participation and try to
create something more organized and safer, to
where racers could really get a hold of it and get
excited about working toward something like I
did for so many years.”
To that end, four points-paying events were
held in 2016, with Jerry Bird ultimately earning
the inaugural Dirty South championship in Big
Tire, Cody Jones prevailing in Small Tire, and
Nick Kallergis taking the True Street title.
“When we announced the first points series I
was told by other promoters, not necessarily the
racers, that hey, the points thing is never going to
work; nobody is going to want to race for points;
nobody cares about that. But I’ll tell you what, not
only did they get it, but our racers were excited
about it. And going into our final race in Hub City,
we had all three championships not even decided
until the semi-finals or later. At that point, those
guys were hooked,” Murillo says.
“And now another promoter that does this kind
of thing, they’re also taking on the points thing,
which is kind of funny because they’re the ones
that told me it wasn’t going to work. But I think
it’s good for everybody. You know what I mean?
It’s just good for the racing, it’s good for the fans
and we’ve just got to try to keep this momen-
tum going.”
This year, the Dirty South No Prep Series is
upping its schedule to six points-paying races,
plus one invitational. It opened the season in
March at Hub City, then ventured a little farther
north in April to Clay City, Kentucky, with stops
to follow at San Antonio and Odessa, Texas, in
May and June, respectively. The series will return
to action in September at Gulfport, Mississippi,
before returning to Clay City the next month for
the invitational and back to Hattiesburg for the
championship finals in November.
“The Dirty South No Prep Series is something
that has been put together by racers for racers,”
Murillo proudly declares. “The current revival of
drag racing to the masses is because of this style
of heads-up, street-attitude, risking-it-all style
of racing. We as racers and promoters just want
to keep this deep-rooted movement going. Drag
racing needs this.”
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38 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
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Issue 120
A
multi- championship NMCA/
NMRA career, half a season behind
the wheel of a Pro Mod, a brief role on
the Street Outlaws TV phenomenon
and a celebrity appearance at a no-prep event all
added up to convince Mike Murillo that becoming
a partner and pro moter of the Dirty South No
Prep Series was a good idea—even if he doesn’t
always feel comfortable within its unique culture.
“This no prep stuff, especially our series, you
have a bunch of racers, fast MF-ers, and they
are just like WWE wrestlers. I mean, it is just
so entertaining to sit back and watch the shit
talk that they do to one another. But I can’t take
it, man, I’m too sensitive,” he admits. “But that’s
also what makes it so exciting. It’s something new,
something different.”
Since opening his racing resume in 1994, Mu-
rillo, a 48-year-old father of six who once planned
on becoming a police officer, recorded a perfect
10 world championships. He spent the first half
of 2013 behind the wheel of a Todd Moyer-owned
ride in the short-lived XDRL series.
“I was on the XDRL property that year with
some of the baddest Pro Mod drivers in the
country—although I didn’t consider myself one
of those at the time—but I couldn’t get over the
lack of fan support there. Seeing 50 or a hundred
people up in the stands, who were probably just
there with other racers, I just couldn’t believe it,”
Murillo recalls. “But then in 2015, on the other
hand, I spent Season 5 with the Street Outlaws
guys and raced on the show and started doing that
no-prep scene and I couldn’t believe the total sup-
port there was for them. I mean, going to a race
and watching 10- or 15-thousand people show up,
it was just incredible for cars that weren’t really
that fast at the time, to be honest.”
Finally, a guest appearance at a no-prep event
early that same year at Hub City Dragway in Hat-
tiesburg, Mississippi, convinced Murillo to join
forces with grudge racing veteran Scott “John Doe”
Taylor and his Hub City co-owner Chad Waldrop
in order to bring better organization to the no-
prep scene throughout Mississippi, Louisiana
and Murillo’s native Texas. “Our roots were in the
Dirty South so that’s pretty much where the name
came from,” Murillo explains. “I just wanted to be
a part of something that was exciting, something
new to me, so that’s kind of how it all got started.”
Murillo knows he could have just gotten in-
volved as simply another grudge racer, but says
after coming from the highly orchestrated back-
ground of NMCA/NMRA racing he recognized
too much disorganization, little consistency in
rules or enforcement, and too often an alarm-
ing lack of regard for safety requirements in the
no-prep world.