ONE-ON-ONE W
GREG JONES | EDITOR
D
uring this first-time event, Engine Builder was fortunate to grab some time with Sick Week founder and promoter Tom Bailey to discuss the week in Florida and his thoughts on the exploding drag-and-drive community. Q: How did Sick Week come about?
A: At Drag Week is when we started talking about having a signature event. We thought maybe we could do that in a year or two. During Drag Week we were talking to people and talking about the ideas we had and they all said we should do it now. I’ve been to lots of these events and figured they’re easy, so we said, “Okay, we’ll do it, and we’ll do it in February, in four months.” I didn’t realize what it takes to plan an event. Luckily, I’ve got a great team of people who have stepped in. A lot of the Drag Week staff that I’ve known for years has stepped in. Having Keith Turk has been huge, and having Jenny Turk as the event
32 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | MARCH / APRIL 2022
planner. I wouldn’t have been able to even try and race this event without her and I don’t even know if I could have pulled it off because there’s so many little things to take care of.
Q: Where did the Sick Week name come from? A: The name of everything stems from my car, which is Sick Seconds (now Sick Seconds 1.0 because Tom also has Sick Seconds 2.0). Sick Seconds was going to be the first 6-second street/strip car. When I got the car, I adopted the name. I carried it over to my new car, Sick Seconds 2.0, and everything ended up as Sick. We started a fundraiser that takes place in August called Sick Day, which has been going on for four years. The Epilepsy Foundation of
Michigan is what that is a fundraiser for. It was just natural that when we came up with the magazine, it was Sick the Mag and then the event had to be Sick Week. Who would’ve thought? Now, we’ve got a trademark on the word sick when it’s used in anything car related.
Q: For someone who doesn’t know racing, what is Sick Week? A: Sick Week is about having a bunch of like-minded people who enjoy getting tortured 24-hours a day for five days, because that’s what this stuff all ends up being. It’s really man and machine. It’s the most primitive form of racing. It goes back to the days of Snake and Mongoose doing grudge races traveling across the country in a truck with a trailer with their car on it. Sick Week took it a step further
