Queen City Garage Is Live. Project Never Lift Is the First Build.

Saturday, May 9. Florence Motor Speedway. Fifty laps, Limited Late Model, Mother's Day weekend. The car will say 25 on the door, and the 25 will be in the field at 7 PM whether anyone is paying attention or not.

I have been here before.

Three and a half years ago — November 2022 — I drove the No. 170 Dodge Charger SRT Super Late Model in the South Carolina 400 at this same track. Lee Faulk Racing built the car. Direct Connection backed it. Across the weekend, the run combined for more than ten million online impressions. I went to Florence to ask one question: is there a real market for a Hemi at the grassroots level? The answer was loud. The answer was clear. The answer was: yes, build it.

Three and a half years later, the answer is sitting in the shop. Mopar Direct Connection sent us the first 5.7L Hemi to test and certify. We have it. It is not going in the car on May 9. That part is on purpose.

So let me tell you what this is.

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What QCG is. Queen City Garage is a Charlotte stock car development program. Project Never Lift is its first project. There will be more. PNL goes first because PNL is the one with the engine and the question and the date.

PNL's job is to take a next-generation 5.7L Hemi and prove it on tracks that do not give engines the benefit of the doubt. Mopar Direct Connection put that work in our hands. The first engine is in hand, dyno-validated. We start now.

I did not start a race team. I started a development program. The car is a tool. The track is where we find out what is true. The engine is the point.

Why. Grassroots stock car racing has been waiting on a real second option for a long time. The 2022 Florence reaction told me what I already suspected — the appetite is real. Project Never Lift is the second option. The Direct Connection partnership is how we deliver it.

The name. Project Never Lift means what it says. Never lift on the throttle when the data says don't. Never lift on the build when it gets boring or hard or expensive. There will be sessions when the data says lift, and we will lift — corner entry, dyno sheets, life. But the posture is committed. We are not running this thing soft.

Who's with me. Michael Faulk built the 2022 Florence car. He is still building. He runs Lee Faulk Racing in Mooresville. He is Dev Lead on Project Never Lift. Same shop, same hands, both jobs.

Mopar Direct Connection is the engine partner. The brand has been with me since the Dodge Thrill Ride tour in 2019, through the 2022 Florence run, and into PNL today. We are not new together. The work is what is new. Specifications, dyno data, and certification milestones will appear in this build log as we are cleared to publish them.

That is the team on day one. The work happens in Faulk's Mooresville shop. QCG runs out of Charlotte. The shop comes when the work earns it.

About May 9 — what it actually is. May 9 is a chassis benchmark, not an engine debut.

We are not putting a new engine in an unproven chassis on a Saturday night and calling the result data. The 25 runs sourced equipment with a known dyno curve. The chassis is the only variable that gets to talk that night. We listen. Then we drop the PNL Hemi into a chassis we already understand, with our own numbers in our pocket.

That is how you build an engine program. We are building a program, not a moment. Anyone can run a debut. Not everyone can run a benchmark.

If you came here for a finished thing, this is the wrong site. If you came here to watch the build, pull up a chair.

About Florence. Florence Motor Speedway is fifteen miles south of Darlington — close enough to feel it. Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran early Late Models there. Caden Kvapil won the South Carolina 400 last fall. The track calls itself the Diamond of the Southeast. The track is right.

We are running the Mother's Day card, Limited Late Model class — fifty laps, $1,000-to-win, deliberately small. A benchmark is supposed to teach you something. A 0.4-mile asphalt bullring teaches whoever shows up. It is also the place where this whole idea got asked out loud the first time.

We are coming back with the answer.

What happens here next. This becomes a build log. Pull up a chair.

The 25 runs on May 9. The PNL Hemi fits when the data says it does.

— Dylan "Mamba" Smith, Founder, Queen City Garage Charlotte, North Carolina · May 3, 2026