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Business Profile: Bullet Racing Engines
With an emphasis on no-time and no-prep competition, engine builder Nick Bacalis supports sportsman drag racers with reliable horsepower, comprehensive trackside service, and whatever it takes to make it to the next round.
Bullet Racing Engines builds big horsepower for a wide array of applications, but with a firm focus on sportsman drag racing: “Pro Mod, Top Sportsman, Top Dragster, the .90 classes, small tire N/T, and 4.84 small tire N/T Nitrous,” said shop manager Nick Bacalis. “We have customers with small blocks and big blocks; all-motor, nitrous, turbos, and superchargers. We build a lot of Hemis with screw blowers, centrifugal blowers, or turbos for the N/T anything-goes classes and the No Prep Kings series.”
Bullet has also built engines for street performance, monster trucks, and even a handful of dirt modifieds. But sportsman drags are where Bacalis sees both opportunity and innovation.
“Sportsman drag racing is the backbone of the industry,” he noted. “In the small-tire radial classes, or no-prep, they have to figure out engine, transmission, and suspension packages, and make them go down a track surface where they shouldn’t be going as fast as they do.” They “push the limits,” and what they learn “goes up the food chain to the professional classes.”
Bullet is the engine-building branch of Larry Jeffers Race Cars, located within Jeffers’ vast facility in House Springs, Missouri. Bacalis has managed Bullet since 2021, but his history with racing reaches back much further. He ran his first race in 1995 at age 17 in the NHRA 10.90 class. Over the next decade he added heads-up competition in NMRA, NMCA, PRO, and NSCA, at first in the naturally aspirated classes, and then “a couple of years with a nitrous motor.” He worked for Barnett Performance in Conyers, Georgia, and then Barry Grant in Atlanta.
In 2006 he earned an associate’s degree from the School of Automotive Machinists & Technology (SAM Tech) in Houston, Texas. That led to travel with a number of race teams, and a 2008–2018 assignment with Tony Bischoff and BES Racing Engines. “Then COVID-19 hit,” Bacalis recalled, “and everything was in chaos. After working with the Craig Sullivan and then Tom Blincoe Pro Mod teams, I bounced around until October 2021, when Larry Jeffers asked if I would be interested in running the machine shop. I’ve known Larry for probably 15-plus years, from meeting at the track and being around race cars. And I needed a job. So I decided to move to House Springs and run the shop.”
While he sees many racers struggling with increasing costs, Bacalis cited a few areas that are steady or growing. “Most of the high-end motors are ordered by millionaires, and they don’t care if they spend 100 grand. They are going racing no matter what. You build a screw-blown Hemi for a guy, and he knows he’s going to have a ton of maintenance and a ton of parts in it.
“A lot of people are running Pro Mod now, and the no-time stuff, where they run for no rules, on a small tire, for $50,000 once a month. A lot of them are leaving other classes, like X275 or Super Street, because those classes have gotten too far out of reach for them, or have disappeared, so they decide to do this. They can go local; they don’t have to travel like they used to.”
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