Tess Wood grew up as a self-professed tomboy who helped her dad with his off-road projects. At one point, he owned a Ford truck and a Chevy truck that they’d wrench on together. Tess always preferred the Ford though, and now she drag races a Ford Maverick with a nitrous oxide system and a fully built motor with a supercharger strapped to it to make more than 500hp. When the Maverick line was launched in 1969, it was intended to be something of an American answer to fuel-efficient compact imports, but when Jess launches her highly modified ’73 example off the line at Pomona, it’s wont to do a wheelie. It’s a transformation that’s seven years in the making, and seeing as she’s chasing the eighth-mile stock short block record, it’s one that she’s far from done with. And her methodology is sound: “Build it, make it faster, break it, figure out how to fix it, and then make it faster again.”