An Interview with Superstar Chevy
10.5-Wide Racer Jack Barfield
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Quite simply, the story of Outlaw 10.5 racing can’t be told without including Jack Barfield, a dedicated Chevy racer out of Pembroke, GA. In addition to being the Atlanta-based Outlaw Racing Street Car Association’s (ORSCA’s) first 10.5 champion in 2004, Barfield owns a piece of ORSCA along with fellow racer Mike Hill and sanctioning body president Johnny Fenn. At the halfway point of the 2007 season, Barfield and his nitrous-fed 870ci (!) 2002 Camaro were sitting 10th in ORSCA points with four races to go.
The 40-year-old construction company owner cut his racing teeth at the now-defunct Savannah Dragway while still in high school, running a 1975 Chevelle that started out with a 350, but seven engine swaps later hosted a full-out 454 beneath the hood. “There was always a motor hanging in the front yard from a shade tree,” Barfield recalls.
Married at 19, straight out of school in 1985, the demands of family life and the somewhat nomadic lifestyle of living wherever the next construction job cropped up took Barfield out of the sport for several years. In ’94, however, he “came home” and within a year established Atlantic Underground Utilities, which prepares raw land for new subdivisions before home construction begins.
The new business venture provided the time and wherewithal for Barfield to return to his drag racing roots, this time with a ’67 Chevelle that he entered in Fastest Street Car Shootouts, a precursor of the Outlaw 10.5 class. Though he loved the Chevelle, it proved too heavy for what Barfield was asking of it so within a year or so he bought a ’68 Camaro that he raced well into the 2005 season.
That’s when Barfield debuted a stunning Sheppard Race Cars-built ’69 Camaro that helped take Outlaw 10.5 to a new level of performance and professionalism. Midway through last season, though, Barfield parked the ’69 in favor of his current ride, purchased after it won the ’05 ORSCA championship with Terry Robbins at the wheel.
A fan favorite and feared competitor at the track, Barfield recently sat down with MacChevy.com to discuss his career and role with ORSCA.
What’s one of your earliest memories of driving a high-performance car?
Barfield: All my parents ever had were Chevys, so that’s what I had, too, but I remember my next-door neighbor was a die-hard Mopar man and he had this Super Bee that my best
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I remember that car, how fast it was, and back then whenever we had a drag race in his car or any of my friends’ cars, I always had the driving duties. Well, my car had a limited-slip rearend in it, but my buddy Keith’s, that Mopar, it had a posi unit in it. Anyway, we were going to a drag race, I was driving, and when we left my house we turned on to another road and I got in the gas. You know, with my car it would slip one tire going around the curve, but when I shot the gas to it that posi took hold and shot us off about 100 feet into the marsh. We had to get towed out, but it taught me a little about what positive traction does for you.
