Fastest Car

Today we're gonna run four wide, one quarter mile,

and the winner of this race will go on to the championship round.

In Cuba, my main dream was owning a car...

so it would be beautiful to win this race.

There's men out there

that think you shouldn't be doing the car thing at all,

but you don't realize what this thing is capable of,

you don't realize what I'm capable of.

The car is me.

It's built by me with these hands.

Definitely got more power than a supercar.

The guys building the cheap junk cars with big turbos,

they're just wasting their time,

because this car is engineered to be that fast.

I can't respect that particular car, it's painful to my eyes.

I wanna blow the doors off all three cars here and that's it.

Come on, your turn. Huh?

Whatever car they bring we are going to win.

We are going to represent the family and Florida.

I know I'm a gonna win this race.

- A draw! - A draw, a draw!

That's not gonna happen in the race!

My name is Daniel Rodriguez.

I'm 33 years old.

We live in Homestead, Florida.

My car is a 1992 Honda Civic.

I bought it for $3,000.

Hondas are underdog cars, yes.

Why? 'Cause they're cheap.

A little money, you can make it fast.

Driving this, I feels like I'm driving a Mercedes.

Like I'm driving another supercar.

It's all about Honda power, bitches.

Oh, yeah.

This car has a K-series engine.

Produce about a thousand horsepower.

Most of the Hondas are front-wheel drive. This one, we make it all-wheel drive.

This all-wheel drive set up hooks and books.

The first time I drove in the US,

I was scared to switch lanes.

because in my country, they only have, like, one lane,

but it feels great at the same time, you know?

Uh, 'cause I was doing something that I would never do in my country.

I was born in Cuba, the city of Havana.

It's super hard to grow up in Cuba.

You have to find a way to survive.

You have to look for food,

because whatever the government gives you is not enough.

You gotta eat whatever you have at the moment.

Even if you have the money,

you gonna take you 30 days to save that money,

and then you're not gonna spend it in one day only to eat chicken.

It was so hard for us.

So, thank God I had the opportunity.

I came to the United States in 2006,

I was about 19 years old.

I was leaving everything that I had

and making a new life here.

Super hard to have left my mother,

to leave my sister and my brother...

to leave my people, to leave everybody behind.

Ah...

It was super hard to leave my mother.

And I miss her every day, yeah.

But my mother was super happy,

'cause she knows that, at least, here we have the opportunity

to have stuff you're not gonna have in Cuba,

and opportunities to meet new people,

and to be free.

When I got to the US, it was so hard for me.

You never know if you're gonna make it.

You're closing your eyes and it's like you... you...

...are born again.

I met Yosmari a year and a half after being here.

She always helping me.

She's the one that helped me and say, "I know you can do better."

I get my cousin to take me to a racetrack,

and when I see that guy racing the car?

Oh, my God.

Make me feel... I say, "That guy's mine."

Like, picked it up.

"That's mine."

She really loved cars,

and actually knows a lot of stuff about cars.

Yeah, we are 100% a power couple. We're best friends.

I support him, he support me.

We have that, uh, connection.

He race, he works on the car,

I do the shit talking.

My car was my first baby,

but now we got Natalie now,

so, now the car is number two, Natalie is number one.

Natalie was the best thing that happened to me.

I love her. I want to be with her always.

She's everything. I love her.

Look at this.

What is this?

Most of the time, when I'm working on the car,

she come to me and she grab a tool,

but in my opinion, I don't like Natalie to be in cars.

Why? 'Cause she's a girl...

Racing is not for girls.

It's better for them to be in the kitchen and do their nails and things like that.

That's Cubans' thing.

That's all machista stuff from Cubans.

Girls can drive whatever car they want,

and if they like racing, that's good.

I'll never get beat by a woman. Don't make me race a woman, please.

It would be a dream for us to win this race.

I come from a country with limited resources.

They don't have anything, there's no internet,

they know nothing about technology...

Whatever a person can do to overcome that is super important.

It feels so nice to be fast, it feels like freedom.

I really like makeup

because it kinda gives you, like, a creative outlet

to... kinda do what you want.

There's no real rules to it, you can do whatever you want.

You can express yourself.

But when it's race car time,

my hair's pulled back, I'm greasy, and it's race car time.

And then, of course, there's men out there

that think you shouldn't be doing the car thing at all.

But, if you look at statistics, women have better reaction times than men.

I'm 22 years old.

I started martial arts when I was about eight or nine.

I became black belt at about 12.

I did manage to win my first world title my first time competing for it.

So, that was pretty fun.

Spinning. Intensity strong.

Oh! Behind the back catch!

And the pressure did not get to her.

I loved everything that I did,

but eventually I had done the karate for a really long time

and I just wanted something different.

Ms. Noonen...

what a performance!

When I was about 15, 16,

that's when I really started wanting to get into cars more.

My dad bought this car,

and we started building this together, and the rest is really history.

I drive a 1992 Eagle Talon.

It's got a 4G63 engine in it.

Um, it's transverse. The car's all-wheel drive.

We named this car Phoenix,

because it rose from the ashes.

The car itself we bought as a roller,

so nothing that's in it now was in it before.

Now it's a big, you know, beautiful, fire-breathing,

badass, you know, kinda thing that we... that we built ourselves.

What are your thoughts on this race? Are you...

Are you worried about it? Are you...

No, like anything, it's just...

karate, cars, no matter what,

you have to focus on what you're doing, and not worry about the others.

Are you worried about the race?

Yes, I hold my breath when you go down the track.

It's good it doesn't take me long to get down it,

or you might pass out, holding your breath.

I don't know what supercar it is, but, uh...

I don't give a shit.

Winning would be great, because, you know,

we did spend a lot of weekends and late, late, late nights working on the car.

I've raced this car for years and years.

I would say that this car meshes with my personality

in a way that you don't realize what this thing is capable of.

You don't realize what I'm capable of.

She is a great kid.

To see Adriana win this race, it'd be pretty amazing.

Her focus, her determination to win...

I'll bet on her every time.

This is my half a million dollar Ferrari F12.

And I bought a Miami Vice outfit

with a gold Rolex, gold 18-carat shades, and everything else,

even a gold gun,

so I could just straight-up be like Miami Vice style

living here in South Florida.

I have a lot of cars,

and I've owned more expensive cars,

but none that really have hit my soul as hard as this one.

I'm racing a 2018 Lamborghini Huracán Performante Spyder.

It's in Miami Blue, with every single option possible,

and a sticker of $370,000.

Like, there's a feeling that goes into it, you know?

- I mean, listen to the noise. It just... -

- It's crazy, you know? Listen to this. -

I mean, this is a pussy magnet on a level, like, beyond, like, anything.

I get haters everywhere. Right?

I get people, like, yelling stupid shit like, "Hey, did Daddy buy you that car?"

They want to justify

why it's okay to be mediocre,

and I remind them of the reality of being mediocre,

and they don't like that one bit.

I found a lot of business success early.

I'd made some incredible real estate investments,

and made my first million when I was 27,

but I had lost my sense of purpose.

So I decided to teach people business online.

I have so many businesses,

but, in short, I'm an online teacher.