For the average person, zooming down a 660–foot long drag race strip at speeds in excess of 170 miles per hour might cause just a touch of anxiety.

For Columbia resident Gilbert “Rock” Jacobs III, it’s his favorite kind of stress relief.

Jacobs, 37, who works as a bondsman for Bail Bonding Inc., said he finds his day job to be much more pressing than “grudge racing” each weekend in his 1968 Camaro on the American Drag Racing League circuit.

“I’ve been in the bond business for eight years – eight long years,” Jacobs said. “Racing is my hobby, my stress relief.”

It seemed that Rock was always on the fast track, even as he earned his nickname as an infant.

“When I was six or seven months old, I used to just rock back and forth and never crawled,” he said. “I would rock and rock to try to get someone to pick me up. My granddaddy called me ‘Rock,’ and the name stuck.”

But Jacobs, a Columbia High School graduate, said although the moniker stayed with him, his attachment to the floor didn’t.

“One day I just got sick of waiting for people to pick me up, and I got straight up off the floor and took to walking,” he said.

Fast forward to Jacobs’ fledgling racing career, which started in a similar fashion. One day, Jacobs got himself a Mustang, slapped his company’s logo on it, painted in neon green letters, and took to the track.

“I realized that I was pretty fast, and I also found out that the advertising was working,” Jacobs said. “After I raced, people would call our company. So it became my advertising mechanism as well as my stress relief.”

A little more than three years later, Jacobs has a six–man team helping him make his Camaro called “Bounty Hunter” one of the fastest cars on the circuit.

The married father of three, with one more child due in February, is 31–6 with wins all over the East Coast and a fan base that spans the country.

“I even had a guy from Oakland, California who came to watch me race,” he said. “I had no idea that I had a fan from so far away. I guess I have a pretty big following on YouTube.”

He credits his team of mechanics, tire specialists, and parachute packers as the key to his success so far, calling the crew “all heart.”

“None of us are afraid to try anything,” he said. “And we’re just fast.”

Speaking of fast, they are quickly grabbing the attention of others in their business. Jacobs was featured on February’s cover of the magazine “Drag Illustrated.”

Catch him at his next head–to–head matchup, November 7 in Jackson, S.C. But don’t blink or you might miss it. Each race lasts less than four seconds.