JERRY PITT: The son of an auto body repair shop owner, Jerry literally grew up surrounded by the enthusiast car culture. In 1986, he entered the publishing realm as an editorial assistant for Petersen’s Car Craft Magazine. Within 3 years Pitt was named editor of Mustang & Fords, and helped launch Petersen's 5.0 Mustang & Super Fords. By 2000, after serving as Group Editor for several Petersen titles, Jerry was promoted to publisher of Corvette Fever and Mopar Muscle. There, he spearheaded double-digit ad revenue growth for each of the past five consecutive years. By 2004, under PRIMEDIA's leadership, Pitt took on publishing duties for performance automotive titles, High Performance Pontiac and Vette.

In June of 2005, Jerry Pitt was promoted to the post of HOT ROD MAGAZINE Publisher. Jerry says, "To serve as publisher of HOT ROD - PRIMEDIA's most-important brand - will certainly be the most daunting challenge of my 19-year career. It's a challenge that I intend on approaching with humility and honor to those who read, buy and live, and drive the culture."

The other judges will include members of the editorial staff from Hot Rod Magazine, Mustang Monthly and Muscle Mustangs.

EVAN J. SMITH: Evan J. Smith is the Editor for Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords magazine, the leading late-model Mustang publication with a circulation well over 120,000 per month. He has been working in the automotive media since 1992 and has been on staff with MM&FF since 1994. He first served as an associate editor before being promoted to Technical Editor, and then Editor in 2006.

Evan lives and breathes auto racing, and when not writing articles or traveling to events, he competes in the NHRA Drag Racing series in the Stock Eliminator category. His current racecar is a 1993 Cobra Mustang, with which he has won Class Eliminations 14 times at various tracks from Englishtown to Indiana. This includes three wins at the popular Mac Tools U.S. Nationals held each year at Indianapolis Raceway Park.

Additionally, Evan has set 11 NHRA national records and currently has one of the quickest Jr. Stock cars in the country. In the past few months he has scored a win and runner-up at recent events.