NHRA Top Fuel racer Josh Hart missed this past weekend’s event at New England Dragway at Epping, N.H., he has seen plenty of action swirling around his Ocala, Fla.-based Fearless Racing team and other companies.

On the racing side, Hart has ambitious new plans for his Burnyzz /Technet Dragster, thanks to a significant increase in funding from existing associate sponsor Buymetalbuildingsdirect.com.

Aside from chasing the Camping World Drag Racing Series crown in his rookie season, Hart is preparing for the opening of Burnyzz 2.0, his expanded Burnyzz Speed Shop and full-service auto center that already was 100,000 square feet under one roof and encompasses an entire city block.

Buymetalbuildingsdirect.com, which has spent the past 14 months building Hart’s new $5 million investment, is enabling the Gatornationals winner to increase his racing schedule, as well.

"We’ve already added Topeka, Bristol, and St. Louis to our schedule. We’re looking at potentially adding Brainerd, Pomona, and Las Vegas with this new funding. We’re hoping that they bring back Virginia, but we’ll see what happens with that race. If that race is added back to the schedule, we'll be there, too," Hart said.

Hart is a native of Huntington, Ind., near Fort Wayne, and he is considering a major addition to his growing real-estate investments that would include a presence in the Hoosier State.

"We’re thinking about opening up another location in Indiana. If that happens, [wife] Brittanie and I will have to go back and forth,” he said. “Right now, we’re trying to get settled into this new building and then regroup. Once the dust settles on this one in a few months, we’ll start looking seriously at those opportunities.”

Fearless Racing would relocate to Brownsburg, Ind., once a facility is purchased.

“The race team would move there," Hart said. "There’s a lot of good tax breaks going on right now up there. The goal is to relocate the team there, as many of the NHRA teams are located there.”

For right now, he and Brittanie have their hands full with what he calls “a soft opening” of Burnyzz 2.0 this week.

"Our grand opening will be July 15th. We’ll have the public, business people, and a lot of the politicians there. We’ll do a ribbon-cutting that day with the mayor in the evening,” Hart said.

Ocala CEP (Ocala/Marion County Chamber & Economic Partnership) is helping Brittanie and Josh Hart with the grand opening of the new building.

They will be celebrating the possibility of hiring 10 additional employees. Burnyzz Speed Shop already has 30 employees.

“We were running out of real estate,” Hart said. “We were getting bigger and bigger. We didn't have a choice. We bought as much real estate as we could afford.

“We’re selling a lot of cars now. We used to sell about four cars every month. We were really happy about that. Now we sell seven-10 cars a week,” he said. “All of our cars have to be kept inside, as they cannot be sitting outside in the elements. We’re selling cars right now faster than we can get them on the website. Half of the inventory is not even on the website. It’s just not happening fast enough.”

Modern Muscle Cars, Hart2Hart Photography, the Diner, and Burnyzz's Show Room will be in the front building. The two back buildings feature Fearless Racing and Tuxedo Car Storage.

The yet-unnamed restaurant will open soon.

“We hope that this will be big enough, but nothing is final," Hart said.

Buymetalbuildingsdirect.com is a strong partnership that is galvanizing the Ocala economy.

“They are the ones that built the new Burnyzz’s 2.0," Hart said. "I’m really big on B2B [Business to Business] relationships. I enjoy that aspect of the partnership, because it makes their company stronger and it proves that we have a good balance. It shows that we are committed to helping them obtain more business. In the good old days, where people just write you checks to put their name on your race car, that doesn’t work anymore. You have to do something to help them make it worth their while. They did a great job on my building, and I believe in their product. I think it’s an awesome partnership.”

As for Buymetalbuildingsdirect.com’s involvement with the race team – a venture the company started in April – Hart has plans to help build both businesses.

Fearless Racing will give more visibility to Buymetalbuildingsdirect.com on the race car.

"We doubled the size of the sticker on the car," Hart said. "We're going to include them in all of our social-media posts. We're working on ways to help them get their name out to the public."

He said, "They were a little hesitant, because it was only our third or fourth race. But since we've been in two finals – and we struggled a little bit there in Texas [at Houston] – they seemed more confident to expand our partnership. They came back to me and said that they've received a whole lot of exposure off of the advertisement on the dragster. That was good, because that was the goal. They've more than doubled their sponsorship package with us this season."

Despite skipping the Las Vegas and Epping, N.H., races, Hart is has a 7-3 elimination round record and is ranked eighth in the Top Fuel standings, still in contention for the Countdown to the Championship that will begin in September.