At the NMRA World Finals in Bowling Green, KY this weekend, we watched the Coyote Stock ET record reset not once but four times. The first time was during Friday night’s qualifying session when Hi-Po Joe Charles ran a blazing 10.35, with tire spin at the starting line.
Saturday night we were treated to two rounds of Coyote Stock qualifying runs, and in round three we watched there record changing passes. The first was Shifty Shane Stymiest who was able to best Charles’s first and second round passes by going a 10.329. The second was Brandon Alsept. Alsept and his crew put in the effort to run a killer number, and they did just that. The air was cold, the altitude was low, and the track was proving very sticky. Alsept reset the record with a 10.320, while Charles was sitting behind him in the burnout box waiting to go.
“As I was sitting in the lanes I heard the call for Shane’s run. He went 10.329 and I knew I was going to have to make a killer pass. Brandon’s run was right in front of me. I was in the water watching the pass. 10.320. At this point I had been bumped to third,” says Charles.
“The DA kept edging me on, “Come on… Make a hero pass… You can do it!” Charles lined the car up, and in hero fashion did just that, he made the hero pass, running a Coyote Stock car for the first time into the 10.2x zone with a 10.29 at 130.27 MPH. We wonder how much faster would it have been had the launch been better?
Charles tested at Bowling Green two weeks before the race, and told us, “We went home and crunched the data. Between chassis and clutch tweaks we found a way to make the car a little better.” The efforts paid off in a new record, and number one qualifier position.
Charles’s weekend ended with a round three loss to eventual event winner Steve Gifford, who beat Charles on a hole-shot and drove on to win the race. Charles says he’ll be back next season and wants to throw a big shout out to all his sponsors, MV Performance, DiabloSport, Ram Clutches,Team Z Motorsports, Mickey Thompson Tires, Kooks Custom Headers & Liberty Gears.