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Earlier this season, former NMCA Super Street 10.5W competitor and race winner Steve Summers made the big move from the 10.5W-tire ranks up to the Pro Street division, doing so with a beautiful new 1970-1/2 Chevrolet Camaro that showed some serious promise right out of the gate in its official debut at the Ross Pistons NMCA Muscle Car Nationals down in Bradenton, Fla. But over the weekend, at the series’ year-end blowout event at the Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis, Summers and his crew unleashed the beast, as they blasted into the record books with a new national elapsed time record for the category.
Summers, who earned his first series win one year ago at Indianapolis in the wee hours of the morning of an all-day-and-night affair, purchased the new Jerry Bickel Race Cars-built machine last winter with sights set on the upper echelon of the street car drag racing ranks. The Jasiek Racing Engines powerplant, packin CFE cylinder heads, was transferred from the teams’ former third-gen Camaro, where a set of 88mm Precision turbochargers replaced the former ProCharger setup in the boost department.
[2]By the time Summers and company arrived at the NMRA/NMCA Super Bowl of Street Legal Drag Racing in Chicago at mid-summer, they were already well on their way to making some serious noise, and it all came to fruition just a couple of races later in Indianapolis.
During qualifying, Summers ripped off a stout 5.953 at a booming 254.47 mph to place himself second going into eliminations, just a few ticks behind the former U.S. Nationals-winning Pro Modified Mustang of Kevin Fiscus. then on Sunday, alongside reigning race winner Clint Hairston, Summers unleashed with the quickest run in NMCA Pro Street history, a 5.876 at 257.73 mph that easily defeated the slowing Hairston. Proving that monster run was anything but a fluke, Summers, as though he had a dial-in on the window, uncorked another 5.87, this time at 256.65 mph, to advance to the final over newly-crowned class champion Jeff Lutz, who was right there with a 5.93 of his own.
Summers put an exclamation on the weekend in the final, leaving second but marching away from fan favorite Billy Glidden for the win, albeit “slowing” to a 5.916 at 257.68 mph. With that, Summers claimed both the elapsed time and speed records for the Pro Street category in epic fashion, and also successfully defended his World Street Finals crown — in a different class. What will he do for an encore next year?