Street Car Super Nationals VI Same Day Coverage

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The Street Car Super Nationals, now in its sixth year, brings the 2010 drag racing season to a close with the biggest doorslammer event West of the Mississippi. The Strip at Las Vegas Motorsports park in (you guessed it) fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, is playing host this weekend to teams from across the United States. We’ll be bringing you words and pictures all weekend long, starting with today’s opening qualifying sessions.

Special thanks to our event coverage sponsor Mickey Thompson Tires.  You can check out their full line of wheels and tires at www.mickeythompsontires.com

Friday Qualifying

The story of the day has to be the weather – normally Las Vegas is a lock for at least workable race conditions (even if it is just a “dry heat”) but they do get the occasional storm, and the forecast has one on the way. Today started out a little cold with broken overcast, but as the day progressed, the wind came up and the clouds rolled in. The forecast calls for potential rain tomorrow afternoon, but more importantly, gusts to 65 miles an hour.

With hundreds of race teams from all points of the compass here, the event staff will be doing their best to get things done, but with the enormous turnout in Pro Street, it’s fortunate that we got two full rounds of qualifying in today, just in case things go sideways (literally) tomorrow. The weatherman is more optimistic for Sunday in general, so we’ve all got our fingers crossed and our awnings stowed.

Pro Street

We knew it was going to be a big field, but we didn’t know just how big – 53 cars, and a 6.882 bump spot! With (hopefully) two rounds of qualifying left tomorrow, the field could still get reshuffled significantly, and we might even see a 5 if the track will hold it. The racing surface has been an issue all day – both lanes seem to have one good groove, and one so-so, making for some interesting passes where ridesharing was a definite possibility. Still, there are always a few guys who figure it out before everybody else, and we saw some solid runs today that only served to get us excited about the matchups to come in eliminations.

East Coast nitrous kingpin Pat Musi leads the Pro Street field after two rounds of qualifying. A 6.066 at 235.97 may not be good enough to hold off the rest of the contenders - there are two other drivers with a six-oh already in their pockets, and two more qualifying hits left.

Mike Maggio, who's blown Camaro rivals fuel cars in terms of sheer earthshaking noise, currently holds the second slot in Pro Street qualifying. A best effort so far of 6.085 at 238.51 shows he may have a little something for Mr. Musi tomorrow.

Brad Personett rounds out the top three in his turbo Camaro

Brad Personett rounds out the top three in his turbo Camaro. Taking the early lead in the first round, his 6.088 stood only as long as it took Musi to make his first hit, but nobody can touch Bad Brad in terms of trap speed: 250.37 MPH, more than ten up on his closest rival! If Personett can convert just a little bit of that top end kick into ET on the front half of the track, he may just run away with this one.

Outlaw 10.5

Going into the back half of qualifying, 35 cars are still vying for 32 spots in the Outlaw 10.5 eliminator. To earn yourself a spot in the top ten, you better bring a six to the table. Current holder of the number one spot is Kurtis Tamez with a 6.635 at 211 and change, with Rick Snavely right behind at 6.642 and 215.58 MPH. The bump spot for the field currently is 8.487, held by Rich Zehring, but you can bet that number will fall to a mid-seven tomorrow. The field is deep with heavy hitters like Mike Murillo, Billy Glidden, and Dan Saitz, so it’s anybody’s guess who will actually end up at the top of the order come Saturday evening.

In the very first pair of Outlaw 10.5 cars out of the gate on Friday, Ken Tupper's '49 Ford took a hard left just past the 60-foot block and hit the opposite wall hard. Tupper walked away, but the little twin turbo is probably a writeoff.

Doug Sikora is currently third in Outlaw 10.5 with a best elapsed time of 6.675, but he's the trap speed king at 221.67, ten miles an hour faster across the stripe than the current polesitter.

Extreme Drag Radial

Saying that XDR “only” has a 29-car field is about the same as saying that it “only” takes a seven-second pass to be in the first seventeen cars – in other words, there are a lot of cars going very, very quick on not a whole lot of tire. As a matter of fact, a 6 isn’t out of the realm of possibility for this weekend, providing the weather holds…

Paul Major is the current frontrunner in Extreme Drag Radial, clocking 7.o51 at a mere 197.62 MPH. He's got almost two tenths on the next guy back, Al Jimenez, who ran a best of 7.242, and Mike Keenan, who has six miles an hour on Major through the traps, running 7.260 at a hair over 205.

Wild Street

A score of cars filled the lanes for Wild Street on Friday, with Dee Pfinster leading the pack with a 7.653 at 181, followed by Dave Eggerling at 7.722 and Bob Thompson with a 7.794. You’ll have to go 7 cars deep in the field to find your first 8 – WS promises to be a real nasty fight come Sunday.

Is the track hooking? Ask Aaron Ginn of Cheyenne, Wyoming, who stood his Nova up on the bumper in the second round of Wild Street...

Hot Street

NMRA veteran Robbie Blankenship holds both the current top qualifier spot in the naturally-aspirated Hot Street class with an 8.248 at 167.70, and the "long haul" award - he hails from Hudson, Florida.


Limited Street

Street Challenge

Street Challenge

Mustang Maddness

Double Index

About the author

Paul Huizenga

After some close calls on the street in his late teens and early twenties, Paul Huizenga discovered organized drag racing and never looked back, becoming a SFI-Certified tech inspector and avid bracket racer. Formerly the editor of OverRev and Race Pages magazines, Huizenga set out on his own in 2009 to become a freelance writer and editor.
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