The NMCA WEST World Finals at the Auto Club Raceway in Fontana, Calif. were three days of tire smoke, growling engines, and clean muscle cars. Fontana hosted an event equally enthralling for racers and spectators, with mild October weather meant fast elapsed time and a sticky racing track to hold all the stampeding horsepower.

We arrived Saturday morning to a haze hanging in the air but no threat of rain. In the crisp, still, morning air we walked the pits strewn across the tarmac.

Racers were found emerging from trailers buzzing with anticipation. Having had Friday to test and dial-in their machines, many teams were hard at work prepping, tinkering, and tuning for the impending qualifying rounds. As the sun rose over the oval track to the east, it illuminated the blacktop acreage and marked the start of an exciting day.

We caught up with a few of the teams, for their back story. Among them was the supercharged, alcohol-burning dragster of Joe Glenkwinkel.

“We’re number two in the points, but we’ve had a hard year. We broke the transmission in the second race and broke the motor in the third race. Not big inches, little motor 470 cubic inches but all the right pieces,” said Joe. We enquired about who built their new chassis, “Dave Beckley, which is renowned in Pro Stock, 240 inch hard-tail.” answered Joe.

We talked about his history in racing, concluding that the fun of the sport is the real allure.

Joe explained, “It’s just a shoe polish race. I don’t need to go heads-up and blow stuff up. It’s all about a pocket book, how deep is your pocket, how fast do you want to go? I had an 8.90 car many years ago and index raced, and it was fun, but then I wanted to go a little faster, and a little faster. Twenty years later this is where we are. We were last years Super Quick champion, but lets face it this isn’t corporate America. We don’t do this for a living, this is just my hobby, love, and passion. My wife, and all my best friends, it’s just so awesome to come out and do what you love to do. When the highs are there everybody is having fun, but even when times are tough you all have to put your heads together and go hey, let’s not get mad about this, it’s part of drag racing. You can have the best of the best pieces in that car, something’s going to break, and it’s not the if it’s going to break it’s when. It’s all good, and that’s what I love about it.”

Morning racers included bracket and index classes, and featured vehicles of all kinds. From traditional muscle cars from the big names, to grocery getters and dragsters, and gassers. With no wheelie bars in sight, these grass-roots racers put on a good show for the spectators who rolled out of bed early enough to catch the 8:00 a.m. action. Some of the most well-kept and high-end cars were racing in the NMCA’s bracket categories. Rivaling the ultra high-end Pro Mod cars were beautiful fiberglass Corvettes, Camaros, blown alcohol dragsters and other assorted vehicles.

Sunday in the pits was a different day. Tensions were a little higher as eliminations loomed closer. The wall of thunderclouds over the mountains threatened rain, but never drifted to the track. The morning was an overcast but calm start to a tumultuous day. Several track clean-ups for fluids and debris delayed the action. During the downtime we were able to drift around the pits and scope out the action as crews frantically wrenched, and others lounged.

Among the morning bracket racers was the gold Quick Street Chevelle of Jeff Paulin. Paulin went for a wild ride Saturday morning but was able to save the pass, and the car from destruction. He had a hard launch, pulling the front wheels a good five feet off the ground. When he came down the car was pointing a little crooked. The upset landing just grew from there into a hopping and swaying ride down the track.

We caught up with Paulin later in the day to get his story. “The car went up then turned right. What I normally do when it gets up that high is shift into second. When it came down it was pointing at the right guardrail, so I yanked it left, then yanked it right.

“Somewhere near the finish line it quit swerving,” he continued. “I stayed off the brakes, because if you hit the brakes you lose your steering. The other thing that helped was Greg, the track minister, came by and prayed with me right before the run,” explained Jeff. The car, previously owned by great grandma, is named GG’s Gold, and it lived to race another day.

By 11:00 a.m. the heads-up classes had their chance to warm their gear oil and chill their engines, and were staged in the lanes ready to lay down some rubber on the Fontana strip. First up, we look at Outlaw 8.5. These racers showed us the meaning of setup, putting all the power they could to the narrowest of slicks. By the third round of racing we were left with a classic Chevrolet versus Ford duel. The ’93 Mustang of Anthony Smith ultimately beat out the ’68 Nova of George Raygoza, running a 5.68 at 146.94 mph to a slowing 8.70.

The competition in Street Outlaw was hit or miss. With only four entrants and a wide range of elapsed times, there was little consistency for the odds makers to evaluate. The class was comprised of all Chevrolets. After a few foul starts and rough runs, a victor was crowned. The ’65 Nova of Ryan Jones laid down the best pass of the weekend, a 4.861, narrowly edging out the ’57 Chevy of Armen Maghdessian and his 4.867 by .005 seconds. Despite a much smaller motor, his quick reaction time more than won the race. 

The Lucas Oil N/A 10.5 class proved the saying there’s no replacement for displacement, running impressive times on 10.5-inch tires, without the aid of any forced induction or nitrous oxide. Saturday’s eliminations narrowed the field down to an old versus new contest. Could the old Bowtie teach the new a lesson? In the end, youth prevailed, with ’91 Camaro of Randy Jones ahead of the ’68 Camaro of Tony Aneian by a mere .077-seconds, 8.00 to 8.07.

The Mickey Thompson True 10.5 racers had a decent turnout with a total of seven cars racing the class: six Chevrolets and one Ford. While the Ford Mustang of Dana Cook made it through to the second round, it was an all-Chevy drag to the finish in round three. Pairing up were the Camaros of Roger Rydell and Johnny Coleman. In another old school versus new matchup, the ’02 of Rydell grabbed a substantial lead out of the hole — a whole tenth of a second, and held off the ’69 of Coleman, 4.65 to a much quicker 4.57.

With the big boys of the Pro Modified category were chomping at the staging beams, we saw some spectacular racing. With only five entries, these high-strung monsters suffered a few breakages, no shows, and two unfortunate crashes in the same run. On Sunday morning, we witnessed the violent crash of both Mike Bowman, and Scott Oksas.

The ’70 Camaro of Oksas got loose after hurtling through the finish line at over 237 mph. Independently of the Oksas crash, Bowman crossed the finish line and his parachute fail to deploy. He ended up in the sand trap, backwards and on fire. Thankfully, neither driver was injured, and we wish them both speedy returns to racing. We also have to commend the quick response of the emergency crews that cared for them.

After considerable downtime for clean-up operations, the track was re-prepped and cleared of FOD (foreign object debris). After all the dramatic heads-up competition these teams endured, the win was awarded to the Turbos Direct team and their ’69 Camaro driven by Rick Snavely, who took an easy single in the final round when would-be opponent, Mike Bowman, couldn’t return.

An unceremonious victory, as the car only needed to stage and start. The team was gracious in victory and saved the motor the wear of an extra run.

In the Aerospace Components Winner’s Circle, the awards fell where they were deserved, but that’s not really what we concerned ourselves with. The weekend racers, the mom and pop teams, they make up the backbone of the sport and we appreciate their effort. Even if they didn’t take home a trophy, they take home the better stories and memories than the simple tax-write-off teams.