Winning a class at either of Duck X Production’s prestigious radial races is a task very few are fortunate enough to claim. With car counts often doubling, even tripling, the number of competitors in the qualified field and each of them loaded for bear, it truly takes a monumental effort to take home the coveted Duck X cowboy hat, trophy, cash and bragging rights. Barry Mitchell, a longtime small tire badass from Hamptonville North Carolina, not only took the win in one class, he actually blitzed TWO of the most competitive small tire classes at Lights Out 7 when he took the purse in both Outlaw Drag Radial (ODR) and the newly-introduced Pro 275 eliminator.

Mitchell was quick to thank those around him, crediting his crew members and an assortment of carefully selected components, for keeping the car running through the grueling gauntlet of ten competition passes in a single day. “We have a five man team including my wife and I, and we each do the exact same job at every event,” Mitchell said. “I would say the biggest challenge on our combination is the valvetrain; we run the valves every morning before the day starts and a typical day is five to six passes, not 10. So we were getting concerned as we closed in on the last rounds of both classes and not having the extra 10 minutes to run the valves so we gambled that they would make it, and they did.”

Mitchell, who recently purchased Kyle Huettel’s legendary BAD9ER Racing Camaro, only had a few weeks in the seat of his new hot rod, but you wouldn’t know it based on his Lights Out 7 performance. Mitchell wheeled the sinister F-Body to the number two qualifying position in both ODR (4.17 at 181 mph) and Pro 275 (4.24 at 180 mph), then reeled off an incredible, some might say improbable, string of passes, mowing down the field in both classes. His only misfire came in round one of Pro 275, where Mitchell cruised to a 7.50 to take the win against Ed Grant, who was unable to make the first-round call. After that, Barry ripped off a string of 4.20’s to march to the finals in both classes, with the lone exception of a 4.30 in the second round of Pro 275.

In the finals of ODR, Mitchell faced the swoopy ‘Vette of Ron Hamby, who pulled out his quickest pass of the day, a stout 4.19 blast, in the finals. However, he was a bit late on the tree and Barry’s solid .033 reaction time kept his slower 4.23 out front to take the win. In Pro 275, Steve Drummond very nearly reversed the outcome of the ODR finals, drilling the tree with a stellar .011 light and racing to a solid 4.27 elapsed time. However, Mitchell was hardly late with another solid .035 light and a 4.20 elapsed time that earned him his second win on the day.

When asked about his competition, Barry admitted he stays focused on his car and races his own race, though he certainly didn’t take any of his opponents lightly. “I always try to block out who’s in the other lane and just race my lane. [Crew chief Robby Keziah’s] father always said ‘race your lane, don’t worry about who or what is over there’. Robby and I don’t get carried away with looking at the sheets, we always go to the line with the strategy that we think is best,” said Mitchell. “We knew that if we won either class that it would not be easy and that we would have to face good drivers and good cars all the way. This win was different, it felt like an endurance race and our team and components team showed what they were capable of.”

Mitchell and his crew certainly worked hard to take these wins, but as with any quality program, there’s more to success than meets the eye. Barry wanted to thank Fulton Competition, M&M Transmissions, Mencer Motorsports, Racecraft, Speedwire, Mickey Thompson, Keziah Fabrication and MacFab Beadlocks. He also gave thanks to his loyal, hard-working team, consisting of his wife Heather, crew chief Robby Keziah, Nick Reynolds and David Peters.