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It’s elimination day here at the fifth running of the Outlaw Street Car Reunion, and promoter Tyler Crossnoe and the Beech Bend Raceway team have the track set up for hot passes and great racing. Unfortunately with so many people on the property the internet connection is quite spotty, so we’ll bring you updates where possible.
“The Piano Lady” saved the Tooth Jerker’s weekend. When the team spun in testing earlier this week—sending 50-plus psi through the intake and blowing it up, along with the charge pipe—and hurt the cylinder head during testing earlier this week, there wasn’t anyone in Bowling Green who could fix their cylinder heads with a new O-ring setup. So they started checking local piano stores, as the wire used to complete the operation is similar. Out of the three piano stores in Bowling Green, none of them could help to fix the problem.. but one store directed the Digby/Barnett team to the Piano Lady, a relatively local resident who lives about 20 miles from the track and just so happened to have some piano wire.. which now resides inside the Tooth Jerker’s engine, sealing up the passenger-side cylinder head. The gang at Holley came through with machining to the intake, a new burst panel and some tubing was installed, and they were back in business.
After hearing about Nicky Notch’s personal best yesterday, I stopped at his pit area this to find out more about what makes his program go. “I do it all myself, from tuning to engine building,” he says, “along with help from Santhuff and Greg Slack Converters.” In fact, Yancey from Santhuff is here helping him this weekend as his normal crew chief, girlfriend Amanda, had to stay home. “Trying to keep up with the guys with big budgets is tough, especially with limited vacation time.” Nicky lost a pair of cars in a fire a few years ago, and in the time it took him to rebuild, the technology advanced so much it’s been tough for him to catch up. That said, he’s finally more than happy with how the car is performing now. Stout efforts from a small-budget crew.
After talking with Nicky, I wandered down the row, and when I saw Mark Biddle of Panhandle Performance in Sean Lyon’s trailer I popped my head in to say hello. It was fitting for me to end up there, as Biddle was poring over the data from the team’s MoTec engine management system, we ended up in a long conversation about racing technology, and he showed me quite a bit of the data he was looking at after the team’s run last night. One of the most interesting things to me about how much small-tire radial racing has advanced over the last several years is how much the engine, turbo- (or supercharger), or nitrous system don’t really matter to the ultimate performance level of the cars. They are scienced out enough to this point that Biddle says it doesn’t matter nearly as much whether there is a cast or sheetmetal intake or huge-port cylinder head—it’s about the size of the power-adder and how the tuner manages the power to obtain results on the track.
As I stood and talked with Mark and he explained to me what they were doing with their combination, I was blown away at just how much data they were recording; they have dozens of sensors measuring many parameters that might not typically be considered critical. With the knowledge in hand to interpret it properly, a tuner could manage a car for not only performance, but also incredible reliability, and as an aside, safety. For example, one of the things they are measuring is the angle of a wheelstand, in order to better control what the car is doing and save a potentially bad run to make the car more consistent. When the team first started building this car several years ago, they enlisted Shane Tecklenburg to work with the MoTec system to help them build the most state-of-the-art car possible, and after lengthy discussions, settled on the company’s M1 engine management system. This system is fully configurable to allow the measurement of any piece of data for which there is a sensor. Along with Shane’s assistance, they are constantly refining the package to deliver the results they are looking for. It offers boost control, ignition, datalogging, and so much flexibility that it took the team a long time to learn how to interpret what they were looking at and how it related to the car’s performance.
For the first several years, they struggled to make it work—and even doubted their decision to use it—but stayed the course and are finally having success with it. Interestingly, Biddle says that the transmission and torque converter technology play the biggest part in getting the car to perform. They recently switched to a two-speed transmission and converter from Mark Micke at M&M, and Biddle says that the data they uncovered with the EMS led them in the direction that the inconsistencies they were seeing on the track ware due to an issue with the transmission combination they were running previously. It was an amazing conversation, and while I wish I could share all of the details of it with you, I think Mark would be quite upset with me if I did. They say that knowledge is power, and after seeing firsthand just how much knowledge is available to the savvy tuner, I’d have to agree.
Interesting story out of Oregon: car owner Terry Ryan (left) has been friends with driver Dave Fiscus (left, no relation to Kevin) for over 20 years, as the pair met right here in Bowling Green 20 years ago at a Buick event. Despite seeing one another only three times over that 20-year period, when Terry decided he wanted to bring his Mustang to the East Coast and run it in X275, he contacted Dave to see if he’d be interested in driving it. Dave suggested bringing the car out and leaving it at his Cincinnati-area shop and they’d make a run at it, and the pair is encouraged by its performance so far. Josh Lindsey tunes on the Bennett-powered Mustang, which had the second-fastest top speed in X275 during qualifying. Terry told me that it’s a huge challenge to keep the car running well out there in Orgeon as the tracks simply aren’t experienced enough with radial prep to give them a consistent surface, so he’s been flying back and forth from Oregon to Ohio to work on the car. With FuelTech, MSD, and AMS2000 on board to help control fuel, ignition, and turbocharger boost, they are well on their way to making a mark in the hotly-contested class. Fun side fact: Terry owns an NHRA Stock Eliminator class record in EF/SA in a turbocharged 1989 Dodge Caravan, of all things.
This is what it takes to compete at this level.. the baddest Radial Vs. The World car in the world will be sporting a new powerplant for the next round of competition. Mark Micke went for a wild ride in the second round against Tim Kincaid when the engine promptly ate itself at half-track, The crew reports that the explosion was so violent that the transmission was spinning in the tunnel while it was attached to the back of the crankshaft. The Micke/Carter team (along with Andrew Alepa and others) were in the pits thrashing on the car to get it ready to run again. Part of the crankshaft was actually sitting in the catch pan.
Sorry for the late updates.. if you watched any of the live feed you realize that yesterday was a marathon day, and my internet access was nonexistent through most of it. And if you didn’t watch the feed.. well, you missed out on some AMAZING racing with stout track conditions. We finally wrapped up around 1AM and I didn’t get back to my hotel until 2AM. The fifth running of the Outlaw Street Car Reunion will go down in the books as an event to be remembered.
In all my years of covering drag racing, I’ve never seen a thrash like the one I witnessed last evening from the Carter/Micke/Woodruff team. It seemed like their pit area was simply full of willing and able hands, thrashing to get the car fixed from the massive engine explosion seen above. As they had a bye round into the next round of competition,they had to get the car to the line under its own power and take the tree. With the hood off the car and it completed just enough to make that happen, Micke—never one to ignore the show—threw in a burnout for good measure before the team pushed the car out of the beams and back to the pits to continue lining it out for the following round, where they’d face off against Daniel Pharris and Andrew Alepa.. who had been in their pit previously helping to repair the car. What an amazing display of sportsmanship!
Up close and personal with the carnage.
Speaking of Pharris, he and his team—combined with the Alepa team, for which he is the driver—pulled off the incredible feat of doubling-up here at the Outlaw Street Car Reunion. Not only did Pharris repeat as Radial Vs The World winner in Alepa’s Corvette (he also won here in 2017), but he took the newly purchased EKanoo Lexus to the top spot in the Limited Drag Radial class over Shane Stack. Both cars were incredibly repeatable all weekend long. Pharris did so with the help of the tuning abilities of Josh Ledford, Shane Tecklenburg, and Chase Driskell to earn the right to hoist two big checks at the end of an incredibly long weekend.
I was seriously impressed with the efforts Jeff Naiser threw down in Radial Vs. The World this weekend. Despite showing up with a brand-new untested engine, he ran through the field—getting quicker with each successive pass and taking out juggernaut DeWayne Mills in the semifinals on a holeshot—until he ran into the Pharris/Alepa juggernaut in the final round. I won’t be one bit surprised to see Naiser in the winner’s circle, and real soon, in the toughest class in all of racing.
Brian Keep ran like a bracket car this weekend in Ultra Street to take home the win in his ProCharger-boosted fourth-gen small-block Chevy Camaro. How about a new class record of 4.67? Not long ago, you’ll remember, 4.60s was the realm where the baddest-of-the-bad X275 racers hung out.
Jerry Hunt saved his best pass for last in Pro Mod, and it turns out he didn’t even need it. Hunt ripped off a 3.80 in his final-round matchup with Jonas Aleshire, who lit the red bulb and gave away the win despite having the quicker car all weekend. Shooting photos of these blown Pro Mods on the starting line is like nothing else in the world—you feel it in your soul when they drop the hammer. Awesome showing for the gorgeous Camaro!
Speaking of insane performances this weekend, Rich Bruder (right lane) uncorked an insane 4.29 at 171-plus against Kenny Hubbard in the X275 semifinal round. From what we understand, they hurt the car on that pass, and it was evident in their semifinal round matchup against Shane Fisher, when the car fell off nearly a tenth. Fisher, to his credit, went 4.35 in the semi, but hurt his own car in the process and couldn’t make the lane call for the finals.
It was a long, long week for Memphis-area X275 racer Jimmy White. He didn’t even have a running car at the beginning of the week, but he and his family got the car running, stuck it into the trailer, and rolled up I-65 to Bowling Green on Wednesday. Against one of the toughest fields in recent X275 memory, White’s ProCharger-powered beast unleashed a string of mid-4.30s—even beating 2017 Eric X275 national Champ Eric Moore in the semifinal on a holeshot, and personal-best 4.358 pass—before taking the tree in the final round unopposed to grab the win over Fisher. Everything is done in-house on this car, from engine building to tuning and even the chassis. A stout showing!
To see George Raygoza—one of the premier Outlaw 8.5 racers from the West Coast—make the long trek to Bowling Green was great. To see him be able to go home with a win was even better, especially after he could barely keep the car running and took the line for the final round without even doing a burnout. It just goes to show that the Dream Team Traction Consulting gang and the Beech Bend staff had the track on point all weekend, as Raygoza cracked off a 4.65 in his final round class win over Brad Medlock’s Mustang.
Final Elimination Results
Limited Drag Radial/Pro Mod/Ultra Street
RvW/X275
MX235
