We’re here bright and early this morning; the track has just called the 8.50 Index class to the lanes for their pairings. We’ll be rolling right on time at 10AM and powering through until all of the winners have been crowned and the 2015 edition of the Yellow Bullet Nationals is complete here at Cecil County Dragway. It’s been an awesome weekend filled with awesome racecars and monster crowds. Stay tuned all day long as we bring you our coverage. Thanks as always go out to our event coverage sponsor, Comp Cams.
Caught up with longtime Ford racer Louie Proto this morning in the tower. Lou finally threw all of the nitrous to his convertible Mustang last night–three kits in all–and made it into the Outlaw Big Tire show on the last run last night. Unfortunately, he was here to give notice to the track to call an alternate, as he hurt an exhaust valve in the process. Lou’s slowly been chipping away at the program for a long time, and feels he’s finally got a handle on what it takes to get the lightweight Mustang rolling. ‘Two degrees of timing is huge at the nitrous level we use,’ he says.As part of the Yellow Bullet festivities, Monty and Maria Mikho take good care of the kids on the property, where they hand out prizes for Cornhole tossing on Sunday morning. We stopped by there this morning–the little ones were all pumped up and tossing the bags for a huge selection of toys.Ronny Rhodes was debating which tuneup to put into the car this morning. We managed to sneak a photo of the book, but he said there was a bullet with our name on it if we showed anyone. He’s sitting in 11th after qualifying with a 5-flat and has his work cut out for him.3,350 pounds is how Mike Cerminaro’s X275 ’68 Nova crosses the scales, but he’s able to weigh much less in the class. ‘This is an all-steel car and it’s just too nice, so I won’t cut it up,’ he says. The Induction Solutions-squeezed 572 BBC has been a best of 4.83 in the class.After breaking his rearend in spectacular fashion at a recent PDRA race, Tommy Mauro upgraded to a full-floater setup for safety reasons. Despite not changing any of the suspension settings, he has been struggling to get down the track since reinstalling it in the car. Is he on the hotline to an unnamed suspension guru? Unfortunately it didn’t make a difference as his struggles continued in the first round and he went down to Canada’s Jerry Mitrovic in round one.One week ago, Eric Kenward’s ’79 Malibu ‘Wheelie Wagon’ was sitting in the bodyshop as a shell. Kenward (left) has been to every Yellow Bullet race, so what do you think happened? He took the car home and thrashed nonstop to get it back together with the turbocharged combination under the hood. With no testing, the car ran a 5.07 at 142 mph with a turbo that’s been changed out for a better unit that makes 3.5 more psi on the two step and 5 psi more four-tenths into the run. Cal Hartline, TRZ Motorsports, and Frank Mewshaw among others provide assistance with the program. Kenward thinks the car will be fast in the first round–we shall see!The challenge to find the elusive three-second zone is one that has eluded ‘THE’ Kevin Mullins thus far. He’s currently qualified fifth with a shutdown 4.36 hit but thinks there’s a lot more in the car. Here he’s pondering whether to make any changes for his matchup with Ev Bernardo this morning.
ATI Racing’s J.C.Beattie, Jr. is here racing his COPO Camaro for the very first time in the Ultra Street class. Our understanding is that he built an engine just to be here this weekend. It’s paid off as he qualified third with a stout 4.95 at 143.70 mph–just a couple of ticks behind Alex Hays and Shawn Pevlor.Canadian Nick Agostino crashed his car twice last year while working to figure out the small-block twin-turbo combination. The 441ci engine uses a pair of Alan Johnson billets head, CN billet block, and a pair of 94mm Precision turbos for motivation. He uses a BigStuff3 and Davis Technologies Profiler to make it all come together, and has thanks for guys like sponsor Mark Micke of M&M Transmissions and Patrick Barnhill for the solid performances. The hard work has paid off–he qualified third with a 4.10 at 201 mph, then posted a 4.15 this morning in his first-round broken bye–with lots of tire shake around 250 feet out.Looks like Mullins’ tuneup for the first round wasn’t what he wanted, as Ev Bernardo stormed to the win when Mullins struck the tires. Margin of victory was .052 at the stripe as Bernardo moves on to round two. That will be contested later this evening.Mr. Whetstine went for another wild ride in the first round of X275 today, taking all four hoops off the ground and the loss against Vincent Gianelli in the process. Once he and Essick figure this car out and keep the nose on the ground it’s going to be a serious player.
16 Car Ladders for Pro Classes
John Fisher is rocking it this weekend in Outlaw Big Tire. A 4.34 during qualifying put him right at the top of the ladder; more importantly, he’s got 7 mph over the next closest competitor. 540 cubic inches of Andy Jensen twin-turbo big-block power is under the hood. He faces Charlie Boy Micallef in round two.632 cubic inches of Scotty’s Racing Technology nitrous-assisted power is onboard with John Schroeder. He took out Gary Gonzalez in round one and will attempt to find a tenth-plus to take on Scott Kline in round two.JoshSquatch is in the house working to tune up the Proline customers competing this weekend. He’s been a busy man–we’ve seen lots of Proline stickers.Brian Penna turned in a huge upset win and his best pass of the weekend to date over Frank Pompilio in Outlaw 10.5–Pompilio shook the tires hard and Penna cruised to a 4.38 at 171 mph in his nitrous-assisted bullet.Huge upset as the Tom Ferrick-owned S-10 truck driven by Larry Wood, Jr. takes out number-five-qualifier Steve Gorman in a wild pedalfest. Gorman was in and out of the throttle numerous times and Wood was able to sneak around him on the top end, 4.86 to Gorman’s 4.92. 620 cubic inches of DiSomma twin-turbo power marching on.The upsets continue–Robert Baptista lit the clocks in X with a 4.86 at 153 mph. On the losing end? Charles Hull, who went up in smoke.A career best pass for Jeff Helsinger in X275 of 4.75 at 147 mph puts Vinny Palazzolo onto the trailer. Helsinger strapped a monster holeshot down on the starting line.MONSTER upset in the second round of Ultra Street, as New Yorker John Albrecht takes the win light over a spinning number-one-qualifier Alex Hays.It’s always a great day to be the Greathouse–the Kentucky Ultra Street Domination Machine is in full effect today, as Joel powered to a 4.95 in the heat of the day over Mike Roemer to advance to the quarterfinals.The sweet Tri-Five of Peter Esposito is on the move in Outlaw Big Tire, winning on a holeshot over Craig Buscio in the quarterfinal.Toronto’s Jerry Mitrovic runs 903 cubic inches of nitrous-injected Popeye fury under the hood of his ’68 Camaro, and has nearly 10mph on the rest of the nitrous cars in Outlaw 10.5. How does a 4.11 at 187 mph sound? He faces number-one-qualifier Chuck Ulsch in the semifinal. Ulsch had an easy path through the quarterfinal when Joe Newsham didn’t move off the starting line. Mitrovic–4.11. Ulsch–4.14. It’s going to be an awesome matchup!How about a little bit of Enzo for your soul? Pecchini moved on to the semifinal with a decisive victory over Ev Bernardo. Pecchini’s been going rounds all day with mid-4.20 performances,In the upset of X275’s quarterfinals, John Ashnault put Rich Bruder on the trailer with authority–.041 on the tree to Bruder’s .088 reaction time, and 4.59 to 4.58 on the scoreboard.If it looks like Ronny Rhodes (right lane) is ahead of J.C. Beattie (left), that’s because he is, due to a redlight. Beattie takes the win to move into the Ultra semis against Shawn Pevlor.Now there’s a statement–Joel Greathouse laid it down again in Ultra. He’ll take on John Albrecht in the other semi.
Semifinal Notes
Rich Shainline is moving on, and John Schroeder is not–that’s Schroeder being pushed back by his crew after something went awry in the Outlaw Big Tire semifinal. Shainline then proceeded to blow the tires off at the hit–something Schroeder never does. We’d bet it was hot in the Camaro’s cockpit.Peter Esposito is ahead in this photo, and that’s about as close as he got to winning this race against John Fisher. The Camaro pulled ahead just after this and took the win with an outstanding 4.31 to Espo’s 4.60.Now that’s a close race. We’ll let the numbers do the talking.Right about here, Keith Berry knew his night was done, as the tires started to go up in smoke right as Rick Thornton started to pour on the power. Thornton crossed the stripe with a stout 4.05 at 190 mph.…And this is where The Golden Gorilla turned Enzo’s hopes of moving into the final into dust, pouring on the power, crossing the stripe with a 4.01 at 201 mph–identical to his last qualifying pass, and backing up the track ET and mph records for Outlaw Drag Radial.This is how it started, and this is how it finished–with Ron Rhodes moving on over Mean Dean Marinis in one half of the X275 semifinals. Rhodes crossed the stripe with a 4.50 to Marinis’ 4.90–it looked like the Mustang’s engine expired through the traps.Earlier this weekend we mentioned that Jamie Stanton and Ron Rhodes have faced off a number of times this summer in local X275 final rounds, and it looks like we’ll get to see that again tonight. Stanton eliminated John Ashnault with a 4.53 to Ashnault’s 4.55.It doesn’t win races, but wheelstands like this sure do look pretty. Unfortunately for J.C.Beattie, Jr., this is where Shawn Pevlor pulled away and took his spot in one-half of the Ultra Street final round.Bennett Racing, KBX Performance, and Joel Greathouse took their rightful spot in the second half of the Ultra final round with an easy 4.90 to eliminate John Albrecht, Jr.
Final Round Notes
Right here becomes the end of the line for Rich Shainline in Outlaw Big Tire…Because John Fisher stepped it up in the final and ran his best past of the weekend, taking home the win in the process.Just after this, Mo Hall (far lane) turned on the angry red bulb in an anticlimactic Outlaw 10.5 final round between two of the meanest cars on the property. Chuck Ulsch (near lane) is your 2015 Yellow Bullet Nationals Outlaw 10.5 champion. In the process, he turned in a 4.09 at 189 mph blast.Boom! Jim Halsey and the Cecil County staff answered the call this weekend, giving the racers the surface they needed to throw big power down–and DeWayne Mills did just that, as you can see here.Rick Thornton struck the tires about 60 feet out, ending the race before it really started. Congrats to the Golden Gorilla team on the Outlaw Drag Radial win.Ron Rhodes and Jamie Stanton faced off in an insane battle in X275–the difference on the tree of .029 and .06 in ET is all that separated the winner from the lower in this battle of the titans (Rhodes-right, Stanton-left). What a great weekend for two of the fiercest competitors in heads-up racing today!Greathouse continued his run of success right into the final round of Ultra Street, taking out Shawn Pevlor with a 4.87 Pevlor’s 4.89 blast–the quickest side by side run in the history of the class!And with that, the 2015 Yellow Bullet Nationals are complete. Thanks for sticking with our coverage all weekend!
The second day of Yellow Bullet qualifying is here; last night was challenging for almost every team; many racers simply blew the tires off or had other challenges. The bracket cars are going down the track now, and we’ll be heading out to the track shortly when the big dogs hit the racing surface. Stay tuned all day as we bring you coverage as quickly as possible. Thanks as always to our event sponsor, Comp Cams, for their support.
Jeff Kinsler is a player this weekend in Ultra; ”The Cheater” knocked down a stout 5-flat from his Pontiac-powered Firebird. We shot a feature on the clean machine this morning—look for it in the upcoming months right here on Dragzine. Kinsler’s Poncho is one of the cleanest cars we’ve seen this weekend. He’s been in the 4.90’s in the past and is looking to get back there today. He’s currently qualified sixth.Dan Whetstine’s out here with a brand-new combo in his super-clean ’91 Mustang. The car wears an F-1R ProCharger atop the Brodix Neal-headed 417 cubic inch powerplant. In the last couple of months, the team switched over to M1 fuel, added a Waterman fuel pump, Billet Atomizer 550 lb./hr. Injectors, and Menscer front struts. Jason Norris from Triton Metals made a new water and fuel tank, then powdercoated all of the new supercharger piping. With this combo he’s able to lose 150 pounds from his previous weight. Teammate Tim Essick is ticking the keys on the laptop to bring the tune up to speed. Crewmembers Timmy Savoy and Phillip Buckner also help the program, and Whetstine credits “Awesome Sauce” wife Michelle for the assist on everything he does.He went for a wild ride this afternoon in round two of qualifying.Chris Evans rocketed right into the 4.90s in Ultra last night. Evans and teammate Matt Butrim recently updated the car and the engine to fit into Ultra,using a set of borrowed cylinder heads from another friend. It looks like he’s got a handle on what it takes to go fast—he’s currently in the number three spot, and this is the fastest pass he’s got so far in Ultra trim.How about a Bruder bomb dropped on the 275 Radial class? Can’t ever count out the twins from New Jersey; Rich torched the class with a top qualifier effort last night of 4.51 He’s followed by Mean Dean Marinis at 4.56 and Rob Goss at 4.59.Outlaw 10.5 is led by Steve Gorman, but this is the car that’s caught our eye so far in the class, Chuck Ulsch, driving for owner Gil Mobley Motorsports, is still sorting out the screw blower on the car and trying to get the power to the ground through the big 10.5 meats. Last night he landed in the number three spot with a strong 4.13 at only 186 mph. There’s way more left in this car.Nobody in Outlaw Drag Radial managed to make a clean pass last night except for Keith Berry, with a 4.15 at 185 mph. Every other car in the class struggled to get the power down, encountered issues with staging, and generally threw away the first round.It’s been a few years since Don Barnett’s been out with his Pontiac. He clicked off a 4.97 tonight in X275 in the Rhodes-built machine. Onboard is an XB-105 Vortech supercharger with a 400ci engine, topped with a set of All Pro 23-degree 245cc raised runner cylinder heads from Curtis Boggs at Race Flow Development. Barnett and partner Keith Hartsoe got the car back from Rhodes as a roller and finished the car themselves. We’re working to plan a feature in the near future on this super-sano machine.Mean Dean Marinis just cranked off a 4.49 at 165 mph in X275–and that’s only good for second place, behind Bruder’s 4.479 at 159.70.We caught up with Chip Provenza in the pits tonight; he tells us he’s been testing on the downlow all season to sort out his Vortech-powered Mustang, in preparation for an assault on NMCA’s Xtreme Street class next season. The team was changing the supercharger gear-drive bushings tonight.Although Dave Cappolina didn’t make it into the Outlaw Big Tire field tonight with his hot rod Lincoln, he was ecstatic to be sitting in the driver’s seat of the car. Formerly owned by Tom Kasper, Cappo took delivery of it a year ago at this race and has been slowly creeping up on the tuneup, gaining valuable seat time in the process. The car has a fresh DiSomma 449 with twin Precision 88mm turbos. He’s been trying to find the fine line of performance with the BigStuff3/NLR1000 boost controller combo.Lewes, Delaware-based racer Craig Walls has an all-new combo this year and is working to get back to the level of performance he achieved last year. A best pass of 4.58 has eluded him thus far, as he’s working on figuring out the sweet spot between the new converter and power management. The car relies on an RDI aluminum-blocked 427 with Brodix Neal 202 cylinder heads pumped up by a Vortech billet Xi supercharger.Rich Shainline is one of the major players in Outlaw Big Tire with his Doug Kline-built, Precision-Chassis-backed ’67 Mustang. Shainline’s beast has a fuel-injected Musi 903ci monster under the hood with four stages of Edelbrock nitrous on top. Shainline currently sits second in Outlaw Big Tire with a 4.37 at 168 behind John Fisher.We shot a Dragzine car feature with Shawn Pevlor this morning, and he was talking about how he thought he was capable of low 4.90s this evening in Ultra Street. Turns out he was right; he busted out a stout 4.92 in tonight’s session to take the number one spot from previous Dragzine car feature participant Alex Hays by one slim hundredth of a second. His joy was short-lived, as Hays stole the spot back in the following pair by–you guessed it–one slim hundredth of a second. Hays tops the ladder going into eliminations with his 4.91/141 mph blast.Oh-so-close! The Golden Gorilla almost did the 3-second dance right here at the Yellow Bullet race. When the vast majority of the Outlaw Drag Radial field couldn’t take advantage of tonight’s cooler temperatures, DeWayne Mills went right down Broadway.
Monty Mikho and his band of supporters return to the legendary Cecil County Dragway this Labor Day Weekend for the Sixth Annual Yellow Bullet Nationals. The 2014 version of the event saw over 550 race cars and thousands of spectators at the sweetest little track in Maryland. Classes include Outlaw 10.5, Pro Drag Radial, X275, Ultra 275, and Outlaw Big Tire. We’ll be bringing you the hottest race coverage and an awesome photo gallery around right here on Dragzine–stay tuned all weekend. Thanks as always to our event sponsor, Comp Cams, for their support of our season-long race coverage!
Mo Hall’s nitrous Outlaw 10.5 machine was here on Wednesday testing; he clicked off a 4.22 in the nasty heat yesterday from the Fulton-squeezed 833-inch monster. They have good data for the heat, which will be advantageous in today’s first qualifying session. It may be another story tomorrow–the weather is supposed to cool off substantially.March 1st, DeWayne Mills’ Pro Drag Radial machine looked like this after his horrific wreck at Donald Long’s spring event.oday, it looks like this–you’d never know it was in an accident. And Mills has it right back on the pace; he clicked off an insane 4.03 at 200.44 mph this morning in the PDR test session. He tells us that was with a ‘lazy’ 1.129 short time–in 3,000 feet of air. Tomorrow night, it’s supposed to be in the low 60’s. Will he skip right through the 3.90’s and run into the 80s? Only time will tell. Thanks to DeWayne for providing the photo of the car in the shop.Three weeks ago, Rob Goss’ X275 Challenger had a broken engine block after an event with Jeff Kinsler driving at MDIR. He’s got the car all back together thanks to Bruce Maichle, HHP Performance,and the rest of the guys on his crew. This time around, he’s got an iron block on board, which he says puts him a bit overweight but will hopefully provide a bit more durability. As Goss is the trendsetter with GenIII Hemi drag racing, it’s only natural that he finds all of the weak links in the engine components. He turned in a 4.62 at 157 mph in this morning’s open session.Paul Major’s crew was hard at work changing the plugs in his Pro Drag Radial Corvette this morning. Major’s made a change to a twin 550 lb./hr. fuel injector setup, which has him rebuilding the tuneup from scratch. He clicked off a 4.35 at 188 mph on his test hit this morning, but the DMC Racing-backed bullet has been 200mph in the past. We expect to see him back on that pace in no time.Jamie Stanton has been battling with Ron Rhodes in X275 all summer long–he’s lost three times on the holeshot and has five runner-ups in all despite being right on Rhodes’ fender in all of those races. Stanton recently upgraded his old, tired NMCA Xtreme Street combination with a new set of cylinder heads and a fresh bullet from BES. He says the new engine has been flawless to date, and he’s looking to get that edge back on the tree to finally put Rhodes on the trailer.Alan Von Ahnen went 5-flat in yesterday’s heat; the Ultra Street machine has been 4.90s this year, in several finals, and taken home a few winner’s trophies. He’ll have his hands full with guys like Ronnie Rhodes and the rest of the stout Ultra field. 40-plus cars are expected to be here.Another player in Ultra is Charlie Booze, Jr. Chuck’s running what is probably the most antiquated combination in the class–his old NMRA Hot Street 420 cubic inch engine that was purchased used from Mike DeMayo years ago. The inline-Windsor-headed bullet has still been 5.000 in the heat of the summer in August and is looking to get on the 4.90 pace this weekend.Frank Soldridge recently installed a new set of spread-port billet big-block heads and billet manifold from David Visner at Visner Engine Development. He cracked off a 4.19 pedaling it this morning; with the new combo, he didn’t have a chance to tune the engine in on the dyno before leaving for the event.This is what 48 pounds of boost will do to an intake manifold from Ray Johnson’s Outlaw 10.5 big-block Ford.Here’s the Johnson team putting the car back together with an older intake manifold Johnson received when he originally purchased the car from Conrad Scarry.Just moments after this photo was taken, Alex Hays (left) took the set of Slick Rick Racing Heads on his big-block Chevy-powered Mustang to an awesome 4.98 in Ultra Street. Wheels up through three gears to the 330-foot mark. Awesome job for the kid who’s making inroads into Ultra this weekend.
Round One Qualifying Results
Ultra StreetUltra Street Part 2275 Drag RadialOutlaw Big TireOutlaw 10.5Outlaw Drag Radial
