The 49th Night Under Fire at Summit Motorsports Park once again proved why it has earned the reputation as one of the premier events in drag racing. Bill Bader Jr. and his team stared down Mother Nature and still found a way to deliver a show worthy of its billing as “The Greatest One Day Show in Drag Racing.”
You can always count on Night Under Fire to provide a full dose of everything the sport has to offer. Bader has mastered the art of creating the ultimate drag racing variety show in a format that’s easy for fans to enjoy. The formula is simple: provide nonstop entertainment, mix in outstanding competition, and top it all off with plenty of fire and explosions.
Where else can fans watch Top Fuel dragsters, Funny Cars, Mountain Motor Pro Stock, gassers, wheelstanders, jet cars, Top Sportsman, Top Alcohol Dragsters, elite bracket racers, military-grade fireworks, and even people racing on bouncy dinosaurs, all during the same event?
Mountain Motor Pro Stock Delivers A $50,000 Showdown
Fans were treated to much more than entertainment at this year’s Night Under Fire. There was also plenty of high-stakes racing with significant prize money on the line.
An outstanding field of Mountain Motor Pro Stock competitors rolled into Summit Motorsports Park to battle for a $50,000 winner’s purse provided by Ross Environmental.
The final qualifying session became one of the most intense moments of the weekend. Several marquee drivers found themselves outside the qualified field, forcing racers to swing for the fences in their final attempts to make the 16-car field.
The championship round featured No. 11 qualifier Alan Drinkwater against class legend John DeFlorian. Drinkwater absolutely crushed the Christmas Tree and used a stellar reaction time to score a holeshot victory, running 4.135 seconds to defeat DeFlorian’s quicker 4.121-second pass.
Ron Capps Claims King Of Nitro Crown
The featured attraction of the evening, outside of the legendary fireworks display, was the King of Nitro competition.
The unique format pitted Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars against one another in a winner-take-all showdown. Each class competed in its own four-car shootout before the surviving Top Fuel and Funny Car drivers met in the final round to battle for $100,000.
After two rounds of eliminations, the King of Nitro final featured Ron Capps against his teammate, Maddi Gordon.
To equalize the competition, Capps received a 0.180-second handicap on the starting line based on the elapsed times each driver had posted during the event.
Capps’ veteran experience proved to be the difference.
His .045 reaction time, combined with a 3.843-second pass at 333.91 mph, was enough to hold off Gordon’s quicker 3.733-second run at 338 mph.
“You can’t even dream up something like this,” said Capps, the current NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series Funny Car points leader with three wins this season. “We thought we had the disadvantage with the stagger. Guido wanted to test something since we got here and we didn’t get a chance to do that with the weather today, so he leaned in and said, ‘We’re testing it right now in the final against Maddi,’ and I was like, ‘Oh no.’ But I stepped on the gas and around 300 feet out, this thing put me in the trunk and just took off. I was looking for Maddi’s little wheel out the side the whole way down, then all of a sudden my scoreboard came on.
“What a great night,” Capps continued. “It’s a win-win, obviously, and I would have been just as happy if Maddi had won, but I would have also heard about it for a year from Maddi about beating me. There’s no doubt about it. But it’s a pretty cool win for everybody. We had all of our people watching on FloRacing with NAPA and Carlyle, and our Monster people were here. It was just a great event. The weather was a threat all day, but you roll around from the staging lanes to the starting line and look up into the grandstands and the place is completely packed. These fans are unbelievable.”
Summit Motorsports Park’s Night Under Fire has established itself as one of the greatest one-day drag racing events ever created. The 49th edition lived up to its legendary reputation, delivering world-class racing, unforgettable entertainment, and another memorable chapter in the event’s remarkable legacy.
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