Drag racing is purely about one-on-one competition — it doesn’t matter if you’re at a Friday night test and tune running your buddies, or running Top Fuel at Indy — the goal is to beat the person beside you. For many racers it’s a deep-seeded obsession to be the quickest and fastest person on the racing surface, and they’re willing to put their money where their mouth, so to speak. And thus, we have the high-stakes world of grudge racing.  

Grudge racing has always enjoyed a certain level of success across the country, and particularly in the south. There are plenty of big grudge races going on virtually any day of the week, and like s real-world version of a PINKS negotiation, the dealings can get hot. After all the pomp and circumstance of the negotiations comes the race, and in the world of grudge racing, all bets really are off, as you never know what can and will happen.

At the 2013 World Cup Finals a grudge match with a hefty $15,000 on the line went down between LSX racer Ray Litz and his Camaro, and Super Stock pilot Carey Bales, with his potent turbocharged Honda S2000. A year ago, Ray put Carey on the trailer after peddling out of a big wheelie and ran him down at the stripe, and Carey didn’t soon forget that. 

In an interview with GRS Motorsports, Carey called Ray out, and it was on. 

During the race weekend at the 2013 World Cup Finals in Maryland, the barbs flew between the two racers. So, it was decided they would grudge it out during qualifying. Things got interesting due to some weather delays and the race was set up to be run the last qualifying session of the weekend on Sunday, and with Litz not in the field, he had the car set on kill trying to kill two birds with one stone. 

With all the hype building on this race, the crowd was totally electric and they were witness a great race. Both cars spun hard with Carey recovering first, and he managed to put some serious gap on Ray, but as you can see on the video from Real Street Performance, Litz put on an insane top end charge and nearly caught the Honda in the lights. Carey was able to pull off the win by just two-hundredths of a second!

Rumor has it there has been a third race already set up for next year to decide the winner of this series, so this isn’t the final battle between these two.