Who said a class car can’t get down a race track without a healthy dose of glue?

Colorful crew chief Billy Adams and his cousin and driver Phil “Corndog” Smith sure didn’t.

The formidable Chicago-area natives are both veterans of the NMCA drag racing ranks, with Adams having tuned several nitrous-assisted machines under his Team Midnight banner over the years — including Smith’s current Extreme Street-turned-Street Outlaw Pontiac Firebird. Smith, for his part, has been a hitter in both classes, both in his former bright-yellow third-gen Firebird and his current machine, which has been well into the 7.0’s at over 200 mph.

But with a high stakes race right in their backyard and a car fully capable of getting the job done in their hauler, the pair set their sights on the now-famous Chi-Town King of the Streets at the Great Lakes Dragaway, where $10,000 awaited the winner of the 28 x 10.5 “Senior” class champion.

For the uninitiated, King of the Streets is a no-prep shootout, in which racers bring it right off the trailer without any test hits, line up, and race. Prior to the first round, racers can make call-outs to one another, thereby setting the ladder. From there on, the race is run according to said ladder until only one remains.

Last weekend, 24 cars turned out for the “Senior” class, which is, for all intents and purposes, anything-goes on a 28 x 10.5-inch tire. And Smith and Adams showed up fully prepared with their 632 cubic inch, Nelson Competition-built big block combination on three stages of nitrous and downed all-comers through five rounds of competition, making one steady pass after another and absolutely driving away from each and every one of their competitors. In the end, “Corndog” streaked away from his twin-turbocharged opponent in the final and carried all the cash back to Chicago.