Three-time NHRA Pro Stock world champion Jason Line put together an historic outing at what may have been the greatest display of performance in modern Super Stock drag racing history during the Southern Hemi Throwdown at the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series’ Southeast division doubleheader at the Rockingham Dragway.
The event, backed by competitor Anthony Rhodes, awarded $15,000 to the winner, attracting twelve of the top 1968 Plymouth Barracudas and Dodge Darts that comprise the NHRA’s ever-popular Super Stock A/Hemi (SS/AH) class. With cool air on the menu, competitors wasted little time rewriting the history books.
During Friday’s opening rounds of qualifying, longtime Hemi frontrunner, engine builder Charlie Westcott, made history with the first run ever by a SS/AH entry in the eight-teens, with a staggering 8.194 at 163.40 mph.
Sixteen years ago Westcott flirted with the 8.1-second barrier, it was November of 2010 at South Georgia Motorsports Park that the Ohioan set the class standard at a then-stunning 8.221. Gary Wolkwitz later came close to matching it with an 8.229, but it was another 14 years before the mark was toppled, when Bucky Hess powered to an 8.200 at the Dutch Classic at Maple Grove Raceway in the fall of 2024.
Westcott’s new mark would only last a handful of hours, as under the lights and with adjusted altitude figures nearing sea level Friday evening, Jimmy Daniels briefly snatched the record away with an 8.187. Ultimately, though, it was Line pacing the field into eliminations with an 8.170 at 164.71 mph, a run that reset both ends of the national record.
Saturday’s highly anticipated opening round of eliminations was marred by a frightening crash by class veteran Jim Pancake, whose Dart got loose and barrel-rolled a series of times before coming to rest on its roof. Pancake was unhurt in the accident.
Rhodes briefly equaled the class elapsed time record with an 8.170 of his own in a titanic second-round victory over Daniels. But neither Rhodes nor anyone else was any match for Line, in a Bucky Hess-owned Barracuda, known as Fish Stick, with 426-inch Hemi power Line built and massaged himself.
In a dominating performance, Line never ran slower than 8.187 seconds through all four rounds of eliminations. He defeated Melvin Daniels in the opener with an 8.176, Lenny Lottig with the aforementioned 8.187 in round two, and then set a new national record of 8.157 at 165.26 mph on a semifinal solo, to set up a final-round match with Westcott.
Westcott, for his part, went 8.197, 8.235, and 8.212 through the first three rounds.
Declining ambient temperatures and track conditions forced the scheduled Saturday evening final to Sunday. The wait, though, had no effect on Line, and if anything, the mineshaft conditions only made the numbers on the scoreboard more staggering. Ultimately, the highly accomplished veteran sportsman and Pro Stock standout left no room for Westcott on either end of the racetrack, carding a near-perfect .003 reaction time and storming to the quickest pass in SS/AH history for the win, an 8.128 at 165.93 mph.
In all, Line left Rockingham with $15,000 for the win, an additional $2,500 for low elapsed time, and a mark that history suggests will be difficult for anyone to rival anytime soon.
Photo credit: Sam Cook Productions
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