Jeff Verdi’s Door Car Wins K&N Spring Fling Million At Las Vegas

2,400 miles…37 hours, in a ’99 model pickup truck pulling an open trailer with a sleek Pontiac Firebird tied down tightly for the ride. Glen Allen, Virginia native Jeff Verdi took off work for two weeks and used his much-needed vacation time to trek across country in hopes of bracket racing stardom. Verdi competed in the Wednesday and Thursday events at the K&N Spring Fling without much luck, except for winning an entry into the “Spring Fling Million” field through one of the many giveaway raffles from promoters Peter Biondo and Kyle Seipel.

As the sun fell on the ‘The Strip’ at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Friday evening, the quarter-final round was going into competition with seven racers left standing: Thursday’s $20K runner-up, Kevin Brannon, Verdi, Courtland Carter, David Beedy, Lane Dicken, Jerry Ross, and Paul Russell.

Beedy grabbed the lucky bye run to advance to four cars, and Dicken, Brannon and Verdi all moved on to the round of four remaining. Dicken grabbed the first spot in the inaugural Spring Fling Million final as Beedy turned on the red bulb and Verdi loaded up Brannon. As the final round went down, Verdi turned out victorious with a .014 reaction time and coupled it with a dead-on 5.901 on his 5.90 dial-in to post a .015 package to Dickens’ .026 total package. With that, the cabinet and counter-top builder and installer from Virginia took home the big check that awarded $275,000 to the winner!

There was much more racing going down, even starting on Tuesday with the Yukon Gear & Axle free test and tune session and the Poulson Trailer Shootout, in which Tennessee native and DragRaceResults.com owner Scott Lemen started his week off with a bang in his dragster.

Wednesday’s $10,000 race was wrapped up by Tim Markoglu in his ‘digger;, outlasting nine competitive rounds of eliminations and a little over twelve hours of racing. Thursday upped the ante just a touch with $20,000 on the line and multi-time NHRA world champion and owner of ThisIsBracketRacing.com, Luke Bogacki, in his brand new K&N Filters sponsored, American Race Cars dragster outlasted 511 other deadly drivers to hoist the coveted trophy. Bogacki and Kevin Brannon showed off in the final round with both drivers running dead-on their dial-in’s; but ‘Cool Hand’ Luke earned his nickname, taking the reaction time advantage and never looking back.

Saturday’s $20,000 race winner was none other than ‘Disco’ Dean Karns in his supercharged pipe rack, whacking the throttle and cracking the blower belt to the tune of a dead-on 4.51 elapsed time to defeat Steve Casner in the final race of the weekend to put a wrap on the inaugural K&N Spring Fling Million at Las Vegas. Bracket racing is sometimes looked upon as confusing due to the staggered starts and the popular question of, “the other lane was faster, why did he lose?” But as you can see, the sport is alive and well, and with the continued hard work of promoters like Peter Biondo and Kyle Seipel, the bracket racing game is continually getting more competitive with more and more money on the line. The talented promotion duo has another event upcoming in May, the Spring Fling 5-Day at Bristol Dragway.

Photo Credit: Spring Fling Bracket Races and DragRaceResults