Neal Chance Pro Mod Racers Smith, Janis Star At NHRA Gatornats

Running an entirely new driveline combination in his Chevrolet Camaro, former NHRA Pro Modified series champion Rickie Smith didn’t miss a beat at the season-opening NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Florida, driving to victory over Mike Janis in a nitrous-supercharged finale.

Smith, a stalwart of the tried-and-true clutch and manually-shifted transmission that he’s been rowing for the brunt of his career, took advantage of newly-written adjustments to the NHRA rules that allows the use of lock-up torque converters, in hopes of stepping up his performance game for a run at another title. Running a bullet aluminum, bolt-together lock-up converter from Neal Chance Racing Converters behind his Pat Musi-prepared, nitrous-assisted bullet, Smith qualified fourth with a 5.77 and marched all the way to the final round with an impressive string of consistent 5.80-second runs to meet up with another Neal Chance customer, Mike Janis in the final.

Janis, running an NCRC billet aluminum, non-lock up converter in his supercharged Camaro, slowed in the finale and could only watch as Smith sailed to victory with a 5.794 — his fourth straight run within .014-seconds.

While testing his new automatic transmission and lock-up converter combination in the offseason, Smith put the class on notice when he uncorked an unofficial lap of 5.690-seconds — the first run in the 5.60s by a nitrous car in history.

Steve Jackson, another NCRC runner with a billet non-lockup in his supercharged Camaro, was also a factor at Gainesville, qualifying second at 5.75 before dropping a close second-round race to Chad Green.