Records And Personal Bests Abound At MIR’s Ford Fever Classic

This past weekend, Maryland International Raceway hosted its 21st Annual Ford Fever Classic, where a pair of world records were set, along with a barrier-breaking personal best for one of the legends in radial racing.

Leading off the weekend in spectacular fashion, Scotty “Scotty G.” Guadagno piloted his familiar blue 2000 Camaro to a 4.091 in pre-race testing, placing him among the elite few radial racers to have made passes in the 4.0-second range. Scotty and the Team Jet Blue crew have been steadily knocking big chunks of ET off the Camaro’s bests, and there’s no sign of the Induction Solutions-injected F-Body slowing down anytime soon.

Charlotte North Carolina’s Barry Mitchell brought his sinister black Fox Body to make a run at the season-long Outlaw Drag Radial points competition and would walk away having swept everything in the class. Mitchell qualified No. 1 with a 4.21, officially making him the quickest man in the world on 275 Radials. He went go on to win the race and lock up the ODR points championship, wrapping up a stellar first season for him and his Racraft, Inc-built Mustang. Look for Mitchell and his crew to continue to chip away at the 275 world record as they fine-tune their bottle fed bullet.

Finally, and quite possibly most impressively, Rich Bruder fired a shot heard ’round the X275 world — especially a few hundred miles away in Northwest Mississippi — when he blasted off not one, but a pair of identical 4.481’s to claim the X275 world record.

Known as one of the strictest and most tightly-policed classes in the radial world, X275 records are exceedingly rare. While most of the X275 fanbase was focused on Holly Springs, Rich and Nick Bruder, who previously sat at No. 3 in the record books, elected to head to MIR to launch their assault on the record books, and it paid off handsomely, as they also took home the class win while locking up the world record. The Bruder Brothers wanted to thank their family, sponsors and friends, without whom they wouldn’t be able to do what they love.

With these exceptional performances, Maryland International Raceway certainly proved they belong squarely in the hotly-debated “Best Radial Track” discussion. Jason Miller and the entire MIR staff are world-class and work hard to offer their racers the best possible experience each time they swing the gates open.