One of the endearing attributes of the sport of drag racing is that there are so many races taking places in so many places, every weekend, year-round, year after year, that the laws of nature virtually guarantee that, given enough time, you’ll see things that have never happened before (or that you may have even thought weren’t possible). A March 2019 side-by-side race in Orlando where a pair of Pro Mods ran the exact same e.t. and speed down to the second and third digit, respectively — something that is only known to have happened three times ever, out of millions of races — is a perfect example of this.

Such an incidence as what occurred during the Outlaw 632 semi-final at last weekend’s U.S. Street Nationals in Bradenton, Florida may not be a once-in-a-lifetime scenario (our guess is it’s not), but it was certainly wacky enough to stand out.

The entire scene played out over a 10-minute period, and if you don’t have time to watch the whole clip, we can spare you the details.

Georgia native Walter Lannigan, in his 1953 Corvette, was set to face Dillon Voss in his Florida-based 2017 Corvette in the first pair out, with a trip to the final round on the line. Lannigan, however, couldn’t get his car to fire and never made the turn to the water box. That handed what appeared to be a single into the money round to Voss. But after Voss completed his burnout, the Corvette lost fire and had to be pushed back behind the beams. Voss tried valiantly to re-fire and ultimately staged the car with the starter — a violation of the rule stating the car must be under power in order to take the tree and advance. That disqualified Voss.

That was wild enough in itself, but back in the staging lanes, Lannigan’s teammate, Chris Holdorf also could not get his 1953 Corvette to fire. The culprit, the team quickly found, was that no one had re-installed the spark plugs. In fact, the spark plugs had never been put in the car of Holdorf or Lannigan — a ghastly oversight in the pits that set in motion this whole strange saga. So while opponent Wes DiStefano was doing his burnout, Holdorf’s crew had scampered to the trailer to get plugs, pulled the nose off the car and was quickly jamming them in the cylinder heads..

Because neither car in the previous pairing took the tree, this was effectively the final round…winner take all.

Holdorf hustled around the corner and performed a short burnout, and adding insult to all of the injury, the composite nose fell off the car as he came to a stop. Holdorf graciously provided the team a few extra seconds to fasten the nose back on, and the two took the tree.

Amazingly, in one final hurrah in this whole wild series of events, DiStefano broke the rear end about 150-feet out, allowing Holdorf — who moments earlier didn’t appear capable of even getting to the starting line — to cruise to victory in 4.21-seconds. As the record will reflect, Holdorf seemingly wasn’t rattled in the least, clicking off an .012 reaction time.

Crazy stuff, ya’ll.