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The streetcar classes are packed with some interesting and diverse cars. Walking through the staging lanes we’ve seen everything you can think of including full size trucks, big tire pro street style cars, and even some German luxury muscle. These racers put just as much effort into racing at Outlaw Armageddon as the fastest cars here, but they had to take their cars for a 30 mile cruise in the brutal heat on Saturday.
Ryan Taggart and the Swamp Thing Long Top team have been wrenching on their Nova wagon nearly non-stop to get ready for this weekend's race. "We had to do a lot of bodywork to get it ready to come back to the track and replace some other parts. Other than all the bodywork it didn’t need a whole lot to get ready to race. Right now we're trying to get the tire shake on the leave figured out. The track is super slick and polished, so there’s nothing there on the first 60 feet when it comes to grip. It’s going to take some big power management to win this weekend because the track is so tricky. You’re going to have to be on top of your tuning game this weekend for every round it looks like.
When it’s crazy hot in the lanes and you want to keep your lunch warm during a driver’s meeting….
One of the big things that makes no prep different than typical heads-up racing is the lack of qualifying. You might get a test hit if you’re lucky, but otherwise you have to draw a chip to see who you run each round, and that can lead to some exciting matchups. The first round of the big tire class was fairly tame, except for the huge matchup between Shawn Ellington in the Murder Nova against Larry Larson in his S-10. The two racers were welded together at the doors and the race was so close it had to go to the video to see who won. Larson came out on top winning this epic matchup of no prep titans.
Mike Baker from CFM Performance debuted his stunning1968 Camaro known as the “Flatliner” this weekend. With a 514 cubic-inch Steve Morris engine that has a ProCharger on the front of it, the F-body is making plenty of power. "This car that was a chassis that was sitting around our shop and was an older ladder bar car. We decided to turn it into a no prep car based on where it looked like the rules were going. We pretty much started over with the chassis and cut out everything but the major bars. We fabricated our own four-link, added more bars, added carbon fiber, and stretched the rear fenders to fit the big tires. Chuck Parker is driving the car part-time to help us get it lined ou,t but if it works out we would like to have him drive it more."
Justin “Big Chief” Shearer went for a crazy ride in his first-round matchup of big tire. The Crow really tried to fly away from Shearer, and he did a magnificent job keeping his Pontiac off the wall.
The big tire class started with 52 entries and delivered on the promise of being the most exciting class of the day. Every round there was at least one match-up that could be a final round at any no prep event. The race between Chuck Seitsinger in the “Death Trap” and Chuck Parker in “The 55” felt like a heavyweight title fight in the middle of the day. In one of the closest races of the day, the Death Trap was able to absorb the massive uppercut punch of a run The 55 threw at it to move on.
Disco Dean Karns ended up getting a few bye runs during the day, but every pass he went A to B. Karns being a veteran racer used every pass to gather data to prepare for the next round. Karns ended up falling to the Death Trap in the semi-final round.
No prep truck class standout Flaco put in a whole lot of work to win the Truck & SUV class title at Outlaw Armageddon 4. "We spent a lot of time testing getting this truck ready, I think we went through an entire 55-gallon drum of fuel leading up to it. The long hours and extra work paid off with this new setup since it's making more power, but that isn't always the best thing in no prep racing. This weekend really was an exercise in power management for us since the track really never came around. I had spun every pass and had to figure out how much power to pull out so I could keep the truck happy."
After the smoke cleared and over 50 of the best no prep racers battled it out into the night only one was left standing, Brent Austin and his Camaro known as "The Megalodon". In the past, Austin had to race his way into this event going rounds as a newcomer to the World Series of No Prep, but now everybody knows who he is and what his car can do. Austin had his car on rails and made every pass look easy on the tricky track surface. In the final round, Austin had The Megalodon set on kill yet again and it was able to take a large bite out of the Death Trap that had issues right at the hit.
