Don Cruz has been away from the racing scene a few years and now that his son has moved on to college he can spend some more time away from home. Cruz Performance specializes in Buick GN and V6 performance with his shop based out of Tampa, Florida for about three years after being in automotive electronics and new car dealer accesories for twenty five years prior to that. Cruz has been racing and building engines for nearly twenty years, finally moving in the performance industry recently. The engine sports two hundred seventy four inches and is boosted by an old school Precision GT47/88 turbo and topped with Champion Racing Heads and intake manifold, which are based on a production style heads making around sixteen hundred horsepower running in the 4.8X range. Cruz recently picked up a transmission from RPM and is very pleased as the reliability has allowed his to focus on tuning the car and getting data, not fixing it. He is using a PTC converter and will be making changes to that based on recent data. He sits fifth in class with a 4.88 at 140.
Tom Blinco hails from Bardstown, Kentucky and got starting in bracket racing about twenty years ago. He has been driving this 63 Vette out of David Monday’s Race Cars now in his second year after moving up from Top Sportsman and years of bracket racing. The car gets power from a Procharged 598 Chevy topped with Sonny’s heads and tuned by Patrick Barnhill from PTP. David started working on Tom’s bracket cars a few years back and the relationship evolved to building a new car and going Pro Mod. Monday filled us in on future plans including matching paint schemes on both his and Tom’s cars and a new wrap for the rig along with two new C7 Vette’s coming in a few months. DMRC is based in Maryville, Tennessee and been in business thirty-two years building Alcohol Funny Cars and some early Pro Mod’s for Robby Vandergriff and Bill Khulman, who held the nitrous Pro Mod record in 1988 with a 6.77 at 211 MPH.
Paolo Giust has both his cars here this weekend with Black Betty entered in RVW and earning her “stripes” last night after getting cozy with the right side wall. The crew fixed her up and he sits in 21st spot in the 32 car/all run field of twenty two cars in class this weekend, the most we have had in the class here at Bradenton.Archie Marasco (shown at left) and team Real Speed Racing were bust at the shop yesterday and we not able to make the qualifying session yesterday due to the change in scheduling. Walter made some adjustements to the tune up for the second round today putting him ninth of fourteen cars with a 4.91 at 141.Fast Forward Race Engines Ultra Street was on fire this morning with several cars riding out wheel stands. Here Joel Greathouse takes over top qualifier with a 4.626 at 152. A record setting pass in Ultra.
Troy Pirez Sr. is all about that Big Block Life, hanging em high and doing a fantastic job of bringing it down easy with the pedal job.
Newcomer to Heavy Street is Job Bitler running his 1969 Nova this weekend in his first class appearance. He drove the car to high school back in the day and it slowly progressed to it's current set up, a Scotty's Racing Technology 565 cubic inch Chevy topped with Edelbrock Victor heads and force fed by an F1X-12 Procharger though a blow through carburetor from IRD Racing, Jon's own company. He also works at Induction Solutions though has eschewed nitrous use on his Nova taking almost two years to make the switch. The car sits on Cal Track split mono leaf springs with and a Smith Racecraft bolt on front subframe. Jon tested the car here a couple of weeks ago with promising results getting into the 4.7 range with improvements to the sixty foot and getting the car to work better leaving the starting line. He sit's in second spot with a 4.67 at 159, top MPH for the class.
Final Qualifying Results
Due to inclement weather approaching the area the qualifying schedule was changed in hopes to get the race in this weekend. We had two total qualifying sessions and are going into eliminations Saturday afternoon.
Kevin Rivenbark is running very well this weekend scoring a best 3.634 and a 3.637 setting the Procharger Pro Mod record this weekend, and the race isn’t over yet. We chatted with Pro Line Racing’s Eric Dillard about the engine development program which was initiated by Power Auto Media’s James Lawrence speaking with them about doing a Procharged engine for his effort in NMCA’s Radial Wars. They met at PRI to discuss it, and sealed the deal. Shane Novak also come on board with a Procharger combo in his Pro Mod and between those two teams PLR gathered data and worked on the combo.
The project interested Kevin Rivenbark who was in conversations with Dillard for about a year before the Galot Motorsports team decided to pull the trigger and add a Procharger combo to the stable. Things have progressed well since then and RK Racecraft will have the second car swapped from the roots combo here in a few weeks and will campaign the two carbon copy cars with Strickland and Rivenbark driving. Proline Racing has been in business for fifteen years with founders with founders Eric Dillard, tuner Steve Petty and engine builder Doug Patton still involved with day to day business.
We stopped by Norman Bryson’s pit to see what is new for the team for 2019 and found he had switched to Billy Albert horsepower for the season. This is his first event racing here in Bradenton for the team who has been in the RVW game since 2015. He qualified with a 3.94 at 192 MPH this weekend and has been a best of 3.70 at Darlington. Bryson just swapped over to an EFI Technologies system and has fought various issues since getting here Tuesday for testing getting everything synced up and working together again with Jack and Bud Green assisting with the engine management tuning.Denis Lachance hails from Quebec, Canada and is another first time attendee here at the US Street Nats. Denis purchased the car from Eric Latino after competing in Top Sportsman for several years with the UDRA and PMRA in Canada, also doing some Top Sportsman racing in division 1 in the US. This event is a warm up for the team who plans a full PRDA Pro Boost season for 2019. The engine is also from Eric Latino’s program with Al Billes providing the blowers for Lachance.Johnny Pluchino is hauling the mail and dipping into the teens here this weekend in OL 632. He is the 2018 Champion record holder in PDRA, with I believe a 4.16.Dillon Voss is testing for Mountain Motor Pro Stock this weekend while entered in Pro Mod. Voss drives the car for Enoch Love based out of Richmond, Virginia with this being the team’s third race with Voss driving.The team plans a ful season with the PDRA and will attend the four NHRA events featuring the Mountain Motor class. Voss qualified with a 4.06 at 177.
We spoke to Kimmelyn Pesz who does marketing for Weatherford, Texas based PJS Racing to get us up to speed on the team with Imperial Construction as their major sponsor. The partnership came about in September of 2018 with Brandon Pesz, Jeff and Justin Jones, adding Jeff Sitton to the group. Jeff and Justin are running in Pro Mod this weekend with Justin debuting his new Jeffers built C7. This is Justin's sophomore season in Pro Mod and already the team has bettered the performance with the new car running a 3.59 at 211 so far. Plans for 2019 call for Justin and Jeff to campaign in the Mid West Pro Mod Series again with Sitton planning to attend all of the Duck X events, and probably select events in Denton, Texas at Northstar Dragway. All the team engines feature Frankenstein Engine Dynamics heads, manifolds and valve covers topping CN blocks. Jeff qualified with a 3.70 at 206 landing fourth in class with Justin scoring a 3.82. During testing on Wednesday Jeff Sitton put up a 3.64 making the quickest blown RVW pass to date. Justin Jones new car is pictured at left with the red accents. Jeff Sitton ran very well this weekend qualifying third in Radial vs the World and running low ET in the first two rounds of eliminations. His best being a 3.678 at 203 against Ocala, Florida based Chad Opaleski.
As of 10:15 PM, and after an incident with RVW racer John Carinci getting into the wall while racing Dewayne Mills that required extensive cleanup, we are done for the night due to unsafe track conditions. With the later threat of rain several classes have opted to split the purse, including Radial vs the World, Outlaw 632, Heavy Street, Ultra Street, and Pro Modified. This may conclude the event, well will report back with official word on finishing the event when we know. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We will have the results sheets for the completed rounds posted shortly.
After a drivers meeting all classes agreed to split and go home as the weather forecast is unfortunately not favorable to completing the event safely due to cold weather and high percentage of rain overnight and into Sunday afternoon.
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The 2019 season kicks off this weekend under the sunny skies and amazing weather conditions here in Bradenton, Florida at the U.S. Street Nationals. This morning the corrected altitude was right at negative 500 feet — mine shaft conditions ripe for record-setting. There are several new cars and teams here and we will get you caught up on during the weekend so stay tuned for the latest news from the track and behind the scenes as we get the 2019 season started with a bang!
Ronnie Hobbs own this fabulous S-10 based out of Texas that was formerly campaigned by Jeg’s in Pro Stock Truck. It’s been completely redone with double frame rails by Brink Racecraft and will be campaigned in various No Prep events and perhaps a few other random events. This is the debut weekend for the truck with Ronnie scoring a 4.66 at 132 on the first full run with the team only testing 60′ and half track runs before today. The truck is powered by a twin turbo BAE Hemi freshened and maintained by Pro Line Racing. Hobb’s owned the Texas Rattlesnake Pro Mod winning two Dirty South No Prep events with Steve Wylie driving winning both. The car was promptly banned from competition prompting Hobbs to build this now street legal, tagged, insured S-10. “ We thought about running a Pro Mod series with the 53 but don’t want to be tied down to run a series, we want to be able to pick and choose where we run and have a flexible schedule. Bounty Hunters is our first No Prep event on March 8.” – Ronnie Hobbs From left to right; Ronnie Hobbs, Mar Barum, Seth McCann, and Landon Hobbs
We stopped by Jay Cox’s pit this morning and found him chatting with Victor Alvarez, who bought in as a partner to Bradenton Motorsports park last year. Cox unloaded Wednesday with a 3.72, a good solid hit to start the new year off. Victor told him he better get ready for a .68 and that is the number that popped up Thursday morning for Jay who plans to run the full PDRA season and Mad Mule Shootouts and a couple of the Carolina Extreme Pro Mod events. Jay Cox with Victor Alvarez as right.Wild Bill Devine is entered into Pro Modified this weekend and awaiting on new Big Bubba tires to be mounted. Bill has been doing some NT racing recently with Pinks and made improvements to the ET. If all goes as planned Devine may see a 3.80 this weekend after some suspension changes and a new anti roll bar was installed.
Daniel Pharris also made some small changes to the car in the winter off season and did some testing on Orlando earlier this weekend scoring a new personal best with the car, a 3.69 at 216 MPH and a bunch of low 3.7 runs Tuesday and Wednesday. Over here Pharris ran a .72 and .73 last night. “We are going to have to step up the pace a little bit to hang with these guys. 2019 is upon us, with a lot newer stronger, faster, competition. Some of the blower and nitrous guys got to take some weight away but the turbo rules are basically the same, I saw Cox in the 60's and the screw blown cars are gonna run in this weather.” - Daniel Pharris. The team plans to mix their racing between the NMCA and Mid West Pro Mods and will have the Mustang at Lights Out and the Sweet 16 on drag radials. Pharris also picked up sponsorship from Wiesco for 2019. Craig Sullivan gave the roots set up the old heave ho and moved to a PSI Screw for the 2019 NMCA season. Sullivan thinks with his heavier car the screw blower will be the team’s best option to stay competitive with the new rules this year. “We will run a couple of Mid West Pro Mod events this year but we are committed to the NMCA for the year. We will probably stick a few local events in and maybe some No Time, or Grudge race, or whatever anyone wants to run and sit next to us.” Craig Sullivan told us. Sullivan stayed with Darren at DMPE for the engine maintenance and had him set up the PSI as well. Sullivan hails from Avon, Indiana and has brought Nick Bacalis onto the team this year. We saw one pass this afternoon so far out the team resulting in shake just after the tree.There are no major changes for Mark Micke yet, just making small changes to things in the off season and preparing for 2019. He did score a 3.70 yesterday, at 212. Today we saw a 3.74 at 203 for him. They will be preparing for a solid hit in tonight’s session after 6 PM where it is likely to be again in negative DA, or “mine shaft” air conditions. Will we see the RVW record fall this weekend?Team Swanstrom is now Swanstrom/Stravinos sporting a new wrap and partnership for 2019. Lil Country/Justin Swanstrom scored a .994, 2.50, 3.84 off the trailer today at 167 MPH.. Yes 167, taking it to half track under power. The next one will be a “full pull”. It’s On ladies and gentleman.Chad Opaleski has upped the overdrive for 2019 to 128% and scored a 190 MPH blast this afternoon, running a 1.07, 2.66 3.94 ET. Congrats Chad and team!!Pro Line Racing’s Jamie Miller popped in Ken Quartuccio’s pit to make some tuning adjustments before his first run today. We have quite a few top contenders in RVW here this weekend thanks to a $15K purse and promotional assistance by Donald Long.Kevin Rivenbark is driving the second Galot Motorsports car this year. He made one pass today so far and we will catch up with the team a bit later.
Round One Qualifying Results
We certainly had an interesting qualifying session with many cars struggling early in the new year with mine shaft air and a tricky track with the colder track surface temps, generally racers either stuck, or didn’t today.
TRZ Motorsports Heavy Street, Superior Auto Repair Outlaw 632, Fast Forward Race Engines Ultra Street.
Duck X Radial vs the World. Aerospace Components Outlaw Pro Mod, Open Outlaw. Daniel Pharris led the Outlaw Pro Mod field with one session of qualifying in the books setting another personal best with a 3.678 at 218 MPH.John Carinci napped the top position in Radial vs the World with a 3.74 at 214, a solid run for Carinci.
Nick Agostino made his debut runs with his new car this weekend. Nick had this car being build when the incident happened at Yellow Bullet Nats with his long time OL 10.5 Camaro. At first plans were to campaign two cars, the 10.5 car and this one in RVW. Well, plans change, sometimes quite suddenly so this one was finished with a few adjustments, including steel quarters and factory frame rails to ensure OL 10.5 legality when the need arises.
Originally the car was built by Rick Jones with Joe Van O hanging the quarters and some other work and a local shop finishing up the chassis. The engine is a new build from Visner Engine Development sporting a 4.6 bore space block displacing four hundred and eighty cubes with a pair of Precision XRP turbos providing boost.
Ultra Street fared well int eh weather conditions with most of the thirteen car field making it A to B and Brian Keep leading the class with a 4.639 at 150 to earn top qualifier so far. Keep has a fresh engine from Hameetman Racing Engines and swapped to the smaller Procharger F1A 91 late last year weighing in a 3125 for 2019 after rule revisions for the new season. That makes it 75 pounds heavier overall than last season. Mike Wabuda in the near lane scored a 4.82 at 145 for his qualifying effort landing sixth of thirteen cars.Joel Greathouse landed second in Ultra Street with a 4.640 at 148 still sporting the tubo combo from last year. His team mate Rodney Ragen was just .003 off that pace landing third with Keep and the KBX team getting right to it for 2019.Mike Freeman was here testing at Runday Sunday just a couple of weeks back. If you recall he purchased Tyler Crossnoe’s car late last year but crashed at No Mercy. The incident put the team behind and the decision was made to upgrade his old car and swap things around to regroup for 2019. Freeman landed fourth with a 4.76 at 148 and has Brian Keep now assisting with tuning the car.Daryl Hameetman has top qualifier so far in Outlaw 632 with a very nice 4.26 at 165. He went the long way around to get there moving out of the groove early on the attempt. Look for more of of Hameetman tomorrow once he gets a straight run.Mike Oldham landed secomd on class with a 4.29 though it was in front of Daryl by two or three cars. Oldham has a solid two MPH better top end charge in his 2005 S-10. We wonder how much or that is aerodynamics vs horsepower??
