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The Outlaw Drag Racing Championship returns to the Bradenton Motorsports Park in Florida this weekend, with Pro Modified and Open Outlaw headlining a class lineup that includes Outlaw 10.5, Outlaw 632, Limited Street/Outlaw Radial, X275, and 5.50, 6.50, and 7.50 Index.
Special thanks to our event coverage presenting sponsor Mickey Thompson Performance Tires & Wheels. Check out Mickey Thompson for all your high performance racing and street wheel and tire needs!
Friday here in Bradenton tech is open for early racers coming in as well as an open test session from 4 to 9 PM. The track has some fresh orange paint in the burnout and tree area just prior to the Outlaw Drag Radial Championship event this weekend and is looking spiffy.
John Adams is on the premises for his first event back since a crash at PBIR earlier this year. There was minor chassis damage but the car skidded on it's roof and required a new body for the Shelby GT500 Mustang Pro Mod. The CMF Racing crew will be testing today making the first hits on the car since the crash running a fresh engine from Scotty's Racing Technology.
Mike Stavrinos is running in Pro Modified this weekend and testing a new Halo nitrous system from Nelson Competition on the 800cubic inch big block Chevy. The Speed and Truck World team is based out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida with their 1968 Camaro. We will have more on the new Halo system later this weekend.
Josh Smith (left) and Haskel Mackowski are pictured here with Smith's 1978 Chevy stepside to run Outlaw 632. This is the first race for the truck which has had only a couple of N/A shakedown runs so far. He runs a 632 ci. BBC from Progressive Racing Engines. we have a couple of other new faces here for OL 632 this weekend and look forward to some good racing and fun times.
Terry Duffy is here this weekend to honor his father John who passed just a few weeks ago after a battle with colon cancer. His father had raced for 50 years and was a Chicago police officer for 33 years.Terry is running his 2000 Dodge Avenger Pro Mod this weekend. The engine is a 622 ci. big block Chevy on two kits.
2011 Pro Extreme ADRL champion Jason Hamstra has switched up to a top dragster and is here in Florida for the first time running Open Outlaw. The Spitzer chassis is powered by an AJE 481X. The team has been running various top dragster and outlaw events through the midwest for 2012.
Todays long haul spectator award goes to Kevin and John and Schweigel from Minnesota. Kevin's wife is expecting a child and the baby shower is this weekend so the boys got the boot and made the trip down here for some nice weather and great racing.
Drag Radial racer Chad Opaleski hails from Ocala, Florida with his Procharged 66 Chevelle. Dan Neumann Race Cars updated the intake piping to 5 inch tubing from the throttle body to the intercooler just finishing up about a week ago. Will Stevenson also runs out of Dan's shop and he just installed a 5 inch pipe inter-cooler but is waiting on a new throttle body before the rest of the pipe is fitting to the car. On Steve Morris. dyno the increase from 4 to 5 inch yielded well over 100 horsepower.
Sean Ashe has been running the F1X Procharger but had to switch to the F1R due to the rules here this weekend. The ATF team has not run the blower but a couple of times this year so they will be creeping up on the tune.
Lil Pup Racing runs this altered in Open Outlaw into the high 3 second zone. They run the Heads Up Madness series here in Bradenton on a regular basis. The class has some heavy hitters here this weekend from out of town and should make for some exciting racing with several cars capable of dipping well into the three second zone.
Chad Opaleski made a good run on his second attempt with a 4.65 in a pairing with X275 racer Brain Keep's 5.09 nitrous sniffing fuel injected S-10 Chevy.
OL 10.5 racer Dave French put up a nice 4.55 this afternoon. he runs a Nelson Competition BBC with Induction Solutions nitrous and hails from south Florida.
Jack Lumsden had a nitrous backfire late in his run while paired with Dave French. He was out of the car quickly after he got the car stopped and the safety crew was right there but the fire grew and took a bit of time to be quenched. The pro Mod Camaro is burnt pretty bad but Jack is ok
James Thompson from Jack's crew took this photo after the fire on the top end of the track. Scary without a doubt.
Gabby Labiosa formerly with Wilson Manifolds is now working on his own with EIC Motorsports and here this weekend with Zapato Grande Racing based out of Miami, Florida. The two car team runs a sister car in the Caribbean and Venezuela. Dinilo Nammour drives this Rick Jones built Mustang Pro Mod/Pro Street with a 5.3 bore space 864 big block Chevy from EIC Motorsports.
Mike Stavrinos laid down a nice clean 4.04 with his ultra Clean Pro Mod Camaro.
Sean Ashe had the quickest run in X275 that I saw with a 4.90 @ 144 MPH.
Adam Vetter is sporting a new nose after an incident making the turn off at Lakeland/Stingray Chevrolet Dragstrip last month. He got a nice wheels up launch to a 5.0X.
Hamstra managed a clean 4.79 towards the end of the test session this evening.
2011 Heads Up Madness Pro Mod champion Chris Mendola got down to a 4.20 so far in a tough Pro Mod field. Robert Mathis had low ET with a 3.92 after backing off on a previous attempt due to a push rod popping out of the rocker.
Friday Night Pit Notes
Lil' Country was pulling double duty swapping on a new set of Mickey Thompson Pro 275's for the two car FatBoy Racing team.
After running 5.07 off the trailer and a 5.02, later Adam Vetter made another pass and stood it up coming down hard about 150 feet out putting a little crush to the oil pan. Adam and Joe Irwin from Fast Forward Race Engines were assessing the damage when I dropped by.
The Zapato grande Racing team did well in the session with two good runs including a 4.13. They are loading up tonight to prep the car for shipment to the Caribbean for some match racing, they expect to be back here in 2013 for the US Street nationals.
Jason Gatlin (left) and Sean Ashe are swapping gears in the Mustang to get the engine speed more to their liking after swapping blowers. His 4,88 was the best X275 run of the session.
Eugene Rodriguez had an issue with the valve body sticking and enlisted the help of fellow X275 racer Larry Hart to get it fixed back up.
Chad Opaleski was on the phone to Joe from Pro Torque after a couple of runs testing last night. They are swapping this one in tonight after receiving it this afternoon.
Special thanks to big Al Dito and crew for the chow and hospitality. I'll be dropping in on them tomorrow around lunchtime for some shots of the car and skinny on the new combo.
