Jeff Kinsler is a player this weekend in Ultra; ”The Cheater” knocked down a stout 5-flat from his Pontiac-powered Firebird. We shot a feature on the clean machine this morning—look for it in the upcoming months right here on Dragzine. Kinsler’s Poncho is one of the cleanest cars we’ve seen this weekend. He’s been in the 4.90’s in the past and is looking to get back there today. He’s currently qualified sixth.

Dan Whetstine’s out here with a brand-new combo in his super-clean ’91 Mustang. The car wears an F-1R ProCharger atop the Brodix Neal-headed 417 cubic inch powerplant. In the last couple of months, the team switched over to M1 fuel, added a Waterman fuel pump, Billet Atomizer 550 lb./hr. Injectors, and Menscer front struts. Jason Norris from Triton Metals made a new water and fuel tank, then powdercoated all of the new supercharger piping. With this combo he’s able to lose 150 pounds from his previous weight. Teammate Tim Essick is ticking the keys on the laptop to bring the tune up to speed. Crewmembers Timmy Savoy and Phillip Buckner also help the program, and Whetstine credits “Awesome Sauce” wife Michelle for the assist on everything he does.He went for a wild ride this afternoon in round two of qualifying.

Chris Evans rocketed right into the 4.90s in Ultra last night. Evans and teammate Matt Butrim recently updated the car and the engine to fit into Ultra,using a set of borrowed cylinder heads from another friend. It looks like he’s got a handle on what it takes to go fast—he’s currently in the number three spot, and this is the fastest pass he’s got so far in Ultra trim.

How about a Bruder bomb dropped on the 275 Radial class? Can’t ever count out the twins from New Jersey; Rich torched the class with a top qualifier effort last night of 4.51 He’s followed by Mean Dean Marinis at 4.56 and Rob Goss at 4.59.

Outlaw 10.5 is led by Steve Gorman, but this is the car that’s caught our eye so far in the class, Chuck Ulsch, driving for owner Gil Mobley Motorsports, is still sorting out the screw blower on the car and trying to get the power to the ground through the big 10.5 meats. Last night he landed in the number three spot with a strong 4.13 at only 186 mph. There’s way more left in this car.

Nobody in Outlaw Drag Radial managed to make a clean pass last night except for Keith Berry, with a 4.15 at 185 mph. Every other car in the class struggled to get the power down, encountered issues with staging, and generally threw away the first round.

It’s been a few years since Don Barnett’s been out with his Pontiac. He clicked off a 4.97 tonight in X275 in the Rhodes-built machine. Onboard is an XB-105 Vortech supercharger with a 400ci engine, topped with a set of All Pro 23-degree 245cc raised runner cylinder heads from Curtis Boggs at Race Flow Development. Barnett and partner Keith Hartsoe got the car back from Rhodes as a roller and finished the car themselves. We’re working to plan a feature in the near future on this super-sano machine.

Mean Dean Marinis just cranked off a 4.49 at 165 mph in X275–and that’s only good for second place, behind Bruder’s 4.479 at 159.70.

We caught up with Chip Provenza in the pits tonight; he tells us he’s been testing on the downlow all season to sort out his Vortech-powered Mustang, in preparation for an assault on NMCA’s Xtreme Street class next season. The team was changing the supercharger gear-drive bushings tonight.

Although Dave Cappolina didn’t make it into the Outlaw Big Tire field tonight with his hot rod Lincoln, he was ecstatic to be sitting in the driver’s seat of the car. Formerly owned by Tom Kasper, Cappo took delivery of it a year ago at this race and has been slowly creeping up on the tuneup, gaining valuable seat time in the process. The car has a fresh DiSomma 449 with twin Precision 88mm turbos. He’s been trying to find the fine line of performance with the BigStuff3/NLR1000 boost controller combo.

Lewes, Delaware-based racer Craig Walls has an all-new combo this year and is working to get back to the level of performance he achieved last year. A best pass of 4.58 has eluded him thus far, as he’s working on figuring out the sweet spot between the new converter and power management. The car relies on an RDI aluminum-blocked 427 with Brodix Neal 202 cylinder heads pumped up by a Vortech billet Xi supercharger.

Rich Shainline is one of the major players in Outlaw Big Tire with his Doug Kline-built, Precision-Chassis-backed ’67 Mustang. Shainline’s beast has a fuel-injected Musi 903ci monster under the hood with four stages of Edelbrock nitrous on top. Shainline currently sits second in Outlaw Big Tire with a 4.37 at 168 behind John Fisher.

We shot a Dragzine car feature with Shawn Pevlor this morning, and he was talking about how he thought he was capable of low 4.90s this evening in Ultra Street. Turns out he was right; he busted out a stout 4.92 in tonight’s session to take the number one spot from previous Dragzine car feature participant Alex Hays by one slim hundredth of a second. His joy was short-lived, as Hays stole the spot back in the following pair by–you guessed it–one slim hundredth of a second. Hays tops the ladder going into eliminations with his 4.91/141 mph blast.

Oh-so-close! The Golden Gorilla almost did the 3-second dance right here at the Yellow Bullet race. When the vast majority of the Outlaw Drag Radial field couldn’t take advantage of tonight’s cooler temperatures, DeWayne Mills went right down Broadway.