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While the rest of the racing world is in hibernation, the annual Snowbird Outlaw Nationals will heat up the state of Florida this weekend, featuring a plethora of exhibition vehicles, along with competition in Open Outlaw, Outlaw 10.5, Limited Street, Outlaw 632, X275, and some great index and bracket racing action. Dragzine will have same day coverage all weekend long from the Bradenton Motorsports Park, beginning with the scheduled testing on Friday and the qualifying and eliminations action on Saturday and Sunday.
Special thanks to the presenting sponsor of our same day event coverage, Mickey Thompson Performance Tires & Wheels. For all your racing and high performance wheel and tire needs, visit Mickey Thompson!
Larsen Motorsports has two jet dragsters here this weekend for the Annual Jet Jam. Two jet semis are going to be here this weekend and six cars total for the show tomorrow.
Jimmy Keene is back at it after a crash testing here in April damaged the car. A new body from Hairy Glass was sourced and the car was sent to Rick Jones Race Cars for repairs.
Al Billes has here car here for the first time in competition with driver Tommy D'April. The team is fresh off a win last weekend's Citrus Nationals at Palm Beach International Raceway.
This '62 Bel Air was built by Scott Brasket and owned by Toney Curry out of Columbus Ohio. Curry said he was inspired to build the car after seeing Tommy D'April driving Mel Bush's car here in Bradenton. Brasket also built the supercharged big block Chevy.
Adam Flomholz is racing once again here in Pro Mod and is here with two cars, one being a recent purchase from Frank Manzo. Manzo is here helping out tuning his former Top Alcohol Funny car which Adam will take back to Europe to campaign.
There are three cars in the Fat Boy Racing camp this weekend with Eric McMillen bring Vader down to test and race with the drive train from Swanstrom's white turbo car. "Skywalker" (center) formerly owned by McMillen was just purchased from Jeremy, aka Maxrider, on Yellow Bullet.com.
Cody and Corey Swanstrom is a father/son racing team based in Zephyrhills, Florida. The car is powered by a small block Ford built by Chris Seidle in house at Speed365. I will have more on the new purchase and plans for 2013 coming later.
Eric Kenward has a Ford small block back in the car after the sale of Robert Rogers 23 degree Chevy. The Nelson Competition built engine is owned by Bruce Roberts and Eric is working with TRZ Motorsports on a new car for Rogers.
Bill Futch is still behind the wheel of Mel Nelson's twin turbo Drag Radial Camaro. After swapping on a new pair of Garrett 94 mm turbos the first run was a 4.79 lifting at the shift.
Eric McMillen rolled out to a 4.96 @ 144 in Skywalker's nemisis, "Vader".
Scott Brasket got down to the tune of 4.05 on his first hit of the session.
Brad Personett at the hit. He struggled to keep the car straight and hooked up but managed a full run to the 1/8th.
Chad Opaleski ran a personal best today with a 4.53 @ 167, improving on his previous 4.59 ET . The Nelson Competition big Chevy is tuned by Rob Zarcone with chassis and fabrication by Dan Neumann Race Cars in Ocala, Florida.
Troy Pirez showed the X275 racers how it's done with a 4.77 @ 151, a record for the new 2013 X275 rules which limit the big block nitrous cars to a -6 nitrous feed line and -4 to the fogger. Team Pirez freshened the engine just before this event.
Dan Saitz has run two passes in the high 4.80's, including his first pass of the trailer today. two clean straight runs puts Saitz in a good position for qualifying tomorrow morning. The first session is at 11 AM.
Randy Van Raden made the haul to Florida for some X275 action. I caught him running a clean 4.99 as the sun was going down this evening.
Eugene Rodriguez has two wins recently in X275 and a runner up here at Bradenton. He got down with a 4.96 @ 141 in the Pro Fab Performance Mustang.
