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Rick Riccardi is here after having his race car repaired from a wreck earlier this year. The Car spent some quality time at Matt Wirt Race Cars getting repairs. Riccardi took one pass to get his feet wet, and then almost made a full pass in round one of qualifying with an 8.94. We trust Riccardi will go quicker as the weekend goes along.
Street Outlaw racer Eric Gustafson sits atop qualifying as Saturday morning gets started. The Goose busted out a 4.437 at 165 mph, and is looking to win a championship in the ProCharger-motivated Mustang.
Another Street Outlaw racer that hasn’t had such a great race so far is Andrew Demarco. He hurt the engine in testing on Friday morning, but the guys worked overnight to get it fixed, and running again. Hopefully, we’ll have better news out of the Demarco camp after round two qualifying, which is scheduled to start around noon.
The Ford Racing Cobra Jet Showdown is rolling as we type this. All the Cobra Jet heavy hitters are here battling it out.
The car show at the NMCA World Finals is full of Detroit iron, and a Ducati Superbike. It's barely 10:30, and the show field was already pretty full of stunning rides.
NMRA Coyote Stock racer Mike Bowen is here at the NMCA Finals to get some practice in, and participate in the NA 10.5 class. He’s not really in the neighborhood of the class regulars, but he’s working on reaction times, and doing some testing while at the event.
For the NMCA Finals, Billy Glidden has the 872-inch engine in the car, but he’s made some recent changes to it. The engine makes really good power early in the run so he’s working on the downtrack part of the power curve via the EFI tune.
In talking to Andrew Demarco, he relayed his engine issue turned out to be a cracked exhaust port leaking water. Repairs were made overnight, and Demarco was able to make a second round qualifying hit.
News from the Paul Major crew is that everything is good so far. Saturday morning they were checking valves, rockers, and adding new spark plugs, all the normal stuff to make sure everything was fine.
Ray Schuler's Pro Mod Camaro runs a Nelson Competition powerplant with a custom nitrous system on the car. After the first round of qualifying he was in the 6th spot. He got out of the groove a little, so he's hoping he can keep it in the groove, and improve that qualifying spot.
The starting line was packed for the second round of qualifying with Keith Berry and Dewayne Mills lined up against each other. The guys didn't disappoint. Berry ran a 4.10, and Mills ran another 4.0 with a 4.06 this time. If the weather cools down for the third round of qualifying, we just might see a 3-second pass. When we walked through the pits this morning, the Mills pit was pretty quiet, just waiting on the qualifying to roll around. Berry says we should should watch for side-by-side 3s for third round of qualifying.
Jessie Coultier lowered his elapsed time again in the second round of qualifying to a 7.78 at 176 mph in Holley EFI Real Street.
In a match-up perhaps everyone wanted to see, Phil Hines and Eric Gustafson lined up against each other in the second round of qualifying. Hines improved his time from round 1, while Gustafson was slightly off his round 1 pace. We hope the two will line up again for round 3. Hearing both ProCharger cars go down the track is like hearing angels sing.
Another NMRA regular giving the NMCA side a go is Jim Breese. Bresse has competed in NMRA’s Modular Muscle, Real Street, and most recently, the Renegade class. The Renegade and NMCA Extreme Street rules are pretty close, and Breese is giving it a shot with a ProCharger-blown Four-Valve, Rossler Turbo 400, and an Ultimate Converter Concepts converter. Last night’s qualifying pass was Breese’s first hit with the old design Mickey Thompson ET Street radials. His best in Renegade trim with the new Mickey Radial Pros is an 8.14. In second round of qualifying today Breese ran an 8.17 at 164 mph.
One of the more unusual cars here at the NMCA Finals is the 1963 Studebaker Super Lark of Ted Harbit. He is running in the National Parts Depot FAST class, and running deep into the 13s.
Another NMRA regular Alton Clements is here running Extreme Street, as well. Clements hurt his primary blower last night in qualifying, but family friend Brent Weston flew in this morning with a new ProCharger F-1C 10.5 to put on the car. Behind the Ford small block is a Neal Racing Transmissions’ Turbo 400 with a Cameron’s Torque Converter Service converter.
Jason Hoots is here running Extreme Street with a Vortech YSi-Trim BXL, Powerglide, and Ultimate Converter Concepts converter. He and his traveling buddy Paul Wiley were repairing their golf cart when we came by, and he was hoping to improve on his qualifying time in round 3. We saw him driving around the golf cart so we think that part was fixed with a little welding, but an off-pace pass means the guys still have some work to do on the car.
NA 10.5 racer Rick Riccardi made a full pass in round 3 of qualifying, running an 8.17 at 167 mph. Riccardi reports he is just sneaking up on it.
Dwight Ausmus made a tune-up change to his NA 10.5 Firebird, and it really helped on top end, but it hampered front half performance. So he tried to get some of that front half back during third round of qualifying, and the car dipped back into the 8.0s.
In third round of Radial Wars, Dewayne Mills again ran in the 4.0s with a 4.02 at 201 mph. No one ran in the 3s, unfortunately, but Mills’ consistency will be tough to beat.
