Network
Friday
The 2019 NMCA season is officially underway here in Bradenton, Florida and we have some excellent weather on tap for the weekend. “Fast” Frank Cersosimo acquired this Bickel-built Chevy Cavalier last year and did some shakedown runs at the Snowbird Outlaw Nationals here in December. The car features a Buck Racing Engines powerplant and Frank told he is eagerly looking forward to campaigning the new car this year.
Chuck Watson Sr. had low ET in the Holley EFI Factory Supercars while testing this morning, running a 1.23, 5.06 at 139, and 7.83 at 177 MPH — a significant improvement over the numbers here last year due to some rule revisions in the offseason. Geof Turk was the first class car to break into the sevens here last year and the Chevy and Ford cars have new blowers for 2019 which has evened up the field. Watson mentioned the new blower, a Whipple now displacing 3.0L, and a stroked crank as differences.
“Actually we’re doing real good and we’ve got some more tune to put in the car and we’re just going to be a little conservative and creep up on it and prepare for Gainesville next weekend.” All four of the Watson Racing cars here ran in the sevens so far this week including the new team member, Trip Carter, “The Chicken Man”. Round one of qualifying is sure to be exciting as the various racers vie for spots in the 7 second club.
Jim Widener is back at it in Pro Mod for 2019 with one obvious change to the car: it’s got a hood scoop now. After using a blower injector hat as the throttle body in order to see out of the car better for about two years they fought some tuning issues with car stalling and idling issues because of the major increase to plenum volume. The car runs exactly the same under power so the team at BES decided to scrap that idea and go back to throttle bodies, using a pair of twin oval units from Vizner. Jim scored a new best with the car this morning running a 3.80, the quickest nitrous car in the test session this morning. The engine displacement was also increased from 903 to 944 as the team will not campaign the NHRA circuit this year.
Tony Bischoff’s Street Outlaw Mustang has a new look and a new driver for 2019 with Shawn Pevlor now behind the wheel. Crew Chief Preston Mosher got us up to speed on some of the changes: “It’s a different class this year, pretty much everything is changed around with a different cubic inch to the build and an additional 200 pound weight added per the 2019 rules package. We de-stroked the engine in anticipation of changes and it didn’t actually work out in our favor after it all shook out but we are doing alright so far … it’s gonna’ be a hard year to try to keep up.” The amazing paint work is by Chris Alexander. So far Shawn has been 160 MPH but the team is pushing the engine harder than they would like to do it. Pictured left to right: Preston Mosher and John O’Neill.
Former Coyote Modified Champion Joe Guertin has switched to Renegade/Extreme Street for 2019 using an MPR-built Coyote engine backed by an ATFSPEED transmission and converter and fed with a Procharger with Chet Caminita as crew chief and Hartline Performance tuners. Joe and Chet from CRE Performance have campaigned the car from test n tune days at PBIR to Coyote Stock and now Xtreme Street for some years now.
Round One Qualifying Results
The big news of the day involves the Holley EFI Factory Super Car class with Ray Skillman Racing's Drew and Bill Skillman jumping in with both feet straight to the 7.70's with Drew scoring a 7.704 at 176 MPH to top the qualifying order so far. The Skillman team was long gone celebrating by the time qualifying was finished today so we will speak with them first thing Saturday morning. One thing we can say beyond doubt is the they are well prepared and sent shock waves through the crowd when the board lit up.
The Holley EFI Seven Second Club is now filled ( unofficially at press time until cars are cleared by the tech department) with Geoff Turk breaking down the barrier here last year and the rest of the five cars to be included sealed the deal in the first qualifying session this evening. They are: Chuck Watson, Scott Libersher, his son Lenny Libersher, and Carl Tasca. Congratulations gentlemen, and all involved with their various programs. The cars were qualified in predetermined order based on previous performance so the cars in the Holley EFI Seven Second Club are the first, not the fastest cars to qualify. Pictured from left to right, Chuck Watson Sr., Lenny Libersher and Scott Libersher. Tasco is the highest qualified car in the 7 Second Club with a 7.82 at 176, good for third after the round.
The DSR Racing Mopar's ran well and both cars carded seven second runs with Mark Pawuk running, a 7.993 at 170 and Leah Pritchett following that with a 7.938 at 172.
Milton, Florida based Joe Baker (right) leads the Xtreme Pro Mod field with a 3.72 at 201 MPH in his blown 2016 Corvette. Tinley Park, Illinois based Randy Adler and the A Team Speed Shop team sit second in class with a 3.77 at 198.
Former Radial Wars Champion James Lawrence is racing Street Outlaw for 2019 since the NMCA moved away from that class in 2019. His new car was formerly campaigned by Daniel Pharris and has underwent some changes since then, including a switch to alcohol based fuel. He currently sits on top of Mickey Thompson Street Outlaw with a 4.389 at 166 MPH after running a .37 in testing. J. Money99 was today's good luck charm.
Don Baskin sat out 2018 after a difficult recover from knee replacement surgery but is back with a vengeance and two cars, one in NPS, the other in NA 10.5, a newer style GTO with the old school Judge graphics. He ran an 8.08 earlier and sits fourth with an 8.11 after one session running a six hundred cubic inch Chevy from BES and TH 400 from RPM Transmissions with Dewco rear end out back. He is also running in NPS with his former Championship winning car. Don told us he had not missed a year of racing since he was fifteen and a half years old and it was not a fun time sitting out the season. He still has the first car he raced back in 1976, a 1963 Impala with a 409 and three on the tree stick shift car back home in his museum.
Leonard Long ran very well in FST Carburetors NA 10.5 scoring a 7.84 at 175 MPH.
Dwight Ausmus (pictured) and Robbie Blakenship were neck and neck for second with Ausmus getting the nod by .005.
John Langer moved to the left on his run and lifted. You can see the wheeli bar is not hitting evenly and needs some adjustment so they won’t turn the car. This small tire class is a difficult road when you have to rely on bars to work the tire and suspension, it’s fin line to walk but very rewarding when it all comes together.
ARP Nostalgia Pro Street had seven cars enter today with Ensslin racing leading the field with the two car team. Jordan, pictured here took second to Jeff Ensslin who is driving a red 68 Camaro.
David Munday suffered some transmission damage on his attempt in XPM this afternoon. The team was tearing it down when we dropped by the pits and found at least a broken sprag. They should be good to go in the morning.
The Libersher pits was the happening spot to be tonight with the Super Car tech inspection. It’s a long day for them after making it in to the club with cylinder pumping and an assortment of details to check.
Street Outlaw has a new face in the class this year with Tony Hobson driving the AEM Infinity sponsored Mustang based out of St Louis. Tony has been drag racing for three years and comes from a family steeped in racing coming up from dirt modified and go carts, getting started at just five years old. Hobson’s father raced for some years, taking time off to raise a family and promote his son’s racing careers. After college the boys branched off doing their own thing a bit and he got back into dirt modified. Tony started drag racing on his own and was soon hooked up with JCP out of Maryland and it snowballed from there to a serious effort with the NMRA/NMCA. Tony as a lot of folks involved with his program, including Extreme Racing Oil, BMR, HPJ Performance, Cortex, RGR Engines, Proformance Racing Transmissions, Neal Chance Racing Converters, Weldon, VP Racing Fuels, The Brake Man, DeatschWerks Fuel Systems, and Weld Racing. The car was built at Larry Jeffers Race Cars where Tony works as a fabricator and chassis set up. Pictured from left to right, Tony Hobson and his grandfather Gary.
