The Radial vs. the World (RvW) final for promoter Donald "Duck" Long's No Mercy 9 featured a classic nitrous versus blower battle, with Houston's Jeff Naiser riding the spray to what he called "the biggest win of my career."

Naiser's nitrous-boosted '69 Camaro led stripe-to-stripe over fellow Texan Alex Laughlin and his supercharged 2012 Corvette after leaving with a .032 holeshot, then covering the all-concrete eighth mile at South Georgia Motorsports Park in 3.79 seconds at 197.62 mph. Laughlin made the trip in 3.80 seconds at 196.73 mph.

"You know, the blower cars, they’re kind of like a nitrous car, quick down low. Not like turbo cars where if you don’t see them at 330 feet that don’t mean nothing. If a turbo car is at your fender, they’re gonna' go around you," Naiser explained afterward. "This race, we took off and I seen him (Laughlin) at the 60 foot, but then when my lock-up and everything come in he disappeared. That's when I knew if the motor stayed together I was winning the race."

Naiser started from the number-one position for No Mercy 9, leading the way through all four rounds of RvW qualifying completed between nightly monsoons hit the track near Valdosta, GA. His class-leading 3.76 at 190.35-mph pass came in the third session. Mark Micke, who dominated and won Long's Sweet 16 event in March, started his twin-turboed '78 Malibu second after going just 6-thousandths slower than Naiser at 213.16 mph, and Jamie Hancock, the most recent nitrous-fed winner of No Mercy in 2014, qualified third with a 3.78 at 196.36 in his '68 Firebird. Marty Stinnett at 3.79 and 202.48 and Canadian Paolo Giust (3.80/192.96) rounded out the top five for the 32-car RvW field after 35 entries made qualifying attempts.     

Laughlin qualified seventh at 3.82 and 199.32 mph and posted low elapsed time for three of the four preliminary elimination rounds (only Micke was better than Laughlin in the opening round when he posted a 3.77 pass at 218.27, the fastest speed of the meet).

When Alex Laughlin decided he was going to venture into the volatile world of Radial vs. The World competition it made perfect sense to retain a Madman to call the shots. https://t.co/OBYerrZN6H

— Competition Plus (@competitionplus) October 1, 2018

Once eliminations began, Naiser was quick on the tree, going .014, .015, .059 (single), .010, and .017 against David Wolfe, Tim Kincaid, Taylor Lastor, Giust and Laughlin, respectively.

"We'd been 3.82 to .86, but we felt that we needed to go about 3.80 (for the final), somewhere between a .79 and .81, so Kenny (Hubbard, crew chief), he put five hundredths in it. Kenny calls all the shots. He even tells me what bottle pressure to leave at. I mean, I have all the trust in the world in him," Naiser said following a brief victory lane celebration. 

"What else can you say? After Kenny did his thing I just let go of the button on time and steered it to the finish line."

With solid reaction times of his own and consistent high-3.70s in eliminations, Laughlin made it past Lyle Barnett (single), Daniel Pharris, Jeremy Martin and Hancock to reach the final round.

With Naiser waiting at the starting line and rain again threatening to fall--in fact, tiny droplets were spitting on the windshields of almost all class finalists--Laughlin was already buckled in with his helmet strapped and cinched as his bright blue Speed Society Corvette was towed to the waterbox.  

"We had to thrash a bit after the semi-finals after we broke a lifter right at the finish line and had to take the intake and oil pan off to fish all the broken parts out. And then, when he did the burnout the little clip that holds the throttle cable to the pedal, the bolt and nut fell out of it, so we had to fix that right before the run," Laughlin crew chief Frankie Taylor said.

"I literally held the bolt in with my ankle going down the race track," Laughlin confirmed while laughing about it all later. "But just the fact that we even made it this far being this new is pretty cool. The fans out here have been great; like you would have thought we had just won the world championship of whatever. Everybody has been so awesome. I'd say I couldn’t be happier. Well, obviously if I won, maybe a little bit, but seriously, this has just been so great."