Jerry Savoie, the most recent Pro Stock Motorcycle winner before this weekend’s Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals, knew he wouldn’t make the trip to Norwalk, Ohio. The two-bike team owner opted to stay home at Cutoff, La., to protect his alligator farm business and property in the wake of Tropical Storm Cindy and leave the racing to partner L.E. Tonglet.

But Savoie told crew chief Tim Kulungian, “Put our best stuff in L.E.'s bike and go out there and kick everyone's ass. We've got a good thing going right now, and I want it to continue."

Come havoc and high water, Savoie saw Kulungian and Tonglet win Sunday’s showdown between the top two qualifiers.

Tonglet launched one-thousandth of a second quicker than opponent Matt Smith and won with a 6.824-second elapsed time at 195.76 mph on the NitroFish.com Suzuki. Smith missed his chance at a first 2017 victory with his 6.882-second, 195.31-mph performance on the Summit Motorsports Park quarter-mile astride his Polaris Racing Victory motorcycle.

Tonglet, the No. 2 qualifier, is perfect in three final rounds this season and has moved into the points lead, passing previous leader and first-round loser Eddie Krawiec.

He said Savoie’s absence made “a huge impact. We didn’t have double the data each qualifying session, so it was a lot tougher. We wish he could have been here, but his job comes first.”

Tonglet, a firefighter from Metairie, La., said he was able to enter the event because “it didn’t affect us as much [in the New Orleans suburb], but Jerry’s an hour south of us.”

Savoie said the storm “already cost us about 80 percent of our [alligator] egg production. Once the eggs are underwater for four hours, they're no good. We've been working around the clock for the last three days, trying to get things stabilized. But there's still a lot of work to do.”

That final-round pass, Tonglet said, “was a very good run for us. Tim said the whole weekend we were two-hundredths behind in qualifying. I didn’t see any win lights in qualifying, but I saw it today and that’s the only day that counts.”

He hoisted his 13th Wally trophy alongside fellow pro winners Steve Torrence (Top Fuel), Jack Beckman (Funny Car), and Bo Butner (Pro Stock). The scene was reminiscent of the Charlotte and Atlanta races, where Tonglet stood on the podium both times with Torrence and at Atlanta also with Butner.

Tonglet, the 2010 series champion, eliminated Melissa Surber, Steve Johnson, and Hector Arana Jr. as he sought his third victory and fourth for the White Alligator Racing team in four straight events.

That, he said, has made “a huge statement.”

He said, “Tim’s tuning it, and it’s just flying right now. This is the weather that Tim likes, so hopefully it’s hot like this the rest of the year.”

Smith, the top qualifier and two-time series champion from King, N.C., advanced past Joe DeSantis and Mike Berry before using a perfect reaction time (0.00 seconds) to dispatch Scotty Pollacheck and deny him a sixth shot at his first NHRA victory.

Smith’s perfect light against Pollacheck didn’t concern him, Tonglet said: “I said, ‘He’s not going to do that [in the final]. He’ll be teens or 20 [.020] at best. He cut it way too close. We just try to be a teen or 20 light.”

Before the bike class final round, Shane Molinari erased Smith’s vision of another winners circle celebration with dad Rickie Smith. Molinari defeating him in the semifinals of Pro Modified eliminations. The Smiths shared the podium here in 2013, becoming the first and so-far-only father-son tandem in NHRA history to earn pro-class victories at the same event.  

Tonglet said Smith “slowed down a lot at the end of the semis. He said he missed the shift button or something happened and it didn’t shift. He slowed down, but he never picked back up. I don’t know what his [bike’s] problem is, but I’m just glad we got around him.”

The next race on the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series schedule is the July 6-9 Fallen Patriots Route 66 NHRA Nationals presented by K&N at Joliet, Ill.