EVENT RESULTS LIVE TIMING EVENT NOTEBOOK LIVE VIDEO			THURSDAY GALLERY FRIDAY GALLERY SATURDAY GALLERY

 

SUNDAY - JENKINS HEADLINES SHAKEDOWN WINNERS



Drag racing’s most decorated Pro Modified driver added one more accolade to his resume.

Shannon Jenkins, a four-time series champion in NHRA and IHRA competition, scored his first Shakedown title by winning the Pro Modified division at the first-ever Palm Beach International Raceway version of the popular doorslammer event.

Joining Jenkins in the winner’s circle was Danny Lowry [Outlaw 10.5], Scott Gaudagno [Drag Radial/Limited Street], Ronnie Wilson [X275], Bruno Massel [Pro Import] and Ron Procopio [Pro Drag Bike].

Originally a two-day event, persistent Saturday rain showers forced the event over to Sunday.

The delay didn’t faze the Pro Modified contingent as the top two qualifiers made their way to the finals. Pseudo teammates Jenkins and Rickie Jones worked their way through a tough field to reach the finals.

Jones was the No. 1 man at the conclusion of qualifying but Jenkins was the top runner when it mattered most. The cagey veteran beat the rookie Pro Modified driver on the line and never looked back en route to the finish line with a winning 4.150, 184.75.

Jenkins had a productive day scoring low elapsed time of race day with a 3.836 second pass to beat Brad Personnet. He then defeated Alex Viscardi and Mike Knowles to reach the final round.

For his part, Jones ran like a seasoned veteran to beat Andrew Handres, Melanie Troxel and then Rickie Smith on a holeshot.

In the Outlaw 10.5 division, Lowry, of Griffin, Ga., used an incredible .004 reaction time to get the best of Scott Filkins, who came up .005 short at the stripe. Lowry won with a 4.339, 183.79.

Gaudagno make his long trip from Brooklyn, NY, worth it by claiming the Drag Radial/Limited Street division over Steve Jackson. Just like Lowry, in the final round of Outlaw 10.5, Gaudagno used a quicker starting line reaction as the determining factor at the finish line with a 4.535 to 4.483 decision.

Wilson starting from the No. 3 position in the X275 division knocked off the division’s top runner Jeff Wallace during the final round. He won with a 5.048 at 140.50.

Massel dominated the Pro Import division from start to finish by scoring the win from the pole position. He won with a 4.524 second run at 157.19 over the valiant effort of Aruban Frans Ponson.

Procopio, a regular in the ADRL’s Pro Extreme Motorcycle, scored the Pro Drag Bike title at the expense of ADRL series champion Kim Morrell. Procopio and Morrell recorded identical 4.121 but the deciding factor was his quicker .041 reaction.

 

Final round results from the inaugural Shakedown at Palm Beach International Raceway in Jupiter, Fla.

 

 

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SATURDAY NOTEBOOK - MOTHER NATURE TOP QUALIFIER AT SHAKEDOWN

THAT'S ALL TODAY - The Shakedown at Palm Beach drag race, interrupted three times Saturday by rain, will resume at 10 a.m. Sunday at Palm Beach International Raceway with the resumption of Pro Modified qualifying, followed by final eliminations in all classes.
 
Friday night leaders Jason Enos (Outlaw 10.5), Kim Morrell (Pro Drag Bike), Bruno Massel (Pro Import), and Jeff Wallace (X275) retained their No. 1 spots Saturday. Tony Ridenour replaced Scotty Gaudagno as the Drag Radial / Limited Street leader Saturday. Rickie Jones will try to protect his top spot in the Pro Modified class.

MORE RAIN - The Shakedown at Palm Beach is delayed once again by rain at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, during the final Pro Modified qualifying session. Please check back to Competition Plus for further details.

HE MEANS BUSINESS - Rickie Jones said his switch from driving a Pro Stock to a Pro Modified was business-motivated.
 
"There's only like 20 Pro Stock cars, really in the country, maybe 30. If you look at Pro Mod, there's so many organizations and categories," he said. "We kind of guesstimated, after talking to some guys in the industry, that there's 300 or 400 Pro Mods in the States."
 
His father's race-car shop at Galesburg, Ill., is a barometer of the trends.
 
Said Jones, "For awhile, we were booked solid for Pro Stock, that and Top Sportsman. It was just easier to stick to the GXP and Cobalt. If we were busy, why stop and have to jig up for something else?
 
"But now, with all the fiberglass bodies in Pro Mod, it's not like you're  working with steel bodies. Everything's changed a lot in the last 10 years in the market. These cars are fast. They're exciting. We're just going all out, doing whatever we can do to try to do more business out here," he said.
 
He said RJ Racecars is working on a 2011 Camaro body that Jones' dad, Rick Jones, is helping design. "We're looking forward to maybe getting that out this summer," the younger Jones said. "If we can get GM back in the sport that would be great. I think drag racing's a great place for marketing. I think they'll come back. They know where the hardcore fans are."
 
Erica Enders drove the lone Chevy in the Pro Stock class at the NHRA's Winternationals.
 
GRAND SHANNON - Shakedown at Palm Beach promoter Dave Hance presented Shannon Jenkins with a special plaque, naming him honorary Grand Marshal of the event. "Thank you for your innovative contributions to the growth of outlaw heads-up drag racing," the plaque reads.
 
KNOWLES LOVES SHAKEDOWN PBIR - When Mike Knowles, a regular in the NHRA-affiliated Get Screened America Pro Mod Challenge, heard about The Shakedown at Palm Beach, he thought promoter Dave Hance's idea was brilliant. Make that b-b-b-b-brilliant.
 
"I'm in Colorado at 50-below-zero in the winter," he said. Besides, he said, "I grew up here, so it's really cool. I know a lot of people here. It's fun. Some of my buddies are here, and we tell stories. I like coming here. The one thing I can tell you is that the staff here are great. We go to some tracks and you pay them a lot of money to test but you feel like you're a bother. Not here. These people are really good people."
 
Knowles said to count him in for the return of The Shakedown at Palm Beach.
 
"I think this race is going to really grow," he said. "I've already heard a few people say, 'Dang it -- I should have come there!' They're testing other places. I've heard that already: 'We should have come there! We should have come there!' So this race is going to grow. It's going to be a big race.”
 
The press and the word will get out. I would imagine this race will probably double next year. We always wanted to go to Englishtown, but it's so far away."
 
How about this October? "Maybe," Knowles said. "We’ll see how everything goes."
 
BILLES JUMPS TO NEW TEAM - R2B2 Pro Mod racer Raymond Commisso took to the track at The Shakedown at Palm Beach and qualified No. 1 in the opening round before tire shake in low gear left him and his '68 Camaro in seventh place by the end of Friday qualifying; which was remarkable, considering he suddenly found himself without familiar tuner Al Billes.
 
Late this past week, Billes rejoined Mike Knowles' operation. And Bob Newberry has done a stellar job in adding Commisso's car to his duties as crew chief for Melanie Troxel.
 
Commisso took the change in stride.
 
"The most important thing is we're friends. We'll stay friends," Commisso said. "He had to move on. That's the way that goes. Friendship means more to me than a race car. Al's my friend and always will be."
 
Commisso has had a change of cars, as well. He's driving the one in which he started last season, then turned over to boss Roger Burgess, and is driving again as Burgess has a new ride.
 
"I have no problem [with musical chairs]," the Toronto racer and restaurant owner said, quickly adding that he's happy to drive what Burgess gives him. "I'll jump in whatever he wants me to. I don't care what it is -- turbo car, blower car, I'll drive whatever he asks me to drive."
 
Knowles explained Billes' move to the "Blown Money"' team as "just time for a change."
 
He said, "Me and Al ran together before and had some success. We stayed friends from when Al helped me before and left me to go over there. We had a rough year last year -- didn’t run very well. He was ready for a change. I was ready for a change in my program. So we kind of mixed our change together, and it worked out well. "
 
It did Friday, as Knowles became the leader after two qualifying sessions.
 
Knowles said he took no special glee in replacing Commisso at the top of the order. "It's more like [I'm happy] taking the lead from anybody. Me and Ray are good friends. I don't mind beating anybody. We reorganized the whole team."
 
He said his performance here this weekend "is a big upper for us. We're excited."

BACK TO RACING - 4:30 PM, EST - After a lengthy rain delay, qualifying action for the Outlaw 10.5 class has resumed for inaugural The Shakedown at Palm Beach at Palm Beach International Raceway. The Outlaw 10.5 and Pro Modified classes will conduct their fourth and final qualifying sessions, and final eliminations will follow.

UNDER RAIN DELAY - The Shakedown at Palm Beach is experiencing a rain delay. The Saturday afternoon shower came after the fields were set in a fourth session for the Pro Drag Bike, Pro Import, X275, and Drag Radial / Limited Street classes and before Outlaw 10.5 and Pro Modified ran their final time trials.
 
Friday night provisional Kim Morrell (Pro Drag Bike), Bruno Massel (Pro Import), and Jeff Wallace (X275) retained their No. 1 spots. Tony Ridenour replaced Scotty Gaudagno as the Drag Radial / Limited Street leader Saturday.

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FRIDAY NOTEBOOK -

LYNCH DONE - In a startling twist Friday evening, Tim Lynch threw in the towel for the weekend after his Corvette ZR1 broke. The Woodstock, Ga., dominator is sidelined when a thrust bearing -- a bearing at the back of the crankshaft -- was damaged beyond repair.
 
KASPER SCARED? - T.J. Kasper, of Westville, N.J., never has traveled farther to race his Mustang, and he's racing at The Shakedown in the Outlaw 10.5 class for the first time. Each of those occurrences would be exciting by itself. However, Kasper took a wild ride during Friday's second qualifying session which will help him remember his first trip beyond Englishtown's Raceway Park, South Jersey's Atco Raceway, and Maryland's Cecil County Dragway, where he was 8.5 Index champion. With Robert Abbott in the left lane, Kasper's car threw him a curveball and sent him snaking through his own lane and into the opposite lane behind Abbott. Showing the skill of a veteran, the 20-year-old kept the Mustang off the left guardwall. His winning 10.5 victories last year at Atco and Cecil County undoubtedly gave him the experience.  



HOOVER FINDING HIS GROOVE - Ed Hoover has the distinction of being the first Pro Modified winner in the International Hot Rod Association, where the class first was recognized. With his 5.941-second test pass at 225.11 down the Palm Beach International Raceway strip Thursday in his Trussel Brothers-sponsored '68 Camaro, Hoover established himself as a threat to become the Pro Modified winner at the inaugural Shakedown at Palm Beach. Hoover, a regular in the NHRA's Get Screened America Pro Mod Challenge tour, said he has been playing with his set-up lately and wasn't quite sure early Thursday what his experimenting would bring.
 
"I got a brainstorm," the Gilbert, S.C., said. And the Sunday following the early-February PRO Winter Warm-up here, Hoover tested his hot new idea and "did pretty decent," he said. But he reverted this week to what he knew would work, what he called "a more typical gear setting." Said Hoover, "If it had showed some promise, I would have stayed with it. And it might work out, but I can't deal with it the week before Gainesville." The Get Screened America Pro Mod Challenge Series will open at the upcoming Gatornationals.  
 
Hoover said he enjoys racing before a Southeast audience and wishes the NHRA-affiliated Pro Mod scheudle would include two trips to Charlotte's zMAx Dagway instead of just the fall appearance. Hoover said Pro Mods have been a racing staple in that region and the people are asking at the first Full Throttle Series visit to zMAx in the spring, "Where are the Pro Mods?" Besides, Hoover said running in the 4-Wide Nationals, alongside three three other competitors, "would be pretty cool. It wouldn't bother me. As a racer I don't tune for who I'm driving against."  

RELATIONSHIP TROUBLE? - Vinny Budano likened his Tim McAmis-built car with its 836-cubic-inch Shafiroff engine to "a new girlfriend." And, he was quick to add, "This one doesn't like me very much." They did have a bit of a quarrel this week, as a carbon-fiber driveshaft broke during a late-Wednesday test session and the Long Island native and his crew stayed up till 3 a.m. Thursday fixing the damage and spent much of Thursday "throwing the kitchen sink at it. We're going from left field to right field. We're trying to figure out what this car wants." No relationship thrives on neglect, yet Budano said he has ignored this car since last October's Shakedown at E-Town in New Jersey. "I was busy. The weather was lousy," Budano said. "So we're trying to do three months of testing in two days." After this Shakedown at Palm Beach, their next date is the March 18-21 NMCA season-opener, the Ross Racing Pistons Muscle Car Nationals, at Bradenton, Fla.

MASSEL MUSCLE - Bruno Massel happened to be in the Sunshine State, up in Tampa, filming an episode of "TruckU," the half-hour weekly SPEED TV program he co-hosts with Matt Steele. The 2009 NHRA Comp Eliminator national champion learned about The Shakedown at Palm Beach and decided to debut his AutoGeek.net sponsorship and crazy paint scheme on his turbocharged Chevy Cobalt this weekend. This is the same modified Jerry Bickel chassis with the Chevy ECOtec engine in which he won his previous four races, at Dallas; Noble, Okla.; Belle Rose, La.; and Brainerd, Minn. The Chicago-area native and one-time University of Iowa football player, DePaul University law-school student, and Ralph Lauren underwear model has another intriguing gig here in South Florida in two weeks. In two weeks, he'll be participating in a three-day photo shoot in Miami's South Beach, modeling swimwear by a Brazilian manufacturer. His images will appear in the company's catalog.
 
 NOT MR. CHRISTIAN, I PRESUME - The last time Tony Christian was in a race car was here in Florida, at Carl Weisinger's World Street Nationals at Orlando Speed World Dragway -- more specifically, up against the wall at the famous outlaw doorslammer race. He said that Halloween weekend last year that he was retiring and putting Jimmy Keen in the seat of his Braille Batteries-funded '63 Pro Nitrous Corvette. Christian was a bit banged up Thursday, his bloody left forearm sporting a slapped-on bandage as he prepped Keen for a test pass. The car made two or three runs Thursday, none at full power. His last attempt Thursday ended up with the car being pushed from the starting line after Keen experienced staging problems.

READY TO ROLL - Brad Personett will be appearing in his first race for Roger Burgess' Duluth, Ga.-based
R2B2 Racing after joining the team in December and moving his family south from Elkhart, Ind. He'll drive the twin-turbocharged '68 Camaro in which he won the prestigious U.S. Nationals in record-setting style last September. Like many others, Personett is preparing for next week's start to the NHRA-affiliated Get Screened America Pro Mod Drag Racing Series, at Gainesville Raceway. He won twice last year and finished third in the standings.
 
More importantly, Personett wants to get it right this time. Remembering his rude awakening in his first Shakedown at E-Town last October, he said, "I hurt stuff on race day. It was just carnage. I hurt everything I had. I don't want to go through that again. I didn’t crash. I ran into some engine failure. Some parts and pieces broke. It was just one of those weekend where nothing was going right."
 
He's definitely more optimistic this week, knowing The Shakedown at Palm Beach will "put you in race mode so you're not [relying on] all these laps from last Halloween.
 
"We'll kind of see what the weather brings us. We want to get a game plan together and get it tuned up right there the week before Gainesville. That's our main concern," Personett said. "we're making some changes, and we want to hit the ground running come Gainesville."
 

ICEMAN COMETH - Shannon Jenkins, king of the nitrous-powered Pro Modified drag racers, has a gleaming-new Al-Anabi-branded, Rick Jones-built '69 Camaro. And he said he hopes The Shakedown at Palm Beach will show him the consistency in this new Camaro that will propel him to the American Drag Racing League's Battle of the Belts title that has eluded him. So for Jenkins, much is riding on this tune-up for the March 25-26 start of the ADRL season at Baytown, Texas. This Pro Nitrous icon, long called "The Iceman," just returned from Doha, Qatar and another ADRL -- the Arabian Drag Racing League -- where last month he won Round 6 of that series and a shootout on team sponsor and series owner Sheik Khalid Al Thani's home track. Jenkins was Pro Nitrous class runner-up, as well. His familiar Camaro is en route home to his shop at Tuscaloosa, Ala., but he said, "This car's going to be good. But it's all about the team, whoever has the best prepared car."

 
   


 
 ON THE SIDELINES - Dave Hance said he has wised up. The New York Motorsports owner, the architect and promoter of The Shakedown at E-Town and now this ninth spinoff race at PBIR, said he won’t be competing in this event. In the past, Hance, of Lawrence, N.Y., has taken on the role of race organizer and participant, lately with his own unpleasant on-track results. He has crashed a couple of times in his own Shakedowns. And on the eve of this first venture outside New Jersey, Hance said, "I'm happy I was smart enough not to do that this time. I'm just doing the cheerleading, promotions, and problem-solving. Once the cars are teched and parked, then the starting-line people and the racers take over." However, Hance had to find ways to keep himself in the performance loop, and at least three Outlaw 10.5 class drivers are turning to Hance for consulting about their tune-ups and tapping into his boost-control expertise.

NEW EXPERIENCE - Veteran crew chief Lance Larsen, whose new duties at R2B2 Racing include working in the dyno room and on research-and-development projects at the Duluth, Ga., shop, is here at Palm Beach International Raceway at the invitation of R2B2 tuner Bob Newberry. But, Larsen said about boss Roger Burgess' Pro Mod fleet with a chuckle, "I have no idea what makes these things fast." Larsen's experience is steeped in Top Fuel and Funny Car operations.

FAMILIAR FACE ON STARTING LINE - Stoffer's Pro Stock Motorcycle colleague Eddie Krawiec is among the contingent from Old Bridge Township Raceway Park (including track co-owner David Napp) on hand for support this weekend. Krawiec, who used to manage the Raceway Park dragstrip before landing a primo job with Vance & Hines Motorsports and earning the 2008 Pro Stock Motorcycle championship, heads the starting-line prep team this weekend.

PETTY IN DEMAND - Maybe the Outlaw 10.5 and Drag Radial drivers should sweat the Petty stuff. In outlaw drag racing circles, just as in NASCAR, the name Petty, is significant. Steve Petty is best known for helping shape Tim Lynch's reputation as the Superman of the Outlaw 10.5 class as together the Georgia tuning and driving tandem have set records and won races up and down the East Coast. But Petty is no one-trick pony. This weekend no fewer than nine teams, including some in Roger Burgess' R2B2 arsenal, are relying on his mechanical magic.

 

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