Oh, what a difference a year can make at Bristol Dragway.
One season after teams wrestled with an unforgiving racing surface, the newly improved track proved more than capable of handling the heat and horsepower Friday as Marcus Butner, Ty Tutterow and Andy Mac led qualifying for the PDRA Thunder Valley Throwdown presented by Larry Jeffers Race Cars.
Nobody in the pits was talking much about the racing surface by the end of qualifying, and that may have been the biggest victory of the day. After dominating conversations a year ago, Bristol’s concrete finally let the cars become the story again.
The biggest story of the day centered around Butner who saved the best for last, driving his Musi-powered Pro Nitrous entry to a 3.659-second pass at 206.51 mph in the final qualifying session to claim the No. 1 qualifier at the fifth of seven races on the 2026 Red Line Oil PDRA Drag Racing Series schedule. The run came just before lightning flashed in the distance and approaching storms brought qualifying to a close.
The first four races left Butner searching for the consistency that carried him to last year’s Pro Nitrous championship. He found plenty of it Friday, leading every qualifying session and putting himself in position to make up valuable ground after entering the weekend fifth in points.
“It’s on rails right now, there’s no doubt,” Butner said. “We got a hell of a team here, and we’ve worked hard to get this car back in this shape. We really struggled earlier in the year. We had one No. 1 qualifier, but we couldn’t ever get it done. It’s like we was chasing little gremlins. So we tested a good bit, worked on fine tuning everything, trying to get it back in championship form. It’s really shown up this weekend, thank the Lord.
“I think it’d go down a dirt road right now and go pretty fast,” Butner added. “All this takes a lot of luck. Maybe we’ll get a little lucky, maybe we won’t. We’re gonna do our best either way.”
Three-time Pro Nitrous world champion Tommy Franklin, who arrived at Bristol leading the standings, qualified second with a 3.665 at 206.20 mph in his Musi-powered “Jungle Rat 3.0” Camaro. Veteran Rickie Smith completed the top three with a 3.711 at 204.26 mph in his J&A Service/Parkway Ford Mustang.
Defending Pro Boost world champion Ty Tutterow continued his strong relationship with Bristol by securing the No. 1 qualifier with a 3.613-second blast at 207.08 mph. The Tennessee racer rebounded after aborting what appeared to be a strong opening pass when his car drifted left shortly after launch.
“We were chasing it all day today,” Tutterow said. “We were running really good off the trailer on the first run, the car was kind of driving to the left, and had to abort that run. That was probably going to be a good .62 or .63 run.”
“Finally chased it down there in Q3 and it was good,” he continued. “I always love running for it in the middle of a race because that gives you a chance to hold your own destiny. This is probably one of my favorite facilities. This is one of our hometown tracks; we’re only two hours from here. I’d love to be able to get our picture taken here in the winner’s circle.”
Former NFL standout Fletcher Cox continued his impressive rookie Pro Boost season by qualifying second with a 3.616 at 207.02 mph in the KTR Racing “Fixed Income” Camaro. Another first-year Pro Modified driver, Paul Gargus, qualified third at 3.622 and 207.91 mph while continuing his breakout campaign with Scott Tidwell Racing.
Andy Mac added another chapter to one of the season’s best stories in Pro Street. After taking over driving duties in Fletcher Cox’s former nitrous-powered Camaro earlier this year, Mac earned his second No. 1 qualifier of the season with a 3.951-second run at 189.55 mph.
“I’m pretty comfortable,” Mac said. “We had some mishaps in Maryland, had some suspension issues. We went and tested, got that straightened out, and I think we got our hot rod back.”
“I don’t know what we was planning on running,” he added. “All Phil told me is he had a bomb in it, and to hold on, and I trusted him. He did his job, and I did mine.”
Richard Reagan jumped to second in the final qualifying session with a 3.973 at 193.71 mph, while Mikey Sasina settled into the third position with a 3.986 at 195.99 mph after holding the provisional top spot earlier in the day.
Elsewhere in professional qualifying, J.C. Beattie Jr. secured the No. 1 qualifier in Pro 632, while Austin Vincent led Super Street heading into eliminations.
Sportsman low qualifiers included Bruce Thrift in Top Sportsman, Tony Careccia in Top Dragster, Randy Perkinson in Top Sportsman 32 and Chaz Silance in Top Dragster 32.
The PDRA Jr. Dragster competitors completed two qualifying sessions with Pheyton Rawlins leading Pro Jr. Dragster after posting a perfect 7.900-second pass on the class index. Mason Dudley carried the provisional No. 1 spot in Classic Graphix Top Jr. Dragster with a near-perfect .006 reaction time.
