Marcus Butner’s early-season problems are getting harder to remember.
The defending Pro Nitrous world champion won for the second race in a row Saturday at Darana Motorsports Park, beating Amber Denton in the Drag Wars final and keeping the pressure on Tommy Franklin with only the PDRA World Finals remaining.
Butner drove his “Heartbreaker” ’69 Camaro to a 3.628-second pass at 209.20 mph in the Pro Nitrous final, defeating Amber Denton’s 3.643 at 207.46 mph. Denton was appearing in her first final round of the season.
It wasn’t going this way for Butner a couple of races ago. The car was fast, but the results weren’t there.
Bristol changed that. Dunn-Benson made it two straight.
“We’ve had a pretty fast car, it just didn’t really show up (at the beginning of the year),” Butner said. “It’s like we were fighting something, didn’t really know what was going on. We found it, finally – I think I paid for most of the improvements at Rockingham testing to get to where we are today. We wore that place out for a good month. Jay’s got a handle on it, and when everything works, we’re hauling butt.”
Butner qualified No. 2 with a 3.631 and worked his way through Brian Teachman, Tim Paap and Brian Shrader before meeting Denton in the final.
More important to Butner, he leaves Benson still breathing down Franklin’s neck. There’s one race left, and neither has much room for a mistake at Virginia.
Pro Boost’s Camp had an entirely different hole to dig out of.
Camp voluntarily gave up a race earlier this season to attend his daughter’s graduation. Against Jason Harris, giving away an entire weekend is about as expensive as it gets, and Camp knew it.
Camp defeated Harris during eliminations and went on to win the event, recording a 3.594 at 210.44 mph in the final against Randy Weatherford. Weatherford left the starting line .004-second too soon, wasting a quicker 3.578 at 210.11.
“This track’s been good to us over the years,” Camp said. “We’ve won the fall race and the spring race back-to-back here, so it’s been good to us. I missed a race (earlier this season) because of my daughter’s graduation. It was a tough decision, but I felt it was the right one. I knew it was going to be tough to battle back. It’s hard to gain rounds on Jason Harris. He had me down three rounds, so I’m just happy to do it.”
Camp qualified No. 2 at 3.576, 210.80 and defeated Joel Wensley Sr. before getting the matchup he needed against Harris. He then beat Carson Perry in the semifinals to advance to the championship round.
Green came to Benson sixth in Pro Street points. Nobody needed to save him a seat at the championship table. They might now.
Green entered Drag Wars sixth in Pro Street points and largely outside the championship discussion. Four rounds later, he owned his first career PDRA 660 Man and suddenly had reason to pay close attention to the standings.
The Pro Street field was the largest of the season with 18 entries, and Green survived it with victories over Graham Hayes, Jerry Morgano and Mikey Sasina after qualifying No. 2 at 3.914, 198.00.
Waiting in the final was No. 1 qualifier Tim Essick.
Green delivered a 3.907 at 197.48 mph in his screw-blown silver ’00 Firebird to edge Essick and become the fifth different Pro Street winner through five races. Combined with early exits by several championship contenders, the victory put Green into the conversation with one race remaining.
“This is huge. It’s like winning the lottery for me,” Green said. “We’ve been trying for this guy for a long time; we just always fell short. My son’s put in a lot of hard work and a lot of guys have helped along the way. I didn’t even think we’d have a chance at a championship, but now that we do, it’s definitely gonna get us thinking and try our hardest to do it. This is big.”
J.C. Beattie Jr., who entered the weekend as the Pro 632 points leader and qualified No. 1 for the second consecutive race, completed the weekend with the event victory. Austin Vincent earned the Super Street title.
The sportsman portion of the Drag Wars produced victories by Bryan LaFlam in Elite Top Sportsman and Brian Anderson in Top Dragster. Mike Alexander Jr. won Top Sportsman 48, while Taylor Holland claimed Top Dragster 48.
Charlee O’Meara earned the Pro Jr. Dragster victory, and Mason Dudley won Classic Graphix Top Jr. Dragster.
The Edelbrock Bracket Bash presented by Philadelphia Racing Products came down to a pair of Carolina racers, with North Carolina’s Donald Webb defeating South Carolina’s Mike Buie.
The next race on the Red Line Oil PDRA Drag Racing Series tour will be the season finale ProLine Racing Brian Olson Memorial World Finals presented by ProCharger on September 17-20 at Virginia Motorsports Park in Dinwiddie, Virginia.
