Marcus Butner arrived at Virginia Motorsports Park with a points cushion, a race car his team believed was as prepared as it had been all season and a chance to make some PDRA history. Then the race car started trying to give the championship away.
What followed at the Pro Line Racing Brian Olson Memorial World Finals was hardly the clean championship-clinching weekend Butner and tuner Jay Cox envisioned. Parts broke, problems piled up and Butner eventually lost in the second round, yet none of it prevented him from leaving Virginia with his second consecutive PDRA Pro Nitrous world championship.
Butner held off three-time champion Tommy Franklin to become only the third driver in PDRA history to win consecutive Pro Nitrous titles, joining Franklin and Jim Halsey. More importantly, the second championship backed up the first and rewarded a late-season charge that changed the complexion of the title fight.
“We thought we were the most prepared for a race we’ve ever been to,” Butner said. “My guys were so excited to come to [the World Finals] being a couple of rounds up. They checked things that I didn’t even know we had to check.”
Then came the reality check. Butner broke a four-link bar on his first test pass, and what was supposed to be a carefully prepared championship weekend became a thrash.
“We literally had problems from the back end to the front end all at the same time, and if I didn’t have such good guys, there’s no way we could have fixed it,” Butner said. “No way.”
Competitors Franklin and Dane Wood supplied parts, and Butner’s crew supplied the labor. Somehow, they kept the Musi-powered “Heartbreaker” ’69 Camaro alive long enough to give Butner a chance to finish what he had started.
The championship had been built before Virginia. After a semifinal at the season opener and a No. 1 qualifying effort at the East Coast Nationals, consecutive second-round losses left the defending champion with work to do.
Butner started doing it at Bristol. He qualified No. 1 and won the Thunder Valley Throwdown by beating Franklin in the final, then followed with another victory at DragWars in Benson, North Carolina, where he defeated Franklin’s daughter, Amber Denton.
Two races, two victories and a championship chase that had flipped completely. Instead of chasing Franklin into the finale, Butner carried a lead of just more than two rounds into Virginia.
A year earlier, Butner had been the hunter. This time Franklin had to come get him, and despite all the mechanical headaches, Butner gave himself a little more breathing room in qualifying.
He was No. 2 after the opening session before settling into the sixth qualifying position and drawing veteran Chris Rini in the opening round. That was when the Heartbreaker finally looked like the car Butner expected to bring to Virginia.
Butner ripped off a 3.655-second pass at 205.32 mph, his best run of the weekend, to beat Rini’s 3.681. One round later, everything changed again.
Billy Albert left first and stayed ahead, winning with a 3.702 as Butner slowed to a 3.714. Butner was finished, and Franklin suddenly had an opportunity to keep the championship alive.
All Butner could do was watch.
In the final pair of the round, Dale Brinsfield left first against Franklin and never surrendered the advantage, winning on a holeshot. Franklin was out, and Butner was champion again.
“It was a roller coaster,” Butner said. “I was mad at myself for being a little late on the tree. The car didn’t run near what we thought it’d run, and that’s from problems and problems. I just beat myself up. I felt bad for my crew. They’ve worked so hard to get us to this point.”
There was another emotion mixed into the moment. Butner respects Franklin enough that celebrating another man’s loss didn’t come naturally, even when that loss delivered him a championship.
“Tommy’s a great competitor, a great man, a great family man, and I’m not saying I don’t pull for him, but this weekend, it was hard to do,” Butner said. “He lost and I didn’t know how to feel. It was up and down all at the same time.”
Franklin finished second in the championship, while 2024 champion Fredy Scriba finished third. Butner joined Franklin and Halsey among the drivers who have successfully defended a PDRA Pro Nitrous championship.
Butner believes winning it a second time changes the conversation. One championship can be a magical season; backing it up requires surviving everything a full season can throw at a team, including a finale where the car seemed determined to fight them every step of the way.
He puts much of that success on Cox, the former Pro Nitrous driver who has become the backbone of Butner’s program from the tuning side. Cox’s job description, however, apparently doesn’t stop at the laptop.
“Jay Cox is my program. I would not do it without him,” Butner said. “There’s not a harder working tuner out there, period. If we work until 5 o’clock, Jay’s here working until 5 o’clock. He will help weld. He’ll help build motors. He’ll do anything that has to be done.”
For Butner, though, the second championship provided the answer he wanted when the season began. Winning one put his name on the list; winning another put him in considerably rarer company.
“Somebody said that you can luck up and win a championship, but the second one really solidifies it,” Butner said. “That was what we were trying to do this year. There’s only been a handful of people that’s won back-to-back. Tommy’s done it. Jim Halsey’s done it three times. Jason Harris has done it. Now we’ve done it.”
REYES ON TOUR: INVASION OF THE CHEVROLET VEGA — PART 1