Only in America can a drag racer who raced his first national event wearing a pirate eye patch and won one day lead Mountain Motor Pro Stock qualifying at an NHRA national event.

Elijah Morton drove his 800-plus cubic inch Mustang to a 6.249  elapsed time at 226.39 miles per hour to set the pace for first-day qualifying at the NHRA Carolina Nationals, the fourth outing for the large displacement factory hot rods. 

Though these cars have been in the six-teens, a 6.2-second run is no joke. 
 
“Yeah, that’s strolling,” Morton agreed. 

Morton, who leads Tommy Lee (6.252), Indy winner Johnny Pluchino (6.271), and John DeFlorian Jr (6.357), admits he wasn’t surprised by what his Jacksonville, NC-based Mustang yielded on its one and only Friday run. 

“We know we got a good piece under the hood, and we knew we had good air here. Charlotte’s a great race track,” Morton explained. “AED and Allen’s Competition has been working hard on getting me a good tune-up, and my crew just put me a good package together. The driver got lucky and drove pretty good.”

Morton has developed a knack for driving well at the right time. Now, back to the pirate thing. In 1999, Morton and his brother Glenn planned to go race their first national event, the IHRA Amalie Oil Nationals in Bradenton, Fla. 

Morton had aced driving their Top Sportsman Corvette to the point they felt the driver was ready to step on the big stage of fast bracket racing. 

The problem began when Morton thought he had aced snow skiing equally. The week before the event, Morton decided he was going to try the more advanced course and while his accident didn’t kill him, it didn’t do him any good either. 

“I thought I got pretty good at skiing, so I thought I would try the Diamond,” Morton admitted. “I come to find out I wasn’t quite as good as I thought I was. I busted my noggin pretty good in my head and I was seeing double the week before the race. So we come up with a plan. The plan was to wear a pirate’s patch so I wouldn’t see but one bulb instead of two bulbs, and I wore a pirate’s patch at Bradenton.”

Morton stopped three world champions en route to winning the national event in his first outing. 

Morton doesn’t have his patch at zMax Dragway, but what he does have are a lot of local fans cheering him on and a good chance the time will hold for Sunday’s eliminations.

“A lot of people pulling for us here, and our fans are close by. It’s just special,” Morton said. “A special time to be sitting on the pole and be good to leave on the pole. So we’ll see how the next day goes in qualifying, but right now, we need to enjoy the next 24 hours at least.”