Veteran radial-tire star Manny Buginga doubled up Oct. 30, winning both the Pro 275 and Extreme 275 titles for No Mercy 13 at South Georgia Motorsports Park (SGMP). With different cars, Buginga beat Eddie Harrison in a traction-challenged P275 final and new world-record setter Rob Goss for the Extreme 275 event win.  

Also making history on the all-concrete SGMP eighth mile was Houston Dial as the first African American to win a Radials vs. the World race, and Haley James as the first woman to win in any class at a Duck X Productions event.

Official NM13 accolades also went to Paul Gargus, who set a new class elapsed-time record on his way to the Outlaw Drag Radial win, and Jason Riley as the Limited 235 event winner. 

Ballground, GA's Eric Dillard, driving for team owner Scott Tidwell, qualified his Proline-powered '69 Camaro on top of the 32-car Pro 275 field with a 3.70 pass at 200.08 mph. Dillard was followed on the list by Tim Dutton, Brylon Holder, Marcus Birt and Mo Hall in the top five, with eventual finalists Eddie Harrison and Buginga 7th and 9th, respectively.

Racing out of Acworth, GA, Harrison and his Procharger-boosted '03 Mustang made it past David Pearson, Steve Wooley, Heath Littrell and Adam Preston before reaching Buginga. Meanwhile, the West Bridgewater, MA-based Buginga had a first-round bye after the '57 Chevy of Otto Schulz broke, then beat Gary Anderson, Brad Edwards and Birt. 

For the P275 final, Harrison lined up in the left lane against Buginga's '03 Mustang Cobra. When the tree came down, Buginga left with a sizable .041 holeshot, but by the time they reached 60 feet out, both cars had lost traction and nosed over. 

Buginga recovered first, though, and steered to a 4.70 pass at 165.62, while Harrison continued to struggle and finished in 6.39 seconds at just 125.34 mph.

"I learned a long time ago from racing, you never give up until the win light comes on--or it doesn't come on in the other lane," Buginga said. "So you just keep trying and we did and we pedaled and just kept pedaling and pedaling until it hooked up again and we went."

Buginga had no time at the top end to savor the win, however, as he still had the Extreme 275 final to look forward to. He said a crewmember was waiting with an extra golf cart to whisk him back to the starting line for his date with Rob Goss and his supercharged-hemi-powered '09 Challenger, fresh off a record-setting run in the semis.

Neither finalist had qualified very well for Extreme 275, with Goss 10th and Buginga two positions beyond that in the 28-strong field. Regardless, Goss steamrolled through Scott Carter, 5th-place starter Shane Heckel and John McDonough before dropping the hammer with a 4.108-seconds run at 174.96 mph over number-one qualifier Kenny Hubbard and his Procharger-equipped '74 Nova.

On the opposite side of the ladder Buginga initially ousted Canadian Jr. Lazic, won with a holeshot against Brad Medlock, easily handled a traction-challenged Eric Moore and avoided what would have been a very close battle with Earl Stanley after the Kentucky-based driver left way too soon in the semis.

All eyes at SGMP were on the starting line as the heaviest of X275 heavyweights opened with a little staging duel before Buginga finally bumped in on the left lane, followed quickly by Goss. The exercise paid off only for Buginga, though, as an .031 light provided him with a .049 advantage off the green. 

Again, however, both drivers lost traction early, but again Buginga recovered first to post a decidedly off-the-pace 5.74 at 158.74 that still was good enough to easily defeat an aborted 9.41 pass at not even 47 mph by Goss.

"Obviously the track had got a little bit worse and we didn't slow it down enough, but neither did Rob Goss," Buginga observed. "So we just kept pedaling and pedaling and pedaling, and the win light comes on. It was amazing."

Still, Buginga admitted he was feeling the pressure, especially going into the second race with championship-winning implications at hand, but also because he was racing in memory of Blake Copson, his teammate who passed away in an accident at home last March and with whom he'd enjoyed a similar double-up win.

Buginga said a lot of people can't comprehend the pressure involved in climbing into the car while running for a championship like the FuelTech Drag Radial Outlaws Series that included No Mercy 13 as a points-paying event.

"Right now we're only three rounds out of the lead in X275 and I think now we're five or six rounds out of Pro. So we have a chance now of getting these championships with double points coming up (at Orlando later this month). So that's good," Buginga said. 

"But the pressure that's on the starting line, nobody realizes how much pressure is on the driver, how much strain, like you know you've gotta' do your job because the crew did theirs. So now as you're going in there, you're just more tensed up and mistakes tend to happen. But it's your job to try to do the best you can and now that you won with one car, the pressure is still on you to not fail with the second car because you're halfway to your goal," he said. 

"So you shrink in the car by five inches. You're trying to just keep your breath, do your deal and don't change the thing. And people don't understand that driving one car is difficult, but coming back around and doing it all over again with another car in less than 10 minutes, it's a lot of pressure. I could definitely feel it," he added. "But it's super, super exciting. Because you're in control of your own destiny."

Upon successful completion of his mission at NM13, Buginga and his teammates went to great lengths to recreate victory lane photos taken with his and Copson's cars and their crew members at the team's last double-up victory.

Afterward, crew chief Jamie Miller, fresh off winning the 2022 FuelTech NHRA Pro Mod Drag Racing Series championship with driver Kris Thorne, said he marvels at Buginga's ability to comprehend and give accurate feedback about what a car is doing as it moves down track.

"He's like another data logger in the car," Miller declared. "He'll come back and tell me things that honestly I can't really see on the data. He'll tell me, 'You know, it goes through the one-two gear change great, but on the two-three, it feels like it's a little soft.' So I'll make changes even though I might not see it in the data and he'll tell me that it definitely picked it up or there's still something not quite right. 

"And then in a scenario like this, these radial cars are very, very difficult to pedal because the power comes on so fast. And it takes some finesse to catch them once they've spun, to kind of get 'em gathered up, and here Manny did a fantastic job in two different combinations this weekend. So he got this win for us," Miller said. "There's no doubt there."