If the NHRA POWERade Pro
Stock Motorcycle community experienced enough headaches with Matt Smith in St. Louis, they’d better
get some more aspirin. The points leading Pro Stock Motorcycle rider from King,
NC, will have a teammate courtesy of Evan Knoll starting at the Torco Race
Fuels NHRA Route 66 Nationals in Joliet,
Ill.

Chris Rivas, formerly of the
Brian Bozsum and Jessey Fenton’s Mohegan Sun team, left that team earlier in
the week. He is aligned with the first-year Smith team seeking one of the best
chances he’s ever had of pursuing a world championship.

Rivas is currently ranked
sixth in the championship point standings.

“I am excited to be given
the opportunity to be included in Evan Knoll’s growing family of race teams,”
Rivas, of Fresno, CA, said. “To me this is an incredible
opportunity. I am a very competitive person by nature. I am very driven and I
have very large goals for my Pro Stock Motorcycle career.

Ralph Andreacchi may not be driving his Skull Motorsports 1953
Studebaker Pro Modified at all upcoming Pro Modified Racing Association
events this year, but the team owner will certainly have his car at the
races.
 
Andreacchi plans to compete in the PMRA tour, but is also planning on having Toronto's Raymond Commisso drive the car.
 
Commisso has been pursing the NHRA Pro Modified series, but with a
large gap in events during the summer, he will be driving the Skull
Motorsports car.

It’s Alive!  Fans and followers of Troy Critchley and the entire AMS/Rage team
have a new portal to the latest happenings about the world’s fastest Pro Mod and
crew.

Read features about the tuner who has eclipsed the competition,
Howard Moon, and learn about Chad Wilson behind the wheel of the 10.5 ‘57 Chevy.
And, gear up with all the coolest fashions from your favorite team in the
all-new online store. Watch videos, see photos, videos, and behind-the-scenes
shots of the Jack Hammer and more!

There are still a handful of spots available in the Ultimate 64 Footbrake
Shootout, to be contested June 9, 2007 at Mountain Park Dragway in Clay City,
KY.  The Footbrake shootout, a small portion of the 2nd annual Ultimate 64
Shootout that will take place all weekend, features a 64-car single elimination
field (no buybacks) for $12,000-to-win ($500 entry fee).  The runner-up will
earn $4,000, with each semi-finalist taking home $2,000.  Quarterfinalists will
earn $1,000, with 3rd round losers taking $500.

Justin Grant’s gorgeous “Stardust” ’70 ‘Cuda (far lane) and Troy Martin’s “Chi Town Hustler” will lead the Eastern Nostalgia Funny Car contingent into battle at the Goodguys 19th Hot Rod Nationals, June 8-10 at O’Reilly Raceway Park.

After a six month hiatus, the Goodguys Vintage Drag Racing Association is back
in action June 8-10 at O’Reilly Raceway Park for the 19th running of
the prestigious Hot Rod Nationals. The event brings over 5,000 rods, customs as
well as 300 vintage drag racing machines to the historic facility just outside
Indianapolis.

Headlining the racing portion of the event
will be a booked in show of nitro burning Nostalgia Funny Cars pitting two West
Coast hitters (Jim Broome’s Speed Sport Cuda and the Godfrey & Gaynor ’69
Camaro) against seven Midwest floppers led by
Justin Grant’s “Stardust” 1970
Plymouth Barracuda. Nostalgia Top Fuel is also in the playbill as well as seven
classes from Troy Coker’s Nostalgia Pro Comp Association
(www.nostalgiaprocomp.com). The popular Geezer Gassers will make their annual
appearance as will the Midwest based Nostalgia
Super Stock Association. Rounding out the racing classes will be a special
exhibition of H.A.M.B dragsters – homebuilt gasoline burning “old fashioned”
bare-bones dragsters.

Nitro Funny Car racer Bob Gilbertson has elected to skip the next race on the
NHRA schedule, the O'Reilly Auto Parts Summer Nationals in Topeka,
Kan.  

With the postponement of the O’Reilly Thunder Valley NHRA Nationals,
the inaugural Countdown regular season just got that much more
intense.There will literally be no rest for the weary and, perhaps more
critical, no chance to regroup if a “gremlin” finds its way into a
team’s car.

With the Bristol race rescheduled for July 6-8, the grueling Western
Swing has become the U.S. Swing, a six-races-in-six-weeks stretch that
begins in New York on June 21 and ends in Sonoma on July 29.

Racers will then have one week off before returning to the track for
the first of back-to-back races at Brainerd and Reading that will
conclude the 17-race regular season.

When rumors began to
surface that Awesome Motorsports was in the process of changing engine builders
- leaving Fulton Competition to join forces with Reher-Morrison - it sent
shockwaves through the Pro Modified community. It was a move labeled by many as
pure sacrilege.

The fact that
Reher-Morrison planned to undertake a high-profile nitrous Pro Mod program sent
similar ripples of disbelief through the Pro Stock ranks, with many at first
surprised to learn that the popular Texas-based company was going to build
anything other than traditional 500-inch Pro Stock motors and fast sportsman
bracket engines.

The chatter was quickly
silenced when Shannon Jenkins, driving Awesome Motorsports team owner Mike
Castellana’s 2007 Mustang, reeled off a an elapsed time of 6.080 seconds at 231
miles per hour during testing at South Carolina’s Darlington International
Dragway.

The move from Fulton to
Reher-Morrison was nothing personal; it was just something Castellana says they
needed to try before making crucial decisions regarding the team.

“Making the move is
something we had talked about,” Castellana said. “We wanted to see if we could
pick up a bit of horsepower by going in that direction. It wasn’t a matter of
being unhappy; it was just that we wanted to go a different direction to
continue our progression.”

When the O'Reilly Thunder Valley Nationals, in Bristol, were
unexpectedly postponed due to track issues, two things were quickly
apparent to every member of Team CSK.  1) The team would now have three
straight off-weekends, during a part of the year when the racing
schedule normally begins to take on a very hectic look, and  2) The
"payback" part of the equation was going to be a tough one, as the NHRA
schedule would combine with a booked match race to create 12 racing
events in the next 14 weeks.