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. 

When the National Hot Rod Association makes it's next stop on the 2007

POWERade tour, the event at Heartland Park Topeka will be contested without
one of
the seasons early shining stars.  Pro Stock campaigner and Rookie of
the Year
candidate Rodger Brogdon has elected to forgo the rest of the
season to pursue
a major marketing partner for the teams continued racing
endeavors for 2008
and beyond.

"It's certainly not the direction that
we want to take," said Brogdon, "the
success we've had, has shown me that we
have what it takes to be a competitive
player. But we didn't win races and
championships in Comp eliminator by just
being competitive, and to achieve
the results in Pro Stock that this team is
used to seeing takes a commitment
that requires the backing of a major sponsor.
My financial investment in
this team has been substantial, yet it is less than
half of what the top
teams are spending to achieve their results."

JEGS.com will assume primary sponsorship of the Cagnazzi Racing Chevrolet Cobalt
entry driven by three-time NHRA champion Jeg Coughlin Jr. The internet home of
mail-order parts giant JEGS High Performance Parts, JEGS.com has been a major
associate on the 47-time national event winner's car since he joined Cagnazzi
Racing last September. It now takes over the top position on the racecar and all
related team components.

Coughlin, one of four Coughlin brothers who took
over the Delaware, Ohio-based company in 1988 from family patriarch Jeg Coughlin
Sr., won POWERade Pro Stock championships in 2000 and 2002. He also won the
Super Gas world title in 1992. This season, Coughlin and his JEGS.com teammates
are third in the points, just 13 points out of the second place spot held by
Connolly.

Mike
Edwards and his Young Life team for nearly six years have opened their pits to
many kids through the Young Life program with disabilities and this was no
different in the recent NHRA stop in Atlanta
for the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals, where Edwards welcomed
some special individuals on Sunday to give them a taste of racing. 

In
Atlanta, the
Young Life Capernaum Ministries, which is a program of Young Life especially
for kids and young adults with disabilities, paid the Mike Edwards Motorsports
team a visit. It marks the fifth time the group has joined Edwards in Atlanta, but the first time
to catch the sights and sounds of NHRA racing on a Sunday. "In the past
we've gone on Thursday, it is still loud and everything, but Sunday, was a
whole different experience for these kids," said Robert "Skeeter"
Powell, who heads the Capernaum group for the Atlanta area.