EVENT RESULTS EVENT NOTEBOOK LIVE AUDIO			THURSDAY GALLERY FRIDAY GALLERY SATURDAY GALLERY

 

SATURDAY NOTEBOOK - WINNERS ARE CROWNED

SHEIKH SCORES MONUMENTAL FIRST U.S. VICTORY - Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani, the son of Qatar’s Emir, has many titles in his everyday life.

On Saturday in Richmond, Va., the member of Qatar’s royal family added another – the American Drag Racing League [ADRL] U.S. Drags III Pro Extreme champion.

Al Thani earned his first ADRL crown defeating a dominant Joshua Hernandez in the final round.

“It’s more than you can imagine,” said Al-Thani, who won the Arabian Drag Racing League’s Pro Extreme series championship. “It’s pretty overwhelming when you stage and race against those guys who you have followed all of those years.”

In two races on the ADRL series, Al-Thani hardly seems like a driver whose career began last fall with a pole position and now a national event victory in the United States. A normal rookie might have been rattled but not this driver. When you have a plethora of natural talent and a tuner of the caliber of a Frank Manzo leading your charge, you tend to not get rattled in the big races.

“Being on the starting line [for as long as I’ve raced], I’ve pretty much seen it all,” said Al-Thani. “When you have Frank Manzo it only helps.”

So what advice did Manzo give Al-Thani?

“He gave me the usual,” said Al-Thani, pointing out the advice was confidential. “We do have a secret code.”

Al-Thani’s humble nature shows through as he describes his early success as a “pleasant surprise.”

“I went from running an extra car last year and Frank took on the challenge of teaching me and the success made us want to come out here and race,” Al-Thani concluded.

JENKINS BEATS SMITH IN PRO NITROUS CLASH OF THE TITANS - Together they account for 11 world championships and over 75 national event victories. On Saturday evening during the ADRL U.S. Drags III in Richmond, Va., they met in the final round for what some could categorize as the ultimate doorslammer race.

Shannon Jenkins, the most successful nitrous doorslammer racer in drag racing history, lined up alongside of Rickie Smith, a doorslammer legend in both legal and outlaw drag racing.

Jenkins beat Smith in a clash of the titans.

“It was a good one,” Jenkins said with a smile, after increasing his ADRL Pro Nitrous win total to eight.

Jenkins established himself as the driver to beat on Friday by opening qualifications with a 3.903 elapsed time for his 56th birthday present. A few hours later he upped the ante with a 3.878.

For his effort, Smith valiantly tried to keep pace and entered eliminations as the No. 2 qualifier with a 3.893.

Clearly Jenkins was in a league of his own for the titanic final round and regardless of Smith’s tendency to be cagey in the final round – Jenkins, who earned his nickname of Iceman for his calm racing demeanor, refused to flinch.  

“We prepared for him just like we would anyone else,” Jenkins said. “He runs his program and we run ours. That’s why it went down to what the track was going to give us. We prepared for him by preparing for what the track gave us.”

Therefore Jenkins didn’t touch the car for the final round outside of the standard maintenance.

“We didn’t stray away from what we ran all day,” Jenkins said. “We were consistently quicker than him all weekend, so it was up to him to play the card.  We knew it was up to him to step it up because we were where we needed to be.”

The final didn’t disappoint as Smith tried his best to rattle Jenkins into an even playing field. The ploy didn’t work.

“I knew how he was going to be … get up there and screw around,” Jenkins said. “It didn’t bother me at all. You just have to know how to play the game.”

And, Smith certainly rolled to the line with his veteran gamesmanship.

“I thought I’d let him think about it as long as I could,” Smith admitted, on his casual staging.

Smith, who considers himself not only a hardcore racer but a fan of the sport, believes the fans at Virginia Motorsports Park saw a great race even though he came out on the losing end.

“I’m worn out this year,” admitted Smith. “In 36 years of racing, this year I’ve gotten some bad parts. I’ve been around racing for a long time and seen people get messed up and wonder how they could get that way. I can’t be disappointed too much, we did qualify No. 2 and finished second.”

REVENGE PADS WHITE’S XTF POINT LEAD - Gary White knows revenge can drive a man. On Saturday afternoon in Richmond, Va., revenge drove him to the Extreme Ten-Five winner’s circle at the ADRL U.S. Drags at Virginia Motorsports Park. The victory marked his second career ADRL national event championship.

White, who drives an inline-six powered Scion, avenged a final round loss to Todd Moyer at the last event in Valdosta, Ga., by winning the rematch.

“I went up there wanting Valdosta back,” said White, who has been in six XTF final rounds. “This race should have been two in a row. That was a case of driver malfunction. I have tried to block all of that out of mind. This time I just forgot Todd was over there and concentrated on what I needed to do.”

White’s success comes as a result of off-season preparation inspired by the reality he needed to make wholesale changes just to remain in  the  proximity of the XTF heavy-hitters.

“Last year we made a lot of changes to the car,” explained White, adding one of the changes was a larger turbocharger. “We knew what was in the future. We knew coming into the season we didn’t need just one tenth, we needed two, and about eight miles per hour. We are a team who shoots for the future, not the present. We are already looking ahead in the near future and you might see us struggle again.”

White knew he was an underdog in the VMP final round even though on paper he appeared totally capable of holding his own. He knew he needed to get out on Moyer early in the race to feel comfortable about his chances.

Filling the underdog role is a feeling White finds hard to shake, even when he’s clearly a big dog trapped in the shell of a little dog package.

“Last year we opened the season with growing pains,” White said. “We didn’t get stupid over the winter. We didn’t get stupid over the winter, I promise you that. It was just a matter of growing.”

The next phase of future preparation is coming, White points out. He’s currently the points leader during the first phase of the championship program. World champions in ADRL competition are determined by a special Battle for the Belts competition, a one race eight-car shootout with top point earners.

 “We’re not far from making another change,” White said. “We’re ready to step back a bit but we are going forward in the future. I’m just glad we were able to pad our lead with this win.”

 GAHM RISES TO THE XPS CHALLENGE AT VMP - If the ADRL U.S. Drags III event was staged in Las Vegas, Brian Gahm would have had long shot odds.

Gahm, the 2009 ADRL Extreme Pro Stock series runner-up, opened the first qualifying session with a tire-rattling aborted run which left him unqualified. The second session was no better. By the end of the day he was a paltry 14th, well below the past champion’s standards.

Gahm and crew chief Cliff Moore checked, double checked and triple checked every nook and cranny of the team’s Mustang. Obviously the car had an abundance of horsepower and the chassis combination appeared to be on the up and up.

If the issue had been a snake it would have bit them, at least that’s how Gahm saw it.

“We had a bad set of tires that we didn’t find out about until later,” Gahm, a 5-time Extreme Pro Stock winner explained. “We just kept getting behind and luckily we were able to get good enough weather which allowed us to get in all of our qualifying runs.”

Knowing how to win when the car wasn’t up to snuff came in handy for Gahm.

“It forces you to get up on your wheel a little more,” admitted Gahm. “When you have a bit of advantage, you tend to lay back and relax a bit. I like winning when you have to get after it.”

The weekend’s victory was refreshing for Gahm and his crew, but he understands if future victories are to come, he and the team had better put in some testing laps in the near future.

“I have to be at work tomorrow,” said Gahm, who planned to drive back to Lucasville, Ohio Saturday night. “We have some work to do.

“We’re not happy with where we are at,” he continued. “We have some things we need to work on but I can’t get away to test. If we can’t get the test time, we’ll have to do some during the events. We’re decent but we haven’t worked on our car since last year. I was angry at the car last year but she’s come around.”

Now Gahm says, they need to get on the same page just like old times.

IF THE NAME FITS - The nickname stuck so Frankie Taylor just went with it.

Taylor, an ADRL Pro Extreme racer from Dickinson, Tex., just smiled when the name Mad Man was bestowed upon him.

In fact, as Taylor surveyed his driving style, which is a combination of kamikaze and over the edge of the envelope, he wondered if the name might have accurately pegged him.

Taylor said the Mad Man moniker was born out of an appearance on the Super Chevy Nitro Coupe series.

“As best I can remember it all started back in a Super Chevy show,” said Taylor, who was racing in his first career Super Chevy event.  “I knocked a window out of the car and it busted. There wasn’t much time to fix it for the next run so I grabbed a piece of cardboard and made it into a window. I went out the next run and ran 199 miles per hour.”

Taylor never got to make a second run with the improvised “glass” replacement. Race officials said he couldn’t run with the cardboard window again.

“One of the vendors had an old piece of Lexan or Plexiglas or something, and it was all scratched up,” Taylor explained. “It was about the same quality as the piece of cardboard.”

A jokester scribbled the name Madman on the makeshift glass replacement. The nickname went on the new glass once it was installed at a later date and has appeared there ever since.

Taylor has raced this season as a mad man on a mission. In the last two races on the 2010 ADRL tour Taylor has established himself as a front-runner and in Richmond, snagged both ends of the world record.

Probably more impressive is the reality his accomplishments have come on a considerably smaller racing budget than most.

“I wouldn’t say I race on half of their budgets, maybe a third or a quarter might be closer,” Taylor said.

His success in the past season has opened the potential for a few more extra parts in the trailer, something he rarely had in the past few seasons.

“We’re not used to having a lot of the stuff we have now, now we’ve got pulleys. It used to be we had two sets of pulleys and that was it. Now different pulleys have been changed, now we can tighten our belts up. Sometimes it’s better not to have a bunch and just do with what you’ve got and you can fine tune it better. Sometimes having too much stuff you can get confused.”

The picture has never been clearer for Taylor.

THE ADRL’S SPEED MERCHANTS - Consider Paul Taylor and Billy Stocklin as the ADRL’s merchants of speed and performance, at least for this weekend at the ADRL U.S. Drags III in Richmond, Va.

“He provides the horsepower and I manage the horsepower,” Stocklin told ADRL.us.

The duo of crew chief and team manager, respectively, put both members of their two car team into the record books as the new Pro Extreme elapsed time and speed record holders.

Event No. 1 qualifier Frankie Taylor, Paul’s brother, ran a 3.607 during Friday’s evening session and covered the required one-percent back-up with a 3.63 Saturday.

Wes Johnson secured the speed mark with a 211.69-mph speed in last night’s third qualifying session. He backed up the mark on Saturday morning with a 211.03 mph trap speed.

RETURNING TO COMPETITION - Between last November and May of this year, ADRL Pro Nitrous racer John Bartunek admits he was as

indecisive as he’s ever been about drag racing. His uncertainty had nothing to do with the tune-up of his engine or which series he should race.

Instead, Bartunek was hesitant about whether he wanted to race at all following a 2009 crash where his car went airborne and flipped violently.

One look at the footage of the crash Bartunek experienced last November during the Shakedown at E’town event in Englishtown, NJ., would leave the most seasoned driver second-guessing whether they’d want to race, too.

For the record, Bartunek quit and decided to come back six times.

“Every week, you stop and wonder if it’s really worth it,” said Bartunek, who raced for the first time since the wreck at the ADRL U.S. Drags III in Richmond, Va. “You know putting all the time, the money, the traveling, it’s tough. With a family and stuff, but we love to do this stuff and I enjoy it, that’s the reason I’m about to do it again.”

Bartunek just missed the sixteen-car field with a 4.026 best run but making the field was secondary to just finding his spot in the game again. Friday’s first qualifying run was the first time for both he and his repaired car down the track since the accident.

Bartunek admits the crash was a combination of driver error [aggressive driving] and a parachute getting underneath the wheelie bars.

Jerry Haas, the car’s original chassis builder, was able to rebuild the car from the remnants of the crash.
“You can’t tell that it was ever touched,” Bartunek admits. “I mean Jerry did an absolute awesome job.”

The initial indecision for Bartunek, he admits, was the long time which lapsed between the accident and the time the race car was returned to the strip. There’s a common belief amongst those racers who have suffered a catastrophic crash which suggests the best way to eliminate the second-guessing is to get back on the track as soon as possible.

“That’s a fact,” Bartunek confirmed. “You start thinking if it’s time to call it quits. A lot of things run through your head. But you know, I like doing this stuff and that was unfortunately something that happened that we had no control over.”

Bartunek’s first run since the crash inspired a flurry of emotions.

“It’s interesting you know when you back away from the burn out and you’re looking down the track thinking about what happened last time,” Bartunek explained. “I’m pretty calm and confident.”

He did get out of the run early just to play on the conservative side. His first run was tuned aggressively, probably a bit too much for the first hit coming back.

“I started out at a 3.80 pace and ended up at 4.09,” Bartunek said. “The motor just wasn’t tuned up right so hopefully this run will be a little better. I felt real confident, the car’s perfectly straight, it’s doing everything it does. Just like [chassis builder] Jerry told me on the phone, don’t worry about it just let the clutch out.”

And with the advice, Bartunek shuffled the Englishtown memories to the back of his mind.

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FRIDAY NOTEBOOK - IT'S THE MAD MAN, ICEMAN SHOW IN VIRGINIA

FRIDAY'S RECAP - Chalk one up for the little guy. Or at least for the littler guy, as Frankie “Mad Man” Taylor made the quickest run in “doorslammer” history to lead Pro Extreme qualifying after the first day of the ADRL Speedtech U.S. Drags III at Virginia Motorsports Park (VMP).

Taylor, an automotive repair shop owner from Dickinson, Texas, covered the VMP eighth mile with his supercharged 2005 Corvette in 3.60 seconds at 208.71 mph to edge the 3.64 at 210.97 combination by His Highness Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar for the top spot. Also carrying number-one status into Saturday morning’s fourth and final qualifying session were Shannon Jenkins in Pro Nitrous, Gary White in Extreme 10.5, Pro Extreme Motorcycle’s Ashley Owens and Bob Bertsch in Extreme Pro Stock.

Taylor said he knew as soon as he left the starting line that he was on a good pass, but after drifting close to the right guardwall and actually shutting down a little early he was shocked to see 3.60 flash across his scoreboard.

“I actually thought it said 3.68, which was still pretty good because it would’ve backed up (within the required one percent) my earlier 3.65 for the record, but then my eyes focused a little better and I could see that zero on the end,” Taylor said. “That was sweet!”

Former two-time Pro Extreme champion Jason Scruggs placed third at 3.66 seconds, with Taylor’s teammate “Wild Wes” Johnston fourth after making a 3.67 pass at a potential record 211.69 mph (if he also can back it up with another run within one percent of that speed). Joshua Hernandez in the debut of a new Fight Me MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) sponsorship rounded out the top five with a 3.69-seconds effort.  

It was all Al-Anabi Racing at the head of the Pro Nitrous list, with teammates Jenkins, Burton Auxier and Mike Castellana earning the top three positions. Jenkins, who also was celebrating his 56th birthday at the track, said his ’68 Camaro’s 3.87-seconds pass at 193.79 mph was all the track would give him today as a present.

“It was a good day; any day you qualify number one is a good day,” the Tuscaloosa, Alabama-based veteran said. “We could’ve been better, but sometimes you’ve just got to be happy with what you’re given.”

New Market, Alabama’s White, who also led Extreme 10.5 qualifying at the ADRL’s previous race last Month in Georgia, made his 4.00 seconds at 186.23-mph run of record in the opening round of qualifying Friday morning with his turbocharged, inline-six-cylinder 2007 Scion. The nitrous oxide-boosted ’02 Grand Am of Houston, Texas racer Jeff Naiser was second at 4.07, with Florida’s Michael Neal third after three sessions at 4.13 seconds in his supercharged, Hemi-powered ‘67 Chevy II.

After opening with a class-leading 4.14-seconds blast, Owens sat out Friday’s second go round in the heat of the day, but returned with a 4.11 at 175.39 mph on his Fast by Gast Suzuki in the evening Pro Extreme Motorcycle show.

“Riding for Paul (Gast) makes everything easier on me,” said Owens, who won the Georgia event in May in record-setting fashion. “It’s a new bike making a lot of horsepower, so everything is just clicking for us right now.”

Canadian Terry Schweigert stepped up to place second with a 4.12 pass on his 2009 Suzuki, while Kim Morrell from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, became the ADRL’s quickest and fastest woman on two wheels with a 4.15-seconds run at 173.81 mph.

Bertsch proved the racing surface was in good shape from the start as he rolled out of the trailer for round one and qualified with an Extreme Pro Stock track record 4.06 at 177.53 mph that stood up throughout the day. Following the Willis, Michigan-based driver and his ’07 Mustang were Elijah Morton at 4.07 and 176.86 mph and fellow North Carolinian Jeff Dobbins with a 4.08 at 176.33-mph pass.

“We came out thinking we were conservative today,” Bertsch admitted later. “We just wanted to get a good run in and have something to work with and we hit it right on.”

In the Pro Jr. Dragster class for eight- to 17-year-old drivers, in which qualifying is determined by reaction times, Manchester Kentucky’s Tyler Allen was one-thousandth of a second away from perfect with a .001 light to earn the provisional pole.

The fourth and final qualifying session for all classes at the ADRL Speedtech U.S. Drags III is slated to begin at 9 a.m. Saturday (May 22), with eliminations to follow.            

STOTT AND D’APRILE HIT THE GROUND RUNNING - Quain Stott is teaching lessons to the Bush Motorsports team from top to bottom. From the driver down to the guy adjusting the valves on the engine.

“Everybody’s got their own way of doing it so I have a system to where you can’t forget,” said Stott, prior to Friday’s qualifying at the ADRL U.S. Drags in Richmond, Va., of his valve adjusting methods.

Stott, the new tuner for the Mel Bush-owned car driven by Tommy D’Aprile, is busy putting his stamp on the team.

“You know us old country boys are kind of dumb and didn’t learn much in school so our memories aren’t as good. So my way is about as foolproof as you can get, at least for me. Where a lot of people would put it on a mark and do this valve, this valve, this valve, this valve, and jump all over the place if I did that my memory isn’t good enough I would forget one of them. So I want my crew members to do it the same way so they can’t forget one of them.”

In addition, Stott is schooling D'Aprile on how he likes the car to be driven.

Stott and D’Aprile last raced together in 2006 as a two-car team with sponsorship for the latter’s car coming from Evan Knoll. When Knoll’s sponsorship money dried up in 2007 Stott was forced to park the second car denying him the opportunity to continue working with D'Aprile, a driver whom he categorizes as one of the best in the class.

The reunited tuner and driver combination put in a few test runs at Carolina Dragway in Jackson, SC., prior to this weekend’s Richmond event. An electrical issue impeded their efforts on the track but didn't slow Stott's mentoring of D'Aprile.

 The first lesson?

“Shut up and drive,” admitted D’Aprile, jokingly. “And if he does say anything, I just listen to what he says. It’s a really good relationship because there’s one boss here [Mel Bush] and everybody knows it and we just do our job. And I hope to do a good job inside of the cockpit because I know he’ll do a good job on the outside.”

There’s a good reason why Bush, D’Aprile and the team are high on enthusiasm for the potential Stott brings to the team. In simple terms, Stott makes stuff happen.

“I told Mel the other day you know we’ve done in two weeks what most people do during the winter,” said Stott. “We’re not expecting miracles or anything like that but we’re going to give it our best shot at this race, we’ve only made four passes on the car and three of those were without a computer.”

The quick results in such short order has Stott convinced the ADRL’s Pro Extreme division had better not take this team lightly.

“I’m not going to run this team any different than how I run mine. The big difference is this team has a bigger budget. I shouldn’t say big budget but Mel Bush will do whatever needs to be done to win. We don’t lean on the motor and I’m not going to tear Mel’s stuff up on purpose. This is a team you had better look out for later in the season.”

After the first two sessions, D’Aprile was the eighth quickest with a 3.961, 193.07.

SNYDER’S FIRST RUN BETTER THE SECOND TIME AROUND - Mick Snyder has grown up around drag racing and learned at an early age; do-overs in drag racing are a rarity. Friday, the former Top Alcohol Funny Car racer from Demotte, Ind., was granted a second chance.

During Friday’s Pro Extreme qualifying at the ADRL U.S. Drags III in Richmond, Va., Snyder was given a second chance to make a first impression.

Snyder has made the conversion from alcohol floppers to alcohol doorslammers and on his first pass in testing back in March crashed his 1963 Corvette.

This weekend will be on the job training for Snyder, who is a teammate to two-time champion Jason Scruggs in 2010.

“I guess you can call this my second, first pass,” said Snyder with a smile.

Friday’s first pass was kinda sorta his first run down the track in a Pro Extreme car. Snyder stopped by Gateway International Raceway outside of St. Louis for some testing. In seven runs, he made it only once to the finish line under full power.

“We were all a little nervous after that first pass and then we wouldn’t talk about it,” admitted Snyder. “In the end, it was not a real big deal.”

The crash and his subsequent test session, along with Friday’s qualifying taught Snyder a lesson of the differences between the two breeds of race cars.

“It’s night and day really; it’s like a cross between a Funny Car and a dragster,” Snyder explained. “It takes the finesse, it’s different that’s for sure. With all the suspension stuff if you lift on the car it only takes it a half-second to settle down.”

 Snyder was eighth in the final after two sessions.

NOSTALGIC BARN FIND MAKES ADRL APPEARANCE - Billy Glidden learned barn finds can be pretty cool.

Billy, while poking around the back of his Whiteland, Ind.-based race shop, found a pair of old valve covers his dad used to run back in the day. Back in the day, in this instance, was 1982 when his father, Bob Glidden, the 10-time Pro Stock champion, converted his small-block engine program over to 500-cubic inches.

The elder Glidden initially ran a Boss 429-inspired engine and the younger Glidden’s discovery, within a homemade kiln, was a pair of 28-year old valve covers. They were last used when his father raced the Ford EXP.

“This kiln … dad used back in the days when he would furnish brazed blocks and cast iron small block cylinder heads,” Billy said.

The valve covers were fabricated from magnesium.

“They are original, with the Ford Boss part number underneath,” said Billy, a beaming smile stretched across his face.

The valve covers were in anything but pristine condition. They were full of holes.

“I had never welded on magnesium before,” the younger Glidden admitted. “I taught myself how to do it and even had one on fire for a little bit. I got them all patched up to the point they’d hold vacuum. I made some one-off gaskets to work with them.”

Glidden is running the Hemi engine this weekend cloaked by the nostalgic valve covers and was 6th quickest within the Extreme 10.5 division after two qualifying sessions at the ADRL U.S. Drags III.

FOR LEGGETT, IT’S GOTTA BE A FORD - Terry Leggett figured if a Ford was good enough for his father, it was darn sure good enough for him.

The Pineville, NC.-based logger who races in the ADRL’s Pro Extreme believes family tradition is the reason he’s been a Ford driver since getting his driver’s license.

“I was born and raised around Fords; I guess I’ve got a bad habit of wanting to be a little different too,” said Leggett, who debuted his newest Ford this weekend at the ADRL U.S. Drags III, a Tommy Mauney-built Mustang.
 
Leggett’s 2010 Mustang is the only Ford in the class this weekend.

“My dad … Fords were all he believed in having. I tried to believe everything he told me.  He was a very good inspiration to me in every kind of way, so I guess I had to take his vehicle choice too.”
 
Bill Leggett raised his boy to be blue oval proud and every car, both street and strip, over the last 30 years have been Ford. Well, except once, there was a Willys … but it was Ford powered.

Leggett carried his Ford passion into the formative years of the Pro Modified movement with a classic 1956 Ford before moving into the mountain motor Pro Stock division with a Thunderbird.

Since those early years, Leggett has witnessed Pro Modified transform into a different kind of class than the one he helped to pioneer in the late 1980s.

“It’s changed a lot but then again it hasn’t changed,” admitted Leggett, whose passion for drag racing is shared by his wife Greta. “There’s a true love for the sport, you see that in most all of the guys out here. The people at the drag race are my kind of people, and I just love it.”

Earlier this season Leggett campaigned a 1940 Ford. He never felt comfortable in the car which led to the construction of the new Mustang.

“I bought the 1940 Ford with the expectation they would have enough room,” said Leggett, who stands 6-foot-4, 250 pounds. “I hear people complaining about being too short but it’s just as bad to be too tall, I guess fat and old too, don’t help. The car was a great car, really good car. But I mean I just really want to be comfortable in a car room-wise so I talked to Tommy at the end of last year and he was like we’re just going to build another one of these Mustangs. He had some really good ideas on how to get me a little extra room, and that’s what we did. I’ve got a lot of room in the car so I can’t use that for another excuse.”

Longtime chassis builder Mauney has been one of the more influential figures in Leggett’s racing career.

“There are some guys who really build great cars, and while I don’t cut anyone short … I just like Tommy’s stuff,” Leggett explained. “As long as I race I’m going to try to have a Tommy Mauney car.”

And for Leggett, there’s nothing finer than a Mauney-built Ford.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THURSDAY NOTEBOOK - A TOUGH RACE SHAPING UP IN VMP

HIT ME, I DARE YA - The recently formed Fight Me MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) league was introduced today as the new major, multi-year sponsor of American Drag Racing League (ADRL) competitor Joshua Hernandez and his supercharged Pro Extreme 1957 Chevy.

Hernandez, last year’s championship runner-up and winningest driver in Pro Extreme history with six career race titles, will debuts the new Fight Me look in this weekend’s ADRL Speedtech U.S. Drags III at Virginia Motorsports Park.

“It is so exciting for me to help introduce Fight Me to the ADRL audience,” the Conroe, Texas-based driver said. “I’m also looking forward to attending Fight Me events later this year and introducing the ADRL’s unique brand of eighth-mile drag racing to the millions of MMA fans around the world. It’s a knockout combination.”

Fight Me was established by the same principals behind the ADRL, Dave Wood, Tommy Lipar and Kenny Nowling, who serves as president and CEO for both sports organizations.

“One of the first objectives in launching Fight Me MMA is to create brand awareness and Dave, Tommy and I know very well what ADRL can do in that regard for its major sponsors, especially when associated with proven winners like Josh and his team,” Nowling said.

Following the ADRL Speedtech U.S. Drags III, Hernandez will attend a press conference in St. Louis, May 27, to officially announce the Fight Me MMA league and the fight card for the Fight Me 1 event.

“I’m really happy about Fight Me coming on board, but I also recognize this as a tremendous opportunity for our race team, the ADRL and drag racing in general to increase its profile,” Hernandez said. “I’m ready to get it on in 2010 with Fight Me!”

 

THE BATTLE RAGES ON - As the American Drag Racing League (ADRL) heads to Virginia Motorsports Park (VMP) for this weekend’s (May 21-22) ADRL Speedtech U.S. Drags III, a great deal of attention will be focused on the Pro Extreme class, featuring supercharged hot rods capable of 3.6-second blasts at more than 212 miles per hour over an eighth-mile course.

Among those leading the high-speed charge into the Old Dominion State will be Saltillo, Mississippi’s Jason Scruggs, a former back-to-back Pro Extreme world champion (2007-08) and winner of the ADRL’s previous event last month in Georgia.

“Every year Pro Extreme gets a little tougher, at least as far as how fast the cars are going,” Scruggs says. “It’s unbelievable the level of competition that’s out there right now.”

Reigning Pro Extreme World Champion Todd Tutterow (below) agrees, pointing out that last month’s  qualifying lists represented a very tight 16-car field.

“There are a lot of cars going really fast now instead of just two or three and the bump spot is getting a lot quicker, too,” the Yadkinville, North Carolina-based champ says. “It makes for a lot more close, side-by-side racing where it doesn’t matter who you are, you can’t afford to make even one mistake.”

Joining Scruggs and Tutterow at the top of the Pro Extreme ranks at VMP will be the likes of Frankie “Mad Man” Taylor, whose 2005 Corvette became the quickest torque converter-equipped “doorslammer” in the world in Georgia with a 3.65-seconds qualifying pass at nearly 207 mph and eventual runner-up Quain Stott in his ’63 Corvette.

No one was stronger in Georgia, however, than ADRL rookie Sheikh Khalid Al-Thani of Qatar (below), who in his first racing appearance on U.S. soil qualified in the number-one position with a stunning 3.63-seconds effort at 212.49 mph in his Al-Anabi Racing ’68 Camaro, marking the quickest and fastest pass in the world by a full-bodied drag racing car (though he was unable to back up either number within the required one percent for an official record).

“Sheikh Khalid, he’s put together an awesome team with (crew chiefs) Frank Manzo, Tim and Kim Richards, and all the other great guys on that team,” Scruggs says. “For the last couple of years or so I guess it was our team that raised the bar on performance here, but now they’re raising the bar for us. But all that’s going to do is make us try harder.”

He won’t be alone, as Tutterow, who also carries the Al-Anabi brand on his own ’68 Camaro, says he draws inspiration from his competitors’ performances, too.

“It’s actually encouraging because it helps show us what’s out there, what’s possible if we get our stuff tuned up right,” he says.

There’s more to winning than just turning in quick and fast laps, though, a lesson learned the hard way through Scruggs’ go-for-broke approach that seemed just as likely to result in an early exit from competition as a record-setting run these last few years.

“We’re trying to race smarter now,” Scruggs insists. “Basically, you’ve got to run your own race and not worry about everyone else and if it’s your day, it’s your day. I think that’s how these races are going to go this year.”

 

 

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