The Peach State’s own Tim Meissner repeated as a Duck X Productions winner at South Georgia Motorsports Park February 26, winning the Radials vs. the World final for Lights Out 14 over fellow Georgian Luis de Leon. He previously won Duck X’s No Mercy event in October 2021.
“I was 60 feet out and I was already on my radio telling the guys we got this,” said Meissner, from Douglasville. “Then I pulled the parachute and I think I lost my voice. We were screaming on the radio and they were high fiving each other back at the start and I got so excited that we fell about 300 yards short of getting to the end of the racetrack. I got stopped on the racetrack and they had to come get me.”
Meissner qualified his screw-blown ’68 Mustang 6th in the 32-car field with a 3.69-seconds pass at 201.61 mph down the SGMP eighth mile. De Leon nailed down the top spot in qualifying his nitrous-fed BAR Racing ’69 Camaro with a 3.56 at 206.73, followed by Jason Lee, Marcus Birt, Norm Bryson and Jeff Miller in the top five.
Meissner handily defeated the ’03 Cobra of Mark Rogers and the big-block-Chevy powered 2000 Mustang of Dean Marinis in rounds one and two, respectively, but looked poised for a real quarter-finals battle against Birt Saturday night. However, Birt lost grip off the start in his ’69 Camaro, sending Meissner into Sunday morning’s semi-finals against George Williams.
Williams left with a .009 advantage off the start, but Meissner quickly scooted past with a 3.68 at 204.48 mph for the win. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the ladder, de Leon ran 3.61 at 205.82 to defeat Bryson and hold lane choice for the final.
Once there, de Leon took the tower-side right lane while Meissner lined up on the left.
It turned out to be over at the flash of green, as Meissner was ready with an impressive .006 light, while de Leon left with a .047 – and immediately lost traction.
“We were set up to do a good run, but she just wasn’t ready for the track condition. But he (Meissner) had a good light and the team made a good lap, so they highly deserve that win,” de Leon said later. “So I cannot be more proud of my car and my team right now. It’s a new car and we have less than 10 laps on it, qualify number one and go all the way to the final. So before this lap I told everyone we had already won. And not hurting anything on the car? Shoot, you can’t ask for more.”
Meisner’s head tuner for the event was “Stevie Fast” Jackson, not currently driving himself while continuing to heal up from off-season surgery on his neck. Jackson said he expects to be back on the track by mid-summer this year.
After qualifying at 3.69, through five rounds of eliminations Jackson tuned Meissner to consecutive runs of 3.71, 3.70, 3.69, 3.68 and the race-winning 3.67 in the final.
“When you race during the day with a radial-tire car and the sun is out like it was here, your last five minutes of decision that you make is 80 percent of the run. You can get the engine as powerful as you want to, but if you don’t have the car set up to go down the track – and it’s not that the track’s greasy or slimy, it’s just greasier and slimier than what you’re used to at night – but if you don’t take that into account, you’re not gonna’ make it,” Jackson explained.
“So yeah, I’m a daytime racer. If you look at when we win, that’s when the track’s bad. I’m really good in that last five minutes of car adjustment. Reading the track, putting the car in the right spot, making the motor jump through the hoops it needs to jump through to get down the racetrack. And if you’re going to beat me during the day, you’re going to go down the track. We were not the fastest car here. But we made our best run of the weekend in the finals. That’s pretty good. Especially when the sun’s out.”
For his part, Meissner expressed supreme confidence in Jackson’s tune-up and advice.
“I don’t know how fast they (BAR Racing) were trying to go on that round, but some people in the pits with their crew said they were going to try and go a .58 or a .59 and if they could have went that, that would’ve been awesome,” Meissner said. “But we didn’t go there. We were going to go up there with a mentality that they’re going to have to beat us.
“And Stevie called that run within one number. He said we were going to go a .67 and we went a .67 with a four. But man, he was great all weekend and the car was good, it was repeatable, and it was fun!”
