Everything moves faster in drag racing; even nostalgia it seems.
Historic little Brainerd Optimist Dragway, nestled alongside I-75 in Ringgold, Georgia, just south of the Tennessee line, hosted a racer’s reunion event last weekend to celebrate the glory days of Outlaw 10.5 racing—circa late-‘90s to early-2000s.
Honored guests included the likes of Rob Hale, Michael Robinson, Steve Petty, Tim Lynch, Bobby Johnson and Steve Kirk Jr., who received a special Outlaw 10.5 Pioneer award, largely in recognition of the winning he did with the bright red 2002 Camaro that essentially redefined the class and ushered in a new breed of 10.5 cars.
“It was a neat deal that Mark Samples and Steve Longley up at Brainerd Optimist put together to acknowledge the roots of Outlaw 10.5 and to recognize some of the people from back in the day,” Kirk said.
Everything moves faster in drag racing; even nostalgia it seems.
Historic little Brainerd Optimist Dragway, nestled alongside I-75 in Ringgold, Georgia, just south of the Tennessee line, hosted a racer’s reunion event last weekend to celebrate the glory days of Outlaw 10.5 racing—circa late-‘90s to early-2000s.
Honored guests included the likes of Rob Hale, Michael Robinson, Steve Petty, Tim Lynch, Bobby Johnson and Steve Kirk Jr., who received a special Outlaw 10.5 Pioneer award, largely in recognition of the winning he did with the bright red 2002 Camaro that essentially redefined the class and ushered in a new breed of 10.5 cars.
“It was a neat deal that Mark Samples and Steve Longley up at Brainerd Optimist put together to acknowledge the roots of Outlaw 10.5 and to recognize some of the people from back in the day,” Kirk said.
“I thought it was pretty cool because I come to find out a lot of my peers had voted for me to receive that award. It was a lot of work back then, racing 30, 35 times a year for about six years, chasing new technology and still running a business, so when you stay involved in a particular racing class for that long it was really nice to have all that hard work acknowledged.”
Between the ceremonies and three days of on-track action that entertained a packed house, Kirk admitted talk among the 10.5 racers in attendance centered around how good they all had it “back in the day” with track and fan support at a peak shortly after the century turned. He lamented, however, that the scene changed dramatically about 2006 or so.
“It’s really hard to say what happened to Outlaw 10.5, but it would be nice if we could scroll back and redesign what’s happened over the last three or four years to keep some of the innovators of the sport in the class,” Kirk said. “I’m not saying Outlaw 10.5 is gone by no means, but I think it’s pretty much become a turbo or supercharged deal to where nitrous really needs to be a separated class, much like Kenny (Nowling) did with the Pro Mods in ADRL.
“That’s exactly why the ADRL has been so successful where they run nitrous against nitrous in their own class and blower cars race blower cars or turbo cars in their own class where it’s all the same, all forced induction.”
Kirk said he suggested a similar splitting of the Outlaw 10.5 class as far back as 2005, but fears of not having enough entries to support separation prevented any action. And while he concedes a split might have required a smaller, eight-car blower/turbo field at the time, he remains convinced it would have grown and the nitrous side would have prospered, too.
“We used to get 30 or 40 cars out and now everybody is pleased to get just eight. But I still think if we had separated the field back then it would have brought even more cars out because we’d have been comparing apples to apples. As it is, they just run the nitrous cars off.”
Regardless, Kirk has been concentrating on Automatic Pro Mod racing lately, including a huge $90,000 win in May with his nitrous-fed ’63 Corvette at Carolina Dragway.
“But I haven’t been racing a lot this year,” he said. “This is a reorganizing year for me and I’m hoping to go into 2011 with a driving and tuning position in a Pro Modified operation that allows me to apply everything I’ve learned over the last 26 years about racing to win, because there’s a big difference between just racing and racing to win.
“No matter what, I’m not finished yet. I feel like a hundred percent when I’m at a racetrack and I’m a firm believer in you need to do whatever you’re designed to do and for me that’s racing—and winning—I just feel like it’s what I’ve been put here to do.”
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