Wes Distefano didn’t expect to be the dominant force in his PDRA Pro Nitrous debut that he was the past two seasons in Pro 632 competition.
Nor did the 2020-21 title holder plan on being a spectator Saturday when the East Coast Nationals eliminations got underway.
Of the 20 Pro Nitrous cars on the grounds for the PDRA season opener, Distefano qualified 19th. While that was a mere 13/1,000ths of a second slower than the No. 16 qualifier, that flash of time kept him sidelined Saturday except for a test pass.
“I’m a believer that things happen for a reason, and even though they were unfortunate things – the car wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do – it worked out to my advantage. I can find the good in anything,” Distefano said. “I got more repetition, more practice, and I’m definitely feeling comfortable in the car. I told Troy (crew chief Troy Russell) before we even got started working on the car, ‘Until I tell you I feel comfortable, we’re not going to really get after it.’ ”
Pretty much everything about Distefano’s 2022 missile is new to him. It’s the same 1968 Camaro that Lizzy Musi drove in PDRA’s race at Norwalk, Ohio, late last May, and it’s equipped with a 959 cubic-inch Pat Musi powerplant. Distefano is no stranger to Musi’s muscle under the hood, as that’s the engine builder who gave him the means to win the 2020-21 titles in 632.
“It’s not a new car, but it’s got a lot of new components in it,” said the Waterford, Michigan, driver. “We put the Liberty (transmission) with a Ty-Drive in there, we put a Merillat rear end in there, and we added RaceStar wheels, which is my main sponsor. The car went straight out of the gate, so that was encouraging, but we had a lot of shifting issues. Once we figured out the shifting issues, it was A to B, then it was power management, figuring that out. We leaned on it, it got a little out of shape, and we’ll work on that.”
He has a history of gaining on his performance needs for the eighth-mile competition. In 2019, Distefano notched a win at Darlington, South Carolina, en route to the runner-up points position behind Johnny Pluchino. He claimed the No. 1 the following season, then last year appeared in all but one final round and won the title with room to spare; the 653-point margin is more points than are available in a race.
That wasn’t the case last weekend at GALOT Motorsports Park, when the best Distefano could muster was a 3.98-second, 186.46-mph blast.
It’s all part of the learning process, Distefano said during an interview in his pit area while keeping his eyes on his young son and daughter.
“These engines, they’re built to huff all the nitrous, not half of what it should,” he said. “When we were trying to be conservative, it was responding really slowly, and we were wondering if we were having problems elsewhere in the chassis. But at the end of the day, when we started throwing power at it, we noticed it responded.
“We tried to adjust (Friday) in Q3 for the weather, similar to what we would do on our 632 car, and it seemed like that was too much of an adjustment. It seems like this bigger-inch motor is touchier about (nitrous oxide) bottle pressure than what we’re used to.”
In an effort to gain more data, on Saturday morning Distefano logged an extra run when he entered the car in Top Sportsman competition. His lone qualifying attempt was washed out when he took out one of the timing blocks near the finish line, but he was otherwise pleased.
“We gave it some good bottle pressure and didn’t touch much else, and it responded positively,” he said. “It went .957 or .958 at 60 feet and 190 mph, so we’ve got a pass to work with now. We can clean that one up and hone in on it, so I expect three-second passes from here on out.”
He’s already gotten past a bit of doubt he experienced in his first blast down the track, and admitted that learning a new car in a new class feels a bit like starting from scratch.
“I feel the learning curve is pretty quick being that I’ve got a lot of laps on the other car,” which was driven to the No. 1 qualifying spot and a runner-up finish in Pro 632 on Saturday by Walter Lannigan Jr. “I’m not trying to sound overconfident. You get in there and push your limits and find out what you’ve got, and with any new car, until you find what it’s capable of, you don’t know what to expect.
“The first pass was quite sensational in a good way, but in kind of a scary way. I kind of had a little tunnel vision. I thought, ‘If that’s going to continue to happen, that might be a problem.’ I was really anxious to get the car going hard again and see if I experienced that, and I never did.
“We experienced some mechanical issues, so it got me to do the repetition to get the routine down for the Liberty. The way it is now is quite a routine to make it work. So once we dialed that in, it was A to B, then we got to work on the power of the car, and then we learned it likes to have all the power it can take. So we’ll clean that tune-up up and we’ll see what we’ve got next test.”
Distefano hopes to test prior to the PDRA’s next event, slated for April 28-30 at Beech Bend Raceway Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
