for my crew . It ’ s a great feeling to win with them ”
Wulcan qualified third and made his way past Wesley Jones and past world champion Jason Scruggs before meeting low qualifier Mike Recchia in the final round . Wulcan ’ s ’ 69 Camaro moved off the starting line first , allowing his 3.604-second pass at 209.50 mph to defeat Recchia ’ s 3.555 at 212.46 , which stood for low et of the event .
“ These are the fastest cars in the world . I drove a Pro Mod in Europe . We won the 2014 FIA championship , then we went to Qatar and tried going 200 meters ( roughly 660 ft ). We started liking that , then we crashed our old Pro Mod car . We had thought about switching to the screw blowers , so that was the time to make the move . That move paid off today ,” Wulcan added .
PRO NITROUS Defending world champion Tommy Franklin managed to pull off a clean sweep of the weekend , qualifying No . 1 and recording low et of three rounds in the process of winning his first Pro Nitrous race of the season .
Franklin posted a 3.706 at 204.17 to qualify No . 1 , but he was looking for more out of his Pat Musi-powered ’ 69 Camaro . He found what he was looking for in a 3.699 at 203.90 second-round victory over John Hall . Franklin backed down his “ Jungle Rat ” entry to run a 3.711 at 204.62 over Lizzy Musi , then a 3.722 at 203.71 to defeat Randy Weatherford ’ s 3.732 at 198.59 .
“ We just tried to pick away at it ,” Franklin said of his eliminations strategy . “ We actually started to get some power with the cool air rolling in so we slowed it down to get it down through there . The 3.69 was nice . Getting the No . 1 qualifier and the win is awesome .
“ Like always , I thank the Lord , my crew , my family , all of my employees taking care of things back at home , and all of the fans who come out and watch the PDRA . It ’ s one heck of a show .”
PRO BOOST Perennial Pro Boost contender Melanie Salemi charged to her first win since the 2015 Rockingham fall race . Racing out of the seventh spot , Salemi drove her Strange Engineering-backed “ Purple Reign ” ’ 68 Firebird to consecutively quicker runs through eliminations .
“ It felt really good to get the win tonight ,” Salemi said . “ I went to a couple big finals last year and it was disappointing that we couldn ’ t come out on top for those , but coming here with even tougher competition , I think it ’ s really awesome that we were able to pull it together tonight .”
Driving a G-Force Race Cars entry built by her brother-in-law , Jim Salemi , and tuned by her husband , Jon , Melanie first ran 3.796 at 195.91 to beat Jerico Balduf in the opening round . She improved to a 3.758 at 197.89 unopposed when points leader José Gonzales ran into problems . Quicker still , Salemi posted a 3.746 at 198.41 over “ Turbo ” Todd Moyer , then a 3.732 at 198.24 to defeat GALOT Motorsports driver John Strickland ’ s 3.756 at 195.23 .
“ We actually struggled when the cool air came to us this weekend ,” Salemi admitted . “ We had a good car in the heat , so hopefully we can continue that on for the rest of the summer .”
EXTREME PRO STOCK After doing battle with some of the toughest drivers in Extreme Pro Stock , Aruba ’ s Trevor Eman can now add a PDRA trophy to his impressive trophy case .
“ We ’ ve been doing this for a while and we ’ re always chasing a championship , of course , but we have managed to win a race with all of the different sanctioning bodies we ’ ve raced in ,” Eman said . “ We won a race in the IHRA , won a race in the ADRL , and now add to that winning a race with the PDRA .”
Eman qualified his Aruba . com ‘ 11 Mustang in the fifth spot and raced past Dwayne Rice , Benson race winner Chris Powers and class veteran Cary Goforth before facing 2016 World Finals winner Buddy Perkinson in the final round . Though Perkinson grabbed a starting-line advantage , Eman drove around him with a 4.079 at 176.33 over Perkinson ’ s 4.175 at 170.00 .
“ Today was a tough day . Qualifying didn ’ t go too well for us yesterday . We put a good run in finally after making some big changes today . Every run after that just kept getting better and better . It was a long , exciting day .
“ The team worked really hard today . I have a team that wakes up at 7 o ’ clock in the morning , works on the car all day , and here we are standing in the winner ’ s circle at 2 a . m . almost 20 hours later . My hat ’ s off to the team . They did a phenomenal job today . Adam and Andy ( Lambert )
from Precision Racing Shocks helped us really well today and they put us on a different direction that I think really helped us . We ’ re very excited for what the car ’ s doing now and we look forward to the next race ,” Eman concluded .
PRO EXTREME MOTORCYCLE Travis Davis found himself in a familiar place Saturday night when he won his second consecutive Pro Extreme Motorcycle race on the PDRA tour . He also qualified No . 1 aboard his Timblin Chassis ’ 12 Suzuki .
“ It ’ s a good feeling to get another win ,” Davis said . “ The track was hot and tricky ; had all different kinds of conditions to deal with . I chose to sit out the last qualifying session today because it was so hot and I didn ’ t feel like I was going to improve . We chose to get ready for eliminations and focus on that challenge .”
The soft-spoken Georgia rider slowed from his qualifying pace to a 4.286 in the opening round , but improved to back-to-back 4.05s to defeat Burke Forster and Brad McCoy . Davis used a better reaction time and his best run of the day , a 4.039 at 174.83 , to win the final round over multi-time and defending world champion Eric McKinney and his 4.017 at 177.73 .
“ That ’ s two in a row for us . We went 3.98 at the last race , which was a big shock to me , too . We ’ re tickled . We have a good program going right now , and maybe we can keep it going ,” Davis added .
EXTREME OUTLAW 632 A battle between two young Floridians proved to be one of the best races of the day in Extreme Outlaw 632 . No . 2 qualifier Dillon Voss drove his Voss Racing Engines ’ 10 Camaro to a 4.337 at 166.05 over Jordan Ensslin ’ s 4.363 at 163.10 in the final round . The two drivers left the starting line just one thousandth of a second apart .
“ This is our first national event win ; it ’ s big ,” Voss said . “ The team worked hard this weekend . We have a fast , consistent race car . We qualified three-thousandths off the pole . It ’ s been a great race car all weekend . We ’ re very happy .”
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