NIGHTFIRE NATIONALS

bump spot was Mike Weiss in his beautiful Port Orchard, Washington-based‘ 54 Corvette with a 6.71 at 212.19.

In the first round of eliminations, all the quicker qualified drivers scored wins except for the aforementioned Radford, who was ambushed by Rob Moore and was relegated back to crew chief duties for Harper.

In round two, which took place at noon on Sunday, plenty more ambushes took place. Moore took out number-one qualifier Bret Williamson, running 6.11 at 239.65 to Williamson’ s shut-off 6.57 at 162.72. Moore had an. 017-second reaction time. Tony Jurado Jr. got bushwhacked by Ed Thornton Jr., who used a 6.24 at 228.77 to defeat Jurado’ s 6.83 at 225.75 The hits just kept on coming, as the next pair pitted number-two qualifier Jeremy Hanger against Rick Snavely in at number seven. At the green, it was Hanger out first, but Snavely made up ground by the 60-foot cone, then slowly drove around Hanger for the upset win. The final pair of round two saw the end of the upsets as Billy Harper just could not get around Mike Maggio’ s 5.98 at 249.16 to Harper’ s close 6.02 at 237.05.

The air temperature suddenly dropped as clouds started to move in over the track for the third round. The first pair

out was Moore and Thornton Jr. This was to be Moore’ s Waterloo, as Thornton‘ s turbocharged

‘ 70.5 Camaro was just too strong and covered Moore’ s attempt at another upset, 6.16 at 235.64 to 6.29 at 236.46. The other half of the semifinals featured another turbo-versus-blower matchup. The results were just reversed of the first pair as Maggio took nearly a tenth of a second starting line advantage over Snavely and parlayed that into a 6.02 at 248.61 to 6.03 at 252.85 win.

With the final round quickly approaching, temperatures continued to drop to around 70 degrees and the sky grew ever cloudier. As the finalists were being pulled into the staging lanes, Mother Nature decided she had seen enough drag racing, as it started to rain – a rarity in this part of Idaho during this time of the year. The decision was made to hold the finals at the California Hot Rod Reunion in Bakersfield, California, later on this year.

The fans may not have gotten a chance to see the finals, but they did see good, close racing. Was it record setting? No. Nevertheless, it was entertaining, as the Pro Mods put on a great show. Close, side-by-side racing and that is all the fans want to see,

and they certainly got their money’ s worth. DI