Drag Illustrated Issue 125, September 2017 | Page 62
I
t was a little after
one o’clock in the after-
noon, Mountain Time, of
course, on Saturday, Au-
gust 5th, 2017, when one
of drag racing’s most talk-
ed about and highly antic-
ipated contests popped off.
Despite a pair of torrential rainfalls
late in the morning, a sizable crowd
packed into Denver, Colorado’s be-
loved Bandimere Speedway to see 16
of the world’s fiercest drag racers go
head-to-head for a winner-take-all
purse of $100,000 - far-and-away
the largest offering ever in the his-
tory of doorslammer drag racing.
As the national anthem conclud-
ed, fans, racers, crewmen and the
like remained standing as drivers
Steve Matusek and Daniel McK-
une were given the orders to put
fire in the pipes of their respective
3,000-horsepower, supercharged
first-generation F-Body Pro Mods.
In the moments before reaching up
62 | D r a g
to the switch panel of his Jimmy
Rector-turned ’68 Camaro to spin
the engine and fire the ignition, the
significance of the occasion - the
first eliminator pair to take to the
quarter-mile for the inaugural Drag
Illustrated World Series of Pro
Mod (WSOPM) presented by J&A
Service and benefitting One Cure -
was not lost on Matusek. “I’d gone
through the run in my head like
10 times at that point - everything
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
from starting the car, hoping the
starter engages, making sure the
car is in forward gear, in low gear,
to doing the burnout and staging
the car the same way I had through-
out the week in testing,” admits the
Lenexa, Kansas-based driver. “It’s
not unusual; it’s a just the process of
reaffirming the sequence of events.
It’s one of the great challenges of
driving, trying to control that which
is in large part uncontrollable, and
maintain your faculties in what is
perceived to be a high pressure envi-
ronment. Honestly, that’s what is so
addicting about driving these cars
and competing at this level, and
when you throw in the fact that it’s
the biggest race in the history of the
class, a moment when Pro Mod is
the undisputed star-of-the-show,
well, it has a significant impact
on the atmosphere - for everyone,
but especially for the drivers and
the crews.”
Perhaps nowhere was the afore-
mentioned intense atmosphere
more abundantly apparent than on
the faces of the men (and women)
associated with each of the teams
invited to participate in the first-
of-its-kind drag race. Not afford-
ed the privacy provided by flame
retardant head socks, helmets and
visors as the drivers involved in this
first-of-its-kind drag race, crew men
and racer’s wives collective anxiety
exuded from a sea of best-effort
Issue 125
WORLD SERIES OF PRO MOD