Dirt
Spring Fling Million
A
year after Luke Bogacki turned
on the win light at last year’s Million
Dollar Race at The Strip at Las Vegas
Motor Speedway, a bevy of the coun-
try’s best bracket racers prepared for what could
be the biggest day of their careers. Past winners
Jeff Verdi and Bogacki can attest to the life-chang-
ing experience it is to win a Spring Fling Million
and by the end of the day, one more person joined
that exclusive Spring Fling Million winner’s club.
But before that happened, there was one more
opportunity for racers to earn some cash.
First up was the Brodix Run For The $50K,
where a combination of a perfect reaction time
along with a dead-on the dial with a “0” earns that
driver a cool $50,000. Everyone on the property
was eligible for the time trial run where even the
three best packages, had no one hit the perfect
run, earning prizes. First place received a set of
Brodix SR20 cylinder heads, second $2,000 in
cash and third, a free three-day entry to the 2019
Spring Fling event.
Prior to the run, co-promoter Kyle Seipel said,
“We’ve already had three perfect runs made prior
to this point and I have an intuition this morning
that there’s probably a 60-percent chance we’ll
be handing over $50K to someone. If a perfect
run doesn’t happen, I still believe it would take
at least a .002 package to win the Brodix heads.”
So much for Seipel’s intuition…or his predic-
tion, but it was quite a round, with three racers
setting the mark tied at a .003 package. Those
three – Larry Webb, Dan Northrop and Mike
Bloomfield – shared the number, forcing a “run-
off ” of sorts. Each name was put into a hat, with
the first name pulled out, Bloomfield, receiving
the heads, while Northrop walked away with
$2,000 and Webb a three-day entry to next
year’s race.
As for the main event, the Pro 38 class final, which
was a no-box category of cars, included many-time
NHRA national event champ Dan Fletcher and
Wednesday’s Pro 38 winner, Andy Schmall, with
both moving into round six for the class win before
they integrated with the Super Pro field.
The survivors of round five would be, natu-
rally, Schmall and Fletcher, but also JR Lobner
with two entries left, Dylan Stott, Aaron Kinard,
Randell Reid, Dan Lafferty also with two entries,
Trevor Harkema, Johnny Ezell, “Peeps” and Phil-
lip Pennington.
Round six started off with the Pro 38 final
where Schmall wasn’t intimidated by the 100-plus
NHRA national event winner Fletcher, defeating
him to move into round seven of the Super Pro
field. The other survivors were Lobner still with
two cars, Stott, Ezell, Kinard and Reid.
In other festivities of the day, the Racer Ap-
preciation Party included a raffle drawing for
a Racetech dragster. If winning one car in the
American Race Cars Dragster Shootout on Tues-
day wasn’t enough, Lori Warden’s name was
pulled out of the hat to win another dragster.
Two dragsters in one week. A Calcutta was also
held, where for $75, you chose a Million Dollar
race entry’s name out of a hat. If your racer went
the furthest, you received $10,000. Darrell Long
must also be happy as his man, Aaron Kinard,
earned him the ten grand.
For round seven, Lobner received the bye with
his first entry to move that car into the semifinals,
while Stott and Kinard also advanced. Lobner’s
second entry was defeated by Reid.
In the semifinal round, first up was Stott and
Reid, with Stott turning on the red light by -.001.
Lobner then made the best of his chances with
a reaction time advantage to defeat Kinard. The
final round would be a battle of Texas vs. Kan-
sas, Reid vs. Lobner. Despite both drivers’ suc-
cess on the NHRA side of the fence, there’s little
doubt that neither had won more money for a
final round.
The final round was Texas all the way as Reid
held the starting-line advantage and never looked
back. “It’s really unbelievable,” said Reid, “This
was the first actual time I’ve raced all year. I want
to thank my dad and my wife back home who is
probably going crazy.”
And with that, Reid and his crew were whisked
off to a suite at the Cosmopolitan Resort in a
custom limousine, joining an exclusive club of
br