MARK MICKE
Micke fully realize his win – considered a routine
victory at the time – is something people will be
talking about for years to come.
“I’ll be honest, later that week it started sink-
ing in because I got so many calls from so many
different people,” he says. “People calling, texting,
messaging things like ‘congratulations.’ Once all
that really sunk in, it was a really huge deal. It just
was. For what we were able to do on that weekend
with the quality of racers that were there…it was
a big deal. We’ll still get calls about it and we still
get a lot of recognition from it.”
Micke pauses when asked if he can top his
overall event performance at Sweet 16. “We may
never, ever duplicate that performance ever again,”
he says. “Who knows? That’s a hard one to top, to
be honest. What we did that weekend, there’s not
much else we could’ve done at that race.”
THE PASSENGER’S SIDE WINDOW BEARS THE
NAME OF CAR OWNER JASON CARTER, EVEN
THOUGH HE HASN’T DRIVEN THE MALIBU FOR
SOME TIME. BEFORE CONVERTING IT TO A FULL-
ON RACE CAR, CARTER USED TO DRIVE AND RACE
THE CAR ON THE STREETS OF KANSAS CITY.
feared competitors in Radial vs. the World – Ty
Tutterow in the former Barry Mitchell ’69 Camaro,
Tim Slavens in his steel-bodied ’69 Camaro, Paolo
Giust in the “Black Betty” ’69 Camaro, and finally
“Big Daddy” DeWayne Mills in the “Golden Go-
rilla” ’68 Camaro – to claim the $101,000 payday.
“That was crazy. It was really good for business,”
Micke says. “That sold a lot of transmissions and a
lot of lock-up torque converters. It just showcased
what we’re able to do.”
It’s easy to assume Micke is speaking solely of
his own performance at Sweet 16, but it really
was a powerful show of force by the entire list
of M&M customers competing in the Radial vs.
the World field.
“We won that race and had a hell of a weekend,
but we also had a lot of customers in the race,”
Micke says. “Ten of the 16 qualifiers were our
guys. That was a big deal for us. Those 16 cars
were the baddest 16 cars on the planet in drag
radial. Period. That race was just a win-win for
us all the way around.”
The Micke and Carter team didn’t realize at
the time the monumental achievement they had
just notched. “At the end of the race, to be honest,
we were all wore the hell out,” Micke says. “It
was nine qualifiers plus four rounds of the most
intense racing. We were happy. We didn’t get
crazy. We’ve won a lot of races in the past. I don’t
want to say you get used to winning – we were
pumped and excited – but we weren’t over the top.”
Instead of a concentrated, night-long cele-
bration of epic proportions, Micke realized the
magnitude of his Sweet 16 title over a period of
days. Only now, nearly a year after the fact, does
March 2019
T
he next step in Micke’s quest for
Radial vs. the World domination is a trip
into the 3.5-second zone. A performance
marker thought to be simply impossible as
recently as a few years ago is just around
the corner, in the eyes of Micke and many other
mechanical minds in the class. Micke feels there
are more than a couple cars capable of dipping
into the 3.50s, and you better believe one of those
is a turbocharged ’78 Malibu.
“We have the car that can do it,” Micke declares.
“We saw that in testing at Bradenton. We made a
run down there that was three hundredths quick-
er to the 330 than our .62 run. We just didn’t run
it out the back. It was a planned 330-foot run.
If it would’ve stayed lit and everything worked,
there was a possible .50 there. But that was in
ideal conditions – below sea level, killer track;
everything was perfect. If we get those conditions
again, I know our car will do it.”
If the conditions at the second annual Sweet 16,
March 21-23 at South Georgia Motorsports Park,
are anywhere near as good as they were when
Micke stunned the world there last year, watch
out. The ultra-competitive Missourian plans to
take advantage of the nine qualifying sessions to
push the Malibu to its limits. While the money on
the line at Sweet 16 is certainly intriguing, Micke
is more drawn to the chance to make moonshot
runs outside the pressure of eliminations.
“I love the horsepower these things make. We
make a lot of power, and I think we make more
power than most guys do,” Micke says. “When
we get into these situations like Sweet 16, we can
really lean on the car and make as much power as
we can and just beat the hell out of the car. I just
love that kind of stuff when you can just give it
all the power you’ve got and just literally run the
hell out of that race car. I’m not a conservative
guy, so I’ll sometimes take a chance and throw
more at it than maybe I should.”
So far, the trusty Malibu has taken everything
Micke has thrown at it. With its steel body, stock
wheelbase and stock-dimension big-block Chevy
powerplant, it’s a bit of an anomaly in the upper
echelon of Radial vs. the World cars. Micke and
Carter have fought off the temptation to ditch the
formerly street-driven Malibu for a purpose-built
Pro Mod-style car like many of their competi-
tors have done, but Micke wonders if that might
soon change.
“We’ve been able to outrun or run with the Pro
Mods with (the Malibu), but I think we’re getting
to a point where we may be beyond that,” Micke
says. “I don’t know yet. We’ll have to see how it
goes in the next year or so. It depends on where
the class progresses.”
According to Micke, the biggest advantage to
running a Pro Mod in Radial vs. the World is their
lower center of gravity, which is especially helpful
when wheelie bars aren’t in use. “They probably
have some aerodynamic benefits – because the ‘78
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