Drag Illustrated Issue 152, January 2020 | Page 32

Special Section ELITE TOP SPORTSMAN SCOTT MOORE MagnaFuel Elite Top Sportsman lived up to its name yet again in 2019, as different winners emerged at all seven contested races. Scott Moore, the winner of the North-South Shootout at Maryland, walked away from the World Finals as the world champion. “As a team, we set two goals in January,” says Rodney Pryor, Moore’s crew chief, who accepted the championship trophy on his behalf at the PDRA Awards Banquet in Indianapolis in Decem- ber. “We all made the commitment to run for the Top Sportsman Elite championship and we won. We also made the goal of if we get in the situa- tion to win the championship, we wanted to see if we could run in the 3s, and we did that as well. Not a bad year after all.” Moore was a consistent late-round player all season long in his Robert Hayes-built and up- graded ’08 Ford Mustang. He added a runner-up finish at Ohio and semifinal exits at Virginia 1 and South Georgia to go with his Maryland win. Then, he got his 3-second runs in at the World Finals, where he qualified No. 11 with a 3.975 and posted a 3.99 in the first round. He lost that round, but the championship was already his as he had a commanding lead over Tim Molnar. “When we win, it’s all [car owner] Sandy [Montgomery] and Scott,” Pryor says. “When we lose, it’s my fault. But we work great together as a team.” This team’s collaborative efforts will come into play again in 2020, as Montgomery plans to join Moore at some races to compete in Edelbrock Bracket Bash competition. round,” Nyerges remembers. “She goes, ‘When are you going to hang it up? You can’t win a race – you don’t go 4.20s.’ I said, ‘I’m going to win the next race.’ And we went to Darlington and ended up winning the next race, and I said, ‘Did I go 4.20s? No.’” Nyerges proved that the fastest horse doesn’t always win the race in Top Sportsman, though he’s got a few new tricks up his sleeve for his championship season. While he was holding back the details in his championship speech, Nyerges teased a new Bickel-built ride with Buck power, an M&M transmission and Switzer Dynamics nitrous equipment. TOP SPORTSMAN 32 CHRIS NYERGES Longtime Top Sportsman competitor Chris “Nitrous” Nyerges was off to a respectable start to the season when the PDRA rolled into the warmer summer races. He was going rounds in MagnaFuel Top Sportsman 32 at the first three races, but his nitrous- assisted ’00 Firebird came alive in the heat. The Ohioan won the Summer Nationals, runnered-up one race later at his home race, the Northern Na- tionals, and managed to finish just over one round ahead of Glenn Teets III for the championship. “Glenn was running the table all season,” Nyerges says. “The rest of these guys, Buddy [Perkinson] and Jeff [Pittman], they all kept me on my toes. They are badass racers and they made me better.” Nyerges also credited his wife, Shari, for pushing him to step up this season after a late- season pep talk in 2018. “Last year, we were at GALOT and we lose third 32 PDRA660.com