‘ KING TUT ’ RETURNS IN SEMIFINAL FINISH
The WSOPM was Todd “ King Tut ” Tutterow ’ s second race back in a full-time driving role after spending most of the 2023 season focused on tuning and working with his WYO Motorsports and Ty-Drive customers . Driving a new screw-blown Quik Fuel ’ 69 Camaro for car owner Justin Smith , Tutterow didn ’ t show any signs of rust as he worked his way through the field to a semifinal finish .
Tutterow , who qualified No . 26 , drew former teammate and No . 30 qualifier Kevin Rivenbark in the opening round . The Yadkinville , North Carolina-based driver used a 3.682 to move on to the second round , where he drew none other than Kurt Steding , the 2023 WSOPM runner-up and his teammate . In a rematch of their thirdround matchup from 2023 , Tutterow left first and ran a 3.726 to beat Steding , who had traction issues and slowed to a 4.758 in his brand-new , screw-blown P2 Contracting ’ 69 Camaro
“ I made a mistake last year when me and Kurt ran not stepping the cars up and got behind ,” said Tutterow , who lost to Steding when they raced at the 2023 WSOPM . “ I told him this year we ’ re going to step both cars up when we ran each other . Overstepped the boundaries with
his . That was the first run really that it didn ’ t go down . I was very pleased with everything . I went on and did fairly well .”
In the third round , Tutterow and young gun Preston Tanner left the line with nearly identical reaction times , Tutterow ’ s . 035 to Tanner ’ s . 036 . Tutterow got the win with a 3.675 to Tanner ’ s 3.684 .
The semifinals featured an epic battle between two of the most accomplished drivers in Pro Modified history . Tutterow , a two-time PDRA Pro Boost world champion with numerous additional titles , lined up against four-time PDRA Pro Nitrous world champion Jim Halsey , who similarly has a long list of career accomplishments . Tutterow ran a quicker 3.632 , but Halsey was first off the line and got the holeshot win with his 3.635 .
“ We run each other a lot down there in Florida because we don ’ t get to run each other [ in PDRA ],” said Tutterow , who thanked chassis builder Alan Pittman for his work on Smith ’ s new car . “ Both of us got very good respect for each other . I knew it was going to be a dogfight , but he just ended up winning it this time .”
— NATE VAN WAGNEN DI
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRIS SEARS , LUKE NIEUWHOF
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