DERRICK REESE CHARGES TO RUNNER-UP FINISH IN MMPSI
Young gun Derrick Reese was one of the last racers to arrive at Bradenton Motorsports Park to compete in the third annual Mountain Motor Pro Stock Invitational, and he was one win light away from being the last one standing on Saturday night. The Ohio native finished as the runner-up to multi-time world champion Johnny Pluchino in the $ 25,000 final round, making up for a rough start to the weekend.
Reese and his one-man crew – crew chief Tom Coon – pulled into Bradenton late Wednesday night after body work on Reese’ s NHRA Pro Stock car took longer than expected. They had to wait until Thursday morning to get parked and set up and simply didn’ t have time to get the car ready for the first qualifying session. Reese broke the wheelie bars in Q2 and shook the tires in Q3, so he went into the final session outside the 16-car field. He laid down a 4.116-second pass to qualify seventh before drawing 2023 MMPSI winner and multi-series world champion John Montecalvo in the opening round.
“ We were hoping for a better draw than Montecalvo because Montecalvo was tough,” says Reese, who left on Montecalvo and won with a 4.124 to a 4.293.“ It was definitely a round
that I wanted to win because I used to crew for Montecalvo and I know everybody over there. It’ s not someone I wanted to run first round, but definitely a round I wanted to win.”
Things didn’ t get any easier for Reese on his road to the final round. He ran a consistent 4.126 in the second round to knock out recent firsttime Extreme Pro Stock winner Daryl Stewart, then he won on a holeshot over two-time and reigning PDRA Extreme Pro Stock world champion Chris Powers in the semifinals in a 4.135-to-4.125 race.
“ I honestly didn’ t think we had anything for Chris,” Reese admits.“ It was weird because we dialed it up for that round and Chris had run a 4.05 the round before, so we went up there thinking we had to swing – and we did swing – but it was still really light on clutch. Obviously something happened with Chris and we were lucky enough to get by him.”
Due to a holdup ahead of him at the scales after the semifinals, Reese only had about 20 minutes to get his Kaase-powered Black Magic Clutch’ 13 Mustang serviced for the final round. The issues continued in the staging lanes, where the already-low air bottle blew an air line, draining it completely. Reese’ s opponents saved the day by loaning him a spare air bottle.
“ That shows how good of a guy John Pluchino is,” Reese says.“ He’ s running a guy in the final for 25 grand and he gives me an air bottle to make the run.”
Pluchino left the line first by a slight margin –. 026 to Reese’ s. 029 – and turned on the win light with a 4.081, while Reese followed with a 4.125 at 176.03. He believes a clutch disc went bad, which combined with the quick turnaround, prevented him from making it a closer race against the toughest draw on the property.
“ Johnny was a guy you didn’ t want to draw,” says Reese, who went on to a career-best outing in NHRA Pro Stock at the Gatornationals, where he defeated six-time world champion Erica Enders in the first round.“ If you were to draw them, you’ d hope for maybe the first round when the track was a little tricky, but after that you don’ t want to see them anywhere but the final. We knew it was going to be tough to beat them. Had our clutch disc not worn out, I think we would’ ve run faster. I don’ t know if we would’ ve beat them, but we definitely would’ ve had a better shot.”— NATE VAN WAGNEN DI DI DI
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118 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated. com Issue 194