reaction time—. 088 to. 099— and 3.649-second pass at 204.85 mph was enough to get by Hensley’ s 3.650.
King faced his good friend Jeff Rudolf and his“ Ghetto Sleigh”’ 69 Camaro in round two. While Rudolf slowed to a 4.826, King ran a 3.681 at 203.98 for the victory. The win was his slowest pass of eliminations, a testament to how consistent he was all day long.
“ Jeff’ s car has been running extremely well lately,” King says.“ I keep saying he’ s a win waiting to happen. He went out there and shook, and we get the win against someone that we figured was going to rip off a pretty big number. Those guys just missed the setup for that particular run, but we’ ll take them any way we can get them.”
From there, King would soon face a Murderer’ s Row of multi-time national champions. But before they could think about the quarterfinals, the team would need to overcome even more obstacles. The car’ s transmission had been fighting them all weekend, eventually tracked down to a bad regulator. With the wear and tear on parts, they decided to swap motors after the second round to try and find any little bit of extra performance.
King is quick to thank a host of people for making it all happen— his wife, Karla; Jeff and Melanie Miller; Gene Pilot, Chad Wright, and Tyler“ Bubba” King; and the entire crew from G-Force— Jon, Jim, Evan, and Lucas Salemi; and Eddie Whelan and Paolo Giust.
“ It took an army,” King states.“ All those guys
KING TOOK DOWN A TRIO OF MULTI-TIME CHAMPIONS IN ERICA ENDERS, JASON HARRIS, AND“ STEVIE FAST” JACKSON EN ROUTE TO A $ 150,000 PAYDAY.
96 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated. com Issue 194