Special Section
PRO NITROUS MARCUS BUTNER( ON COVER)
● For the second consecutive year, the Red Line Oil PDRA Drag Racing Series crowned a brand-new world champion in Switzer Dynamics Pro Nitrous, as young gun Marcus Butner passed three-time world champion Tommy Franklin in a late-season push to earn the title. Butner and tuner Jay Cox won three events during the eight-race season, including the final two races. Butner also walked away with the class speed record when he broke Lizzy Musi’ s seven-year-old record at the World Finals.
In just the second race of the season, the Mid-Atlantic Showdown,
Butner drove his Musi-powered Butner Motorsports“ Heartbreaker”’ 69 Camaro to his second career win. He added a season-defining home-track win at DragWars. That put him within striking distance of Franklin going into the Brian Olson Memorial World Finals at VMP. There, Butner took out Franklin in the second round and secured the championship with his final-round win over past Elite Top Sportsman world champion Buddy Perkinson.
“ I feel like we ran pretty good all year,” Butner said.“ We had some bad luck. I messed up in Michigan, turned it red, and let Tommy go win the race. You can look back and, you know, hindsight is 20 / 20. But when we rolled into GALOT, we had our A-game on.”
PRO BOOST TY TUTTEROW
● Following in the footsteps of his father, Todd“ King Tut” Tutterow, Ty Tutterow raced his way to the WS Construction Pro Boost presented by P2 Contracting and Ty-Drive world championship. He reached the final round at the last five races of the season and won three of them to add another PDRA Pro Boost world championship to the family trophy case, which includes Todd’ s Pro Boost titles in 2014 and 2022.
Tutterow started the season taking over the driver’ s seat in Justin Smith’ s screw-blown Quik Fuel’ 69 Camaro, which Todd drove to a thirdplace finish in the 2024 season. Ty picked up his first PDRA 660 Man trophy in several seasons when he won the North vs. South Shootout at Maryland. When the Thunder Valley Throwdown was rained out and postponed to DragWars, Tutterow won both races over Melanie Salemi. That gave Tutterow a substantial lead over Salemi going into the season finale, where Tutterow beat Salemi in the second round, clinching the title in the process.
“ It means the world. It’ s a childhood dream come true,” said Tutterow, who’ s also an NMCA Xtreme Pro Mod champion.“ Coming out here and doing all this with family on the weekends just means everything. Doing it with my dad, and Justin and his family, Kurt [ Steding ] and his family – it’ s all one big family here, and to go out here and do good and be successful and run at the front and maybe even win more than we deserve, it’ s just awesome.”
50 PDRA660. com