On Monday at Byron Dragway, it was the final day of the Triple $10k's Memorial Day Weekend Brackets. In speaking with many of the drivers and teams, the weekend was a great success. Three days of Super Pro racing with $10K to win, what was there not to like! In Super Pro Box, after a round one loss and a buy back, Dion Degnitz marched through the field to reach the Final runoff. In his round one loss, Dion had a .052 reaction and broke out by .001 trying to catch Steve Marquis. In round two, he started a string of reaction times that left the competition in the dust. Look at these reaction times: Round 2 .006 Round 3 .003 Round 4 .007 Round 5 .014 Round 6 .005 Round 7 .005 Final .002 In the Box final, Dion was up against Zach Lewis, who lost in his first round, but did a buy-back . In the second round, he beat one of the faster cars driven by Dennis Divalerio. To get into the final round, he faced Josh Goike in a close race, Zach .024/463/4.648, Zach .022/5.36/5.377, to take the win light. In the final, it was a very competitive race, Dion had a R/T of .002 and Zach .005, with Dion taking the win light. In the No-Box class, it was Brian Folk who raced through five rounds to reach the Final against Jace Deering. In the five rounds, his opponents redlighted four times! He must have been making them very nervous! Jace Deering had more of a traditional route. He lost in the first round, did a buy-back and in the third round took out Troy Bogner, Sunday's $10k winner. In the Final, Brian had a .011 light with the slower car to Jace's .029. Jace tried to run Brian down and at the stripe lost by .002. That put Brian in the Final Runoff against Dion. In the Runoff, it was Dion with another great light, .008 to Brian's .031, that he couldn't make up at the stripe. Dion took home the $10k Big Check. Track Bites On Friday night there was a Test & Tune and Blind Squirrel Race. The winner was Ryan Fasano. .On Saturday, Troy Bogner won the Super Pro No-Box and the Overall Big Check, $10K. Gary Siedschlag won Super Pro Box (no photo). After the completion of the Sunday Racing Program, it was decided to run a golf cart race. I was told 58 golf carts were entered with double entries and buy-backs. The golf cart racing went late into the night with Nate Kelley taking the win. Here is Nate driving his "Gone Batty" Super Pro dragster. As I was leaving the track Monday evening, my wife notified me that a Flight for Life helicopter was flying a driver from Great Lakes Dragaway to the hospital after an accident. When I arrived home, I learned Dave Douthit driving the Douthit Motorsports wheelstander "Scallywag" had crashed and caught fire. Dave suffered some burns, but is in good shape, but will need some time to recover. Dave and his team were at Byron a week ago Sunday, licensing a new driver, Dave Gates, in the jet funny car, "Quartermaster". Please keep Dave, his wife Robyn and daughter Kathryn and the entire Douthit Motorsports Team in your thoughts. In the below image Dave is on the far right with Dave Gates licensing. The Memorial Day Weekend at Byron Dragway was a four day event of all types of racing, Test & Tune, Blind Squirrel, Pro Eliminator, Super Pro and don't forget golfcarts! Mother Nature was kind to the racing community this weekend with great weather. What a weekend!
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Memorial Day weekend at Byron was the cause of excitement as the Super Pro bracket racers were going for $10,000 to win, three straight days-Trip 10 K's. It was an all-out battle in both Box and No-Box to make into the runoff for the $10,000 Big Check! Above is Charlie Hamma blasting by Kevin Swartz to take a second round Box win. Charlie's closing rate caused Kevin to take too much of the stripe and he slightly broke out, 7.284 on a 7.29 dial-in. In the Box class, Charlie had it going all day, both in his door car and his dragster. It was the dragster that took him to the runoff. All day he was cutting down the tree with his worst reaction time being .022! In round 4, he cut a .001 against the dragster of Hayden Bailey. In the Box final, it was Charlie Hamma in the dragster against Nick Folk in his dragster. Nick ran closer to his dial-in, 4.56/4.573, to Charlie's, 4.52/4.538, a difference of .005, however Charlie beat Nick on the tree, .016/.024, a difference of .003, to give a holeshot win to Charlie. In the No-Box class it was Shane Pope's day. In round one, there was a scoring era in his race against Patrick Hill. In the re-run, Patrick was a little quick on the tree redlighting by -.012. From there through all six rounds he was unbeatable. The same could be said for Jim Laughlin. He beat all comers, to reach the No-Box final. It was a great final with Shane just edging out Jim for the win: .030, 6.76, 6.763 to .038/6.41, 6.418. .That put Shane Pope in his Pinto against the dragster of Charlie Hamma in the runoff. Shane launched first in the slower car and Charlie had to chase him down. At the stripe it was Charlie Hamma taking the win light and the Big Check. Since both drivers were winners, they decided to have both cars in the tower Winner's Circle. In the Pro Eliminator class, Dusty Winrich and Mark Langfoss were the cars to beat through the six rounds to get to the final. Mark had a slightly easier route with two single runs in the fifth and sixth rounds to Dusty's second round single run. As the Christmas Tree lights ticked down Mark was a little anxious went red by -.027 to give the win to Dusty. Here are some of the images of the days action: Track Bites About two thirds through the scheduled event, it was decided to have a "Gamblers" race. Jason Schadt took the win and the cash! When I arrived at the track Saturday morning, the first thing I saw was a light blue, chopped top 1967 Buick Regal, the Wine-O. The week before at the Sportsman/Street bracket race, I forgot take ask Steve Mroz if he was intending to bring out the family race car normally driven by his brother, Bill. Bill had a medical issue over a year and a half ago, is still recovering and currently unable to drive the car. As Steve put it, Bill was allowing him to drive the car Saturday in Super Pro! It was good to see Bill at the track. When I saw Jeff Highland pull his dragster into the water box, it reminded me of a story that Dana Highland related to me from the previous week's Junior race. On Saturday, Jeff had to work, so Dana and family took care of getting Maddie and her car to the race track. Dana had to leave for a graduation party and the Bacon family, Ben and Michelle took over the crew chiefing job for Maddie. They took her to the Finals! Upon returning to the track Mom, Dana, was not allowed to touch the car. All told it was a great day of racing and competition. Congratulations to all the winners! In a way, we were all winners to participate in and witness this day's racing.
To see all the day's racing images, please click here. If you see something you would like to purchase, please click here or on the "Ordering" tab at the top of the page. |
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