World Finals Open ADRL 2009
Season
ENNIS,
TX (Oct. 26, 2008) — Speed and thrills highlighted the running of
the 4th annual LenMar Motorsports ADRL World Finals Oct. 24-25, at the
Texas Motorplex, by the Flowmaster American Drag Racing League presented by the
National Guard.
Day
one featured the Speedtech Al Anabi Nitrous Battle for the Belts, in which the
top-eight points earners in each ADRL pro class raced against each other in
single-elimination “playoffs” that determined 2008 series champions. Pro Extreme
Motorcycle rider Billy Vose successfully defended his 2007 title, as did Jason
Scruggs in the almost unlimited Pro Extreme class, while Billy Harper prevailed
in Pro Nitrous and Billy Glidden won the Extreme 10.5
championship.
With
the 2008 season capped off, all points earned in qualifying and eliminations at
the World Finals counted toward setting the
A
record 45 Pro Extreme entries showed up at the Motorplex, with 23 posting
sub-four-second laps in qualifying for the 16-car raceday field. Travis
Swearingen of
Stott
faced off against Scruggs in the Pro Extreme final, running 3.87 seconds at
183.59 mph in his ’63 Corvette, while Scruggs came oh-so-close to crashing.
Straight off the start, his 2007 Dodge Stratus took a hard left, taking out an
unmanned TV camera in front of the starting-line “tree” before Scruggs wrestled
it back under control.
“The
master (brake) cylinder let go just as I let the clutch out and brake fluid
sprayed all over the rear tire,” Scruggs explained. “I don’t know how I managed
to not hit anything more (than the camera), because I really should
have.”
Earlier,
in round two while racing fellow Texan Clyde Scott, Joshua Hernandez was not so
lucky, as he crashed his National Guard-backed ’57 Chevy, slightly injuring his
right arm after bouncing the car off both guardwalls before grinding to a halt
beyond the finish line.
“It
was on a good pass, but just got a little loose and I tried to drive through it,
just like I had last night (in qualifying),” Hernandez said. “This time, though,
my right foot wrote a check my body couldn’t cash. I’m pretty sore right now,
but what I really hate is that I tore up a great hot rod.”
No
such violent results in Pro Nitrous, where Shannon Jenkins paced the qualifying
field with a 3.93 at 191.02 mph and his teammate Castellana drove his ’68
Firebird to a 3.92-seconds win at 190.57 mph over the ’68 Camaro of Jim Halsey,
who lost traction within about 60 feet of launching and had to shut off
early.
“Once
we got the car to go straight it got better every time out,” said Castellana,
who made the best Pro Nitrous pass of the weekend in the final round. “It was
really straight and smooth by the end there.”
The
diverse Extreme 10.5 class (so named for the cars’ relatively narrow
10.5-inch-wide rear slicks), put on a great show at Ennis, as several drivers
traded record-setting runs in a wide array of combinations on their way to a
climactic finish.
Georgia’s
Steve Kirk Jr. threw down the first gauntlet with a stellar 4.12-seconds run at
177.91 mph to earn the number-one starting spot with his nitrous-boosted,
820-cubic-inch ’63 Corvette. Then Glidden answered with a 4.11-second run in the
semi-finals with his 404 c.i., small-block-Ford-powered ’06 GTO, while Gary
White kept pace with his own 4.12 effort to advance the 186 c.i., turbocharged
six-cylinder Team Titan ‘07 Scion to a final-round showdown with the new
champ.
Along
the way,
The
Glidden-White showdown produced one of the all-time great ADRL pairings as the
combatants laid down the quickest side-by-side pass on 10.5W tires
ever—anywhere—with a pair of stunning 4.10s over the all-concrete Ennis strip.
Glidden took the win, courtesy of a sizable .060 holeshot, but White at 4.101
earned the official elapsed time record by just two thousandths of a
second.
“This
class just keeps getting tougher and tougher,” Glidden said later. “It used to
be you could run 4.30s and occasional 4.20s and be competitive, but everyone has
really stepped up their game over the last five months or so and that’s a thing
of the past.”
The
record-setting continued in Pro Extreme Motorcycle, where Louisiana rider
Charlie Prophit, aboard a 1570-cc, Suzuki-equipped, Timblin Chassis bike, went a
precedent-setting 4.24 seconds to qualify on top in Texas.
It
was left to Floridians Scott Gray and Matt Prophit to settle the final round,
though, with Gray’s 4.37 at 165.09 taking the win after Prophit’s bike missed a
gear shortly after launching.
“I
just felt like it was my time to win today,” Gray said. “For sure it took a lot
of hard work, but when it’s meant to be, it’s meant to
be.”
All
four winners will be on top of the points lists when the ADRL’s 2009 campaign
resumes next March in
Mike Castellana launches hard in
round one of eliminations at the 4th annual LenMar Motorsports ADRL World
Finals. Castellana went on to beat Jim Halsey in the final round of the ADRL
national event at the Texas Motorplex in
The ’57 Chevy driven by Joshua
Hernandez in ADRL Pro Extreme competition shows the effects of a meeting with
the wall at the Texas Motorplex in
Though coming up just a little
short of Billy Glidden in the Extreme 10.5 final at Ennis, Gary White and his
Titan Motorsports teammates left the
Pro Extreme Motorcycle racer Scott Gray (far lane) rewarded new sponsor Bionic Tonic with a win over Matt Prophit in the 4th annual LenMar Motorsports ADRL World Finals.
A steady stream of traffic
represents just part of the massive crowd that attended the 4th annual LenMar
Motorsports ADRL World Finals at the Texas Motorplex (upper right), in
ABOUT LENMAR MOTORSPORTS
LenMar Motorsports is a one-stop race shop in
ABOUT FLOWMASTER
Flowmaster, Inc. is housed in two ultra-modern
facilities in
ABOUT THE NATIONAL GUARD
The
National Guard is the oldest component of the Armed Forces of the
ABOUT
THE ADRL
Based in O’Fallon,
