Words and photos by Bret Kepner
9/27/04

iversity is alive and well in Gateway International Raceway's new Street Car Shootout program. With nineteen events completed, the series has crowned fourteen different champions and has featured one hundred sixty-four different qualifiers out of over two thousand seven hundred entries. The series has also attracted over fourteen hundred registered racers. Adding to the success of the new program is the fact Fords and Chevrolets have each won fifty percent of the nineteen Shootout final rounds.

The Street Car Shootout program, sponsored by St. Louisans Dwayne Rall and Rob Gibbons with their Southside City Speed Shop, (5616 Gravois, 314-481-7500), features a simple format. Held during GIR's Tuesday Night Street Car Drags, all entries are given a permanent driver's number and a laminated driver's ID card. During the event, (an open timed trial affair for $15 entry), all drivers are automatically ranked by elapsed time using the track's CompULink timing system. When qualifying concludes at 10:00 p.m., each of the sixteen quickest qualifiers is awarded a large "Fastest Street Car Shootout Qualifier" decal and the two quickest qualifiers (or alternates, if needed) race heads-up for Winner and Runner-Up trophies. While the decals and trophies are provided by Rall and Gibbons, it's interesting to note that both have competed...and won Qualifier stickers...in cars prepared by their own Southside City Speed Shop!

Drag Racing Online has taken a keen interest in the program, noting that qualifiers to date have included 409-powered '63 Impalas, Eagle Talons and Mitsubishi Eclipses, Ford Fairmonts, Toyota Supras, S-10 pickups, '66 AC Cobras, Nissan SXs, and even a few Dodge Vipers! Therefore, DRO will maintain a regular results section for the 2004 SCSS Street Car Shootout series. After all, it's drag racing in its most pure form!

SCSS SHOOTOUT RESULTS -- SEPT. 21, 2004

Lance Dudley avenged his May 11th runner-up to become the fourteenth different winner of the nineteen completed events in the 2004 Southside City Speed Shop Street Car Shootout Series. A tremendous field of entries made for the fifth largest event of the season while incredible weather conditions produced more new series records.