Words and photos by Tim Marshall
9/8/06
While most of the press and fans were enjoying NHRA's Indy classic, LVMS in coordination with the Pacific Street Car Association put on one great show at the Strip in Las Vegas. It was three days in intense heat (105 degrees in the day and about 99 at night) but that did not hamper the top performances by all.
In the top class of PSCA racing, Pro Street, an all time quickest side by side ever was recorded by the hottest team on the circuit, that being the WFO/Dyno-Flo Cavalier of Steve Paulauskis and company and Fast Motorsports/Extreme Speed's ’57 Chevy of Ed Thornton, tuned by Shane Tecklenburg. In the final round of Pro Street both drivers left at the starting line together with a .049 RT for Steve and big Ed at .058. At the first flash of the
win light the large crowd just knew it was good, but hold on to your hats ladies and gentlemen, how about a 6.475, 218.05 mph for Paulauskis to Thornton’s close 6.560, 225.86 mph! That 6.476 is the quickest pass in PSCA history, period. Big Ed almost equaled his fastest speed ever which is 228 mph, also run at the Strip.“When I put the car in second gear it really started to fly,” Thornton explained after the race. “And I was reeling him in until I put it in high gear. We were 3.5 miles per hour faster at halftrack than we were on our 228 pass, but the engine started to overheat. Since we killed a motor earlier in the year when the temperature got too hot, Shane has a safety that makes the engine rich and pulls 10 degrees of timing out when the water is over 200. I guess we didn’t cool it down enough between rounds and it got to 200 just about when I put it in high gear. I don’t know if we could have caught him anyway, but we would have made it a little closer.”
Gil Neverez against Lee & Mary Baltzell’s hard-to-miss car. Mary is the only woman who runs with the PSCA.
All the glory in Pro Street did not go to the WFO/Paulauskis team though as on Saturday night they ran a special Pro Street bracket which was taken home by Gil Neverez from Las Vegas, NV, with his outstanding running Chevy Cavalier over WFO in the final. Neverez ran straight and true to a fine 6.84 to defeat the flying Cavalier of Paulauskis when he had to shut it off early getting a bit too sideways in the final round.
An outstanding 11 Pro Street cars were in attendance for the Labor Day event, including the fore mentioned plus Monty Berney’s crowd favorite ‘55 Chevy, Randy Walker’s famed El Camino, Lee and Mary Baltzell's
trick Trans Am, Clint and Jake Hairston's twin turbo Camaro, Jeremy Hanger's Studebaker, David Dedrickson's new Trans Am, and Mike Moffett.