- Race Coverage
- Meet David Hance
Shakin’ Them Up at the Shakedown
Outlaw 10.5 class legend Tim Lynch and longtime IHRA and NHRA Pro Stock racer John Nobile used Old Bridge Township Raceway Park's supremely prepared surface and primo conditions Sunday, Oct. 14, to clock jaw-dropping elapsed times and speeds that increased the profile even more of The Shakedown at E-Town independent event.
Also winning the fifth edition of the event that scribe Diana "The Doc" Thomas once warned "definitely ain't for crybabies, phonies, or posers -- [it's] for the hardest of the hardcore" were "Mustang Mike" Modeste (Drag Radial), and Bill Lutz (Heavy Street).
OUTLAW 10.5
Lynch served notice in Saturday's unofficial "warm-up" session that the Southern contingent hadn't driven up the Atlantic Coast for nothing. He stirred the early buzz with a 6.57-second, 232-mph pass, causing event promoter Dave Hance literally to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't imagining it.
Tim Lynch ran two 6.5s to set up the final round, a rematch of last year’s final round, where Lynch turned his third 6.5 – this time a record 6.534.
That run, along with a 20-degree drop in temperatures in the previous two days, was making Hance nearly giddy with joy. Raceway Park had hook, literally and figuratively. The track had great grip, and Hance had a mounting crowd in the pits and grandstands.
But Lynch, who already had carved his own Shakedown legend by becoming the first Outlaw driver to dip below seven seconds on the quarter-mile, reeled off three consecutive 6.5-second elapsed times Sunday to dominate the Outlaw 10.5 division.