PRO EXTREME ELIMINATOR
When Floridian Michael Neal’s familiar purple Chevy Lumina clocked a career-best 3.980-second, 184.83 mph as the first supercharged car down the track, it became apparent that the cloudless skies would heat HRP’s infamous surface enough to ensure traction. It was the sixty-degree ambient air temperature which caused one well-known crew chief to remark, “The trick to this race is to avoid blatant stupidity”. With almost unlimited power on tap, the objective for most teams was to cautiously apply horsepower in an attempt to make the sixteen-car field with only two qualifying sessions available. When the ADRL’s World Record Holder pulled to the line in the third pair of the first session, however, many knowledgeable fans expected to see a result of tire spin, shake, or smoke. Jason Scruggs’ renowned red ’63 Stingray launched with a suspiciously conservative 0.995-second sixty-foot Elapsed Time but almost immediately began darting across its lane. The early tire spin was compounded by a leaking fuel line which produced a rooster tail of spray over the roof of the car while completely covering the windshield in liquid. Clocking a still-amazing 2.557-second 330-feet ET, Scruggs brought the crowd to its feet by recording his fourth-quickest eighth-mile run ever at 3.768 seconds coupled to the fastest doorslammer speed ever- 205.47 miles per hour! Eclipsing his own ADRL record of 205.22 mph, Scruggs quickly set the tone of the 2008 ADRL season by starting up where he left off at the end of 2007!
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The rest of the first session, however, was marked by only two other sub-four second passes; hometown hero Josh Hernandez clocked a 3.94/192.36 effort in Tommy Lipar’s National Guard-sponsored ‘57 Bel-Air tuned by Pro Mod legend Jim Oddy and his son Dan and fellow Texan Gene Hector, at the wheel of Scruggs’ original 406 ci, Screw blower equipped small block Chevy-powered three-second wonder, posted a strong 3.98/183.32. Houston veteran Thomas Patterson, returning to competition after year-long layoff, suffered a stuck throttle at the conclusion of a 4.00/186.29 in his new “HeadHunter” ‘53 Corvette and smacked the HRP wall hard enough to retire the car and Travis Swearingen’s popular “rat rod” ‘41 Willys AmeriCar coasted to a blower belt-pitching 4.05/179.83. Every other run in the session was a shaking, spinning or sideways effort giving a clear indication of which teams made the smartest tuning decisions.