Words by Jeff Burk, Photos by Jeff Burk and Don Eckert

For the second straight DragRacingOnline.com AA/FC Challenge race, rain caused the final round to be carried over to the next event. At the previous Indy event a quick shower late in the day caused the Goodguys officials to call the race after many attempts to get it finished.

Paul Romine drove his Mike Cavalieri-tuned ’79 Mustang to the postponed final round from Indy with a win over Shawn Bowen’s Firebird. The win gave him the points lead for the series.  (Jeff Burk photos)

At Cordova it was a little different:
after the first two pair in the first round a serious storm came through with lightning,
wind and rain blowing sideways. After about a 2½-hour delay, the track was dried and racing resumed in front of a small but
hardy group of fans. Unfortunately, with the two hours required for the Funny Car crews to service their cars properly (this isn’t the NHRA where they have 10 crew guys and are used to servicing the cars in 75 minutes) the track simply ran out of time.

After the semi-finals in AA/FC were completed at around 11:00 p.m. it became obvious that since all of the cars left in the lanes were on their final rounds, it would be about 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. before the Funny Cars would be ready. So, faced with the fact that the track wouldn’t see a tire for an hour and a half at least, the dew that would surely come up on the track surface, and safety concerns for the drivers, DRO’s Jeff Burk, responsible for the AA/FC Challenge series, went to track operator Scott Gardner and they agreed that the best thing would be to split the money between finalists Doc Halladay and Kris Krabill and bring the two back to finish the race at Cordova’s World Series of Drag Racing in late August, the scheduled fourth of six events for the DRO AA/FC Challenge.