As good as the first round was, the semis were better. Bowen and Halladay were the first two racers in the first round. As was his habit, Halladay had only changed oil and put fuel in his car. In fact, the Telstar team never had the pan, heads or supercharger off all weekend.

The Bowens had wounded their motor yet again, breaking something in the bottom end that also went through the motor and ruined their camshaft, but they were able to borrow enough parts from their pals in the pits to get the engine back together.

As they were towing to the lanes I asked tuner Mike Bowen what he did to the tune-up for this race against Halladay. He shot me a big grin and said, “More blower, more nitro. I have to tune it up if we’re going to get to finals.”

The tune-up worked as Bowen (shown left) buried Halladay with a career best 5.887/244.96, but there was ‘”death smoke” coming out of the headers when Bowen stepped off the throttle after the finish line.

Romine and Hale were next to the starting line and Romine answered the 5.88 challenge that Bowen had issued with a 5.843/243.63 clocking of his own, which was just a hundredth off the KCIR track and DRO Challenge record. Hale spun the tires hard just past the 330 lights in the right lane and coasted the rest of the way down track.