IHRA Sportsman Racers Wrap Up Season

Words by Larry Crum
Photos courtesy IHRA

At the IHRA Summit Racing Equipment World Finals presented by RacingJunk.com at Virginia Motorsports Park, nine drivers from different backgrounds were awarded world championships at the International Hot Rod Association’s season finale Sunday, Oct. 16, in Dinwiddie, Virginia.

Glenn Wright (Top Sportsman), J.B. Donati (Top Dragster), Gianni Cantusci (Super Stock), Phil Combs (Stock), Barry Ryan (Quick Rod), Steve Furr (Super Rod) and Chip Johnson (Hot Rod) all walked away winners of the Summit Tournament of Champions and J.P. Schuster (Box) and Matt Hawk (No Box) added wins in the Summit SuperSeries to earn the title of world champion – the first for all but two drivers.

“This is my first Ironman. I have been runner-up several times, been to all these Ironman Classic races, but I always choke,” Combs said. “Not today. Nobody gave me a shot to win this thing in Stock and I felt that they overlooked me. That really helped me rise to the occasion.”

After a grueling season, over 200 racers made their way to Virginia from 21 states and five Canadian provinces to participate in the Summit World Finals culminating with two championship tournaments Sunday afternoon. All of the drivers had to earn their way into the tournament and, once there, had to compete on the track to decide the champions in each of the nine classes.

One of the most unsuspecting winners from Sunday’s big race was Howell, Michigan’s Barry Ryan. A longtime racer in the Midwest, Ryan was so unassuming that final round opponent Nick Folk had to do an online search just to find some information about the man he was about to meet.

And even that didn’t help. Ryan hammered the tree with a .007 light and ran a near-perfect 8.901, 161.69 in the 8.90 index class to take the Quick Rod crown, his first career championship. Folk ran a close 8.938 at 160.92 mph.

“As a racer, the name Folk scares you. So I was surprised when Nick’s dad, Ron, come up to us after the race and made the comment that Nick had never heard of us and he had to look us up on the Internet. He then said that when he saw what we were cutting for lights he said ‘I think we have a problem. I don’t know who this guy is, but he is mowing people down,’” Ryan said. “That is quite the complement coming from that bunch.”