In round two all the players had 5-second potential and the first pair up was Uncle Bucky and the Utah Posse of the “Nitro Thunder” camp. At the green Harris had a nice healthy six-hundredths lead on Hentges but this wasn’t going to last for long, as the power in Bucky’s tuneup started to eat up that lead by 330 feet. A 5.88 for Hentges took care of Harris’s 5.99-second attempt.

After the race there were no long faces in the Utah Posse’s camp. Jack Harris was pleased with the progress of his new experiment. 

“We took something we thought might work (small cubic inch engine and transmission) never tested it and went 5.99 and 5.98 right out of the box.” He added, “We are very pleased!”

The other paring was Rupert and the Zeigler car. Rupert was getting tuning input from his father and also from Gary Densham, plus he had Brad Littlefield calling the shots in the clutch can. Somewhere between all of them, they found a way to make big power, which equates into big mile per hour. 

In qualifying Rupert went 247.79 just two-tenths of a mile per hour short of Mark Hentges’ track record. In round one that record went the way of the Dodo bird as he reset the record by a truckload, running a 250.62. The guys who used to hang on the fence as kids at the “County” and watch their dads race back in the day had found something, and were using it to their advantage big-time.  

The two cars left together but Rupert had to give it a stab at the 330 cone and that put Twig out in front. That only lasted until about the 800-foot mark, though, as the bright orange Satellite started spinning the tires and moving around. But by then Rupert was like a runaway freight train and he drove around Zeigler with another 245-plus mph charge to take the win.

That peddle job of Rupert’s slowed him enough to give Hentges lane choice in the final round, and once again he took the left lane, the same lane that he took in the finals at the Nightfire Nationals last August where he set the mph record but was on the victim of a monumental gate job by Tim Boychuk. 

Hentges seemed bound and determined for that not to happen again, as he saved his best reaction time for the final. A .071 light to the .120 light of Rupert put the black and white Arrow well out in front and it looked as though it was going to be redemption for last August. Then at 900 feet a wisp of smoke started to trail the Benchmark RV Centers Plymouth, and that’s all the bright red Camaro of Rupert would need as he blasted past Hentges, whose engine was now killing every mosquito nest within a hundred miles of Firebird Raceway, to take the win 5.90 to a slowing 6.06 seconds.