he 34th Annual Great American Fox Hunt returned to Firebird Raceway with the traditional free admission for the ladies and featured the West Coast Outlaw Pro Mods, along with the jet dragsters and Funny Cars driven by Darren Bays, veteran driver Richard Smith, and the “Warhawk” driven by Alaskan Derek Snelsen.

The Fox Hunt was a race invented by the late, great announcer at Irwindale, Calif., Steve Evans. His idea was to allow all ladies to get in for free so that they would come to the races with their boyfriends or husbands who had to buy a ticket. The premise still holds true as ladies are admitted free to the Firebird Fox Hunt and the men still have to pay. A huge crowd was on hand for the Saturday evening race on June 25.  

Eight Outlaw Pro Mods from California and Oregon that made the trek to Eagle, Idaho, for the eight-car show. On the Friday night session it appeared that some of the crew chiefs might have been a bit crossed up by both the atmospheric conditions and the altitude as they appeared to not have enough power to get the car up on the tire, leading to tire shake or they had too much power which resulted in spinning the tires down track, the cars getting “loose” and aborting the run. 

However, this was not the case for a couple of the pioneers of Pro Mod racing on the West Coast. John Scialpi driving his “Wapadoo” ‘57 Bel Air and Rod Burbage in his exquisite ‘58 Corvette both went deep into the six-teens, with Burbage setting on the pole with a 6.12 /234.74 lap, followed by the Phelan, California, runner, Scialpi, who went 6.16/226.98.  

On the bump was Dan Myers in his very bright and colorful 1957 Chevy Cameo. (For you kids, that’s a pickup truck). In addition to the Pro Mods and jets there was a full list of bracket classes to run, including the all female “Fox Class” reserved for the ladies, tying in to the theme of the event.

Saturday’s cool weather was a clone of Friday’s with great atmospheric conditions. The racing started to heat up, though, in the second and final qualifying session. In this session a few more of the tuners started to get a handle on the combinations of the racing surface at the venerable facility, the temperature and the air of the high desert facility.