Next pairing featured Burbage and Diedrich in two of the most beautiful cars on the property. Burbage was geeked at the start and had a .032 reaction time to Diedrich’s late .111. Burbage was the easy winner.

The final pair in the first round pitted Marc Meadors and Nickelson. Both drivers were a bit lethargic at the starting line, but there was nothing lethargic about the performance of the “Pure Hell 2” Camaro as his 6.13 easily covered the shut-off 7.18 of Nickelson.

In the semifinals it was Smith and Burbage facing off on one side of the ladder and Meadors and Scialpi on the other. In round two Burbage reportedly pushed out a blower manifold gasket, which caused an oil leak. The Burbage team could not get the problem repaired as each time they fired the engine it leaked oil, so Smith had a single into the final.

In the other semi final match up it was Meadors’ blown ’69 Camaro versus Scialpi’s supercharged ’57 shoebox. Meadors had an almost telepathic .004 RT against a very strong .031 for Scialpi, but that holeshot was coupled with a 6.22 ET and Meadors easily got the win when Scalpi could only deliver an off-pace 6.32-second run.

In the finals it was going to be Smith and Meadors. While it was routine between round maintenance for the Meadors team, it was anything but for the Smith bunch. Their engine had pushed out a head gasket on the left side of the motor on the semifinal bye run and needed to be replaced. Not a big deal for the Smith team which is made up of four total people. 

However, there was one other minor problem for the Smith bunch: They had also broken the rear gears. So, while the Smiths were busy changing head gaskets, the rear of the car was attacked by the Rod Burbage crew, completely swapping out rear ends in time to get the car to the starting line for the final. 

At the green it was Smith again out on his opponent, as he hung three on Meadors and never looked back. Smith drove through some shake and made it to the stripe in his best run of the weekend, 6.29 seconds, as Meadors was shaking violently and tried to drive through it with no avail.