PRO NITROUS

The Pro Nitrous class had 13 entries for what is normally a 16-car field but there were some quality cars just the same including racer Doug Riesterer who got off work Friday afternoon in Victoria, Texas, and drove 17 hours to Gateway Motorsports Park in Madison, Ill., in time for the Saturday morning last chance qualifying shot.

As it turned out his long drive paid off as he defeated veteran ADRL nitrous racer Burton Auxier in the finals of Pro Nitrous. Auxier made a pretty good trip himself hauling his race car operation from West Virginia to race.

Second-generation racer Rickie Jones, driving his new RJ Race Cars 2012 Camaro, qualified low with an impressive 3.800/196.76 effort and then in the second round got beat by eventual winner Riesterer, who equaled Low ET for the class by recording his own 3.800 ET. Auxier defeated former Extreme Ten-Five Battle of the Belts winner Jamie Hancock, who has moved up from the Ten-Five ranks to Pro Nitrous.

The Pro Nitrous final was a great drag race. Auxier left first with a .022 light to Riesterer’s .032, but by the 330-ft mark Riesterer had caught and pulled ahead of Auxier by less than two feet. He managed to hold that advantage to the win stripe getting there just.0061 seconds (approximately 21 inches) before Auxier.

It was Riesterer’s first win in almost two years and he won this race coming from the number seven qualifying spot.

“We put a little more in it because it was Burton, but it was a good run and it felt good,” Riesterer said. “This feels great, it really does. We thought we had a car capable of winning in Bristol…”