(Jeff Burk photo)

There was little breeze that hot and muggy Saturday night so at around midnight when the X275 finals went off the starting line area was a hazy scene with tire smoke and nitrous purges hanging in the 90+ degree air making the cars and starting line hard to see.

Matt Bell, driving his 400 ci SBF-powered ‘92 Mustang, using a 88 mm turbocharger for a power adder rolled into the beams against Stanley Sutton’s ‘85 S-10 Chevy that has a nitrous oxide-injected 421 ci small block Chevy under the hood. Bell’s Ford had been putting down some big numbers, consistently recording ET’s in the 5.40′s throughout the night. Bell was the odds-on favorite in the classic Ford vs Chevy, blown vs carbed showdown.

(Jeff Burk photo)

Sutton left first with the pickup’s wheels in the air. Bell was right behind (more than a tenth based on the drivers’ RT’s) and when the turbocharged Mustang started “marching” on the last half of the track as turbo cars do, it appeared the Mustang might run the Chevy pickup down. The pair looked to be side-by-side at the finish line, but when the win light came in Sutton’s lane it signaled that the Chevy pickup had crossed the win stripe first by virtue of a holeshot. Incredibly, both cars ran IDENTICAL ET’s to the thousandth of a second! On a holeshot Stanley Sutton was the $3,000 winner of the inaugural X275/DKR Race at the Grand Opening of Dyno Dom’s Sikeston Raceway!

Stanley Sutton (Calvert City, KY) ET – 5.669, MPH – 123.22, RT – .479 def Matt Bell (Normal, IL) ET – 5.669, MPH – 145.63, RT – .601