LeWayne Brown

TAO at Houston Motorsports Park

Extreme Meltdown I

Words and photos by Joe McHugh

The Texas Automatic Outlaws rolled into Houston Motorsports Park Saturday, May 17, as part of the first Extreme Meltdown event of the year that also featured the 5.80 index class, Ultra Street and the ever popular X275s.

This was the second event of the 2014 season for The Texas Automatic Outlaws and with beautiful springtime Texas weather the racing promised to be spectacular. Thirteen entries were on hand to attempt to qualify for the eight-car elimination ladder, and a large crowd filled the HMP facility to enjoy the action.

Trent Wilson

Pro Mod Qualifying

The first pair to try and negotiate the HMP eighth mile had Brent Jones’s Chevy pickup and Trent Wilson in his ‘68 Camaro. Both machines ran straight through, logging respectable opening numbers with Jones running 4.59 at 147.83 while Wilson, a regular Top Sportsman competitor in NHRA LODRS Division 4, posted 4.47 at 150.00.

Next Bryant Anderson rolled to the line and ran a 4.94 at 143.13 with Dennis Hendrix in the other lane running 4.85 at 149.06.

Kevin Grub was next to the line in his gorgeous blown ’55 Chevy with Bengt Blomberg and his black nitrous-motivated Firebird. Blomberg was debuting a new 600-plus cubic inch powerplant at the event and unfortunately lost fire after his burnout and couldn’t get it refired to make a run. Running a single, Grubb left hard and had to get out of throttle and then back on it and ran a pedestrian 5.21 at 115.24.