On the other side of the ladder Jimmy Young, who was the dominant performer at this race for ET and speed, was racing Graves. Ms. Graves, in her first-ever national event racing a nitro flopper, was living the dream after advancing to the second round with a win over veteran NHRA nitro driver and tuner Richard Hartman. Then she ran into a veteran driver with arguable the best car in the field in Jimmy Young and the race was basically over in sixty feet.  Young’s .081 RT to Graves’ .209 gave him a lead that was going to be hard to beat especially when he ran a 4.03/192.88 (Top Speed of the meet) to Graves traction-less 5.58/95.38 effort.

Final Eliminations, which started about 10:30 p.m., found no AA/FC cars in the lanes; instead the fans saw Jimmy Young’s Top Fuel dragster and Marc White in Ousley’s nitro altered pull to the starting line.

The starting line was fogged in by a combination of nitro fumes and tire smoke after both cars did their burnouts. Both cars took the lane they had been running all evening with Young in the left lane and White in the right. Both cars pulled to the starting line and then refused to stage in a mini staging duel. Finally both cars staged and the green light blossomed. Both drivers rose to the challenge and both had excellent reaction times.

For the first time in eliminations Jimmy Young got left on as veteran driver Marc White had a great .087 RT to Young’s close .089. The cars were side by side to the 60-foot lights with White slightly ahead with a 1.0624 to Young’s 1.0757. Just past half-track Young’s dragster drove over a slight hump in the track that hadn’t bothered the car before but this time caused the rear tires on his digger to shake and spin. Young coasted to a 4.81 while in the other lane White drove a typical Fuel Altered run with the car all over the racetrack from half-track on and White never lifting. The 4.18/166.98 lap was easily good enough for the win.