ET Drag Racing

Fun in the Sun at Bradenton, Florida

3 Days of Fun

Words and photos by John DiBartolomeo

FRIDAY, NOV. 11

Steve Dweck, the Friday winner.

Day 1 of the third annual Fun In The Sun Bracket Race began under (what else) sunny Florida skies. Eighth-mile racing is the order for the weekend and a great group of racers showed up to do battle with $10,000 on the line going to today’s winner. In addition to electronics Super Pro-style cars, footbrake cars were welcomed and ran separately until a winner is chosen after which that winner is fed into the next corresponding Super Pro round. And as has been custom in recent times, door cars were run separate from dragsters for as long as there are door cars.

Eliminations began at 2 p.m. and over 150 cars made the first round call with 64 of them being door cars. Strange Engineering awarded $200 cash to the Best Losing Package of the first round and the first recipient of any money this weekend was “Disco Dean” Karns.

S&W Race Cars awarded a $250 gift certificate to the Best Losing Package in the fourth round and that “lucky” person was Fred Angers from Canada.

With nine cars left in competition in the sixth round, the combatants were Mike Bloomfield Jr., Todd Burks, Dave Triplett, Randy Folk, Adam Bitzanis, Max Brewer, Steve Dweck, John Biermann and Elizabeth Keene. The survivors of that round included Bitzanis receiving the bye run and Burks, Dweck, Keene and Triplett making their way into round number seven.

In the quarterfinals, Triplett received the odd-car bye while Keene and Dweck were the other survivors. With his better reaction time, Dweck earned the rights to the bye in the semifinals, which moved him right to the final to face off with either Keene or Triplett.

In the semis, Triplett used a slightly better reaction coupled with his elapsed time to give him a .019 package to defeat the lady Keene who was equally just as tough with a .022 package. And so, the finals came down to two-time Million Dollar Race finalist Triplett against the Hollywood, Florida-based Dweck.

The final was sort of anticlimactic as Triplett turned on the red light by only four-thousandths of a second, handing Dweck a well-deserved $10,000.