“Our plan was to run our race and not worry about anybody else,” Harris said about the strategy the team had for the Hot Rod Reunion.

So as the team continued to make laps at Reunion during qualifying the car just kept getting faster. So when it came time for eliminations Harris and the car was loaded for bear qualifying in the fifth position.

 Harris said he was in the zone again once eliminations got underway. The Nitro Thunder digger was also in the zone, looking more like a bracket car than a top fuel dragster. Running in the 5.7 second zone almost at will, it defeated Brendan Murry, Jim Murphy and Jimmy Young in the semis.

In the final round it would be a repeat of the Nightfire Nationals final rounds against their new nemesis Tony Bartone. Harris was in the zone in the finals, leaving the starting line first with a .075 to Bartone’s tardy .108.  As the cars headed down-strip, “Big Red” had one more 5.70 run in her. This was just enough to hold off Bartone’s 5.69 second run which had a booming top end charge of nearly 270 miles per hour. The margin of victory was just .0012 of a second. A wise man once said that an inch is as good as a mile. No truer words have ever been spoken, especially in this case.

The Posse loaded up and headed back to the mountains of Utah with their bounty: the victory at the Reunion and the world title.

In talking to Brett Harris this past week, some interesting news came out.

There is a possibility that the Harrises will be looking to sell their Nitro Thunder Funny car and put together another dragster. The reason for this is that maybe they are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for top fuel and lingering car counts. Brett said that, “the class seems to have leveled out and the dragster association is working hard to make there be a better show.”

Brett’s feelings about the NHRA were not as positive: “They (NHRA) have not given us any adequate input.” 

The association has sent proposals to them about either running a 426 with a two speed, or the same drivetrain package as the funny cars run now, and, according to Harris, the NHRA has refused to consider either proposal. 

DRO is planning to follow up with the NHRA Heritage Series to get their prospective on story.