Words and photos by Ian Tocher
4/30/04

he track was fast, the night was warm, the beer was cold, and a pair of local heroes reached the final round of the main event. In other words, it was a perfect day of racing at Savannah Dragway Apr. 24, for more than 1,000 fans who packed the stands at the tree-lined eighth-miler near the Georgia coast.
Eleven cars showed up to vie for the $5,000-to-win 2nd Annual Outlaw 10.5 Challenge, with Coby Rabon picking up the top qualifier position with a 4.916-seconds pass in his turbocharged Mustang. Five cars made bye runs in the opening round of eliminations in order to get down to an eight-car field in the quarter-finals. That’s when the real racing started.

Coby Rabon set the standard in qualifying with a 4.916-seconds pass straight off the trailer.

Rabon looked set to dominate after posting another 4.90 in his bye, but ran into trouble in the next round against number-seven qualifier Blake Wilder and his blown ‘66 Rambler. Just as it appeared all over for Wilder, his clutch locked up just past half track and he surged past Rabon to win by nearly a car’s length. “We just got a new RacePac computer and we found out what we’ve been doing wrong in the past,” Wilder explained. “We were actually pulling the motor down too much and that caused it to unload the rear tires, because it didn’t have enough power to keep them loaded all the way down.”

Before the race, Blake Wilder said he wanted to send a hello to nephew Eric Ingram and his wife, both stationed with the Air Force in Japan after serving several months recently in Iraq.

Wilder went up against Barfield in the semis and looked to be on his way to another upset when Barfield’s car got out of the groove and drifted toward the rail in his right lane. But Wilder had his own trouble about the same time, heading for the center line. As he let off to gather it up, Barfield had already recovered and stormed past for the win.