With over 70 racers onsite at Mason Dixon Dragway nestled just outside of MD, VA, PA and Washington DC its the perfect location to merge the southern racers against the northern racers. Beautiful sunny skies and a cool 80 degrees, you really couldn’t ask for a more perfect day. Not only did we have the new addition of 7 ECPRA Pro Stocks but we merged Pro Mod and Vw Heritage Series A/GAS to have a combined total of 13 entries. The Air cooled Street Car Association brought 11 cars and in our bracket classes we had 23 in I/GAS and 16 in H/GAS.
In our I/GAS 7.99 and quicker it was proving to be survival of the fittest with 23 cars making the race. We had racers as far north as Connecticut and as far south as South Carolina. In the final round it was a true North vs South Shootout. Bucky Holling in 63 Ghia from South Carolina was paired up against New Jersey’s own Scott Pocaro. With a redlight start from Bucky the race was over before it even started. Now only was Scott busy promoting the race but he did a hell of a job racing it as well. Congrats to Scott and his entire family for the support.
H/GAS had 2 of our local racers making the final round. John Keedy from Maryland and Aaron Payne from Virginia. Unfortunately for Aaron he had shifting issues and it gave John the easy win at the top end.
In ASA it was once again the local legend of Gene Cook taking the win. With a very tough field of competitors such as Ryan Koenig, Anthony Consorte, Doug Hartman and Rob Schultz in the field you’d think they’d be a shoe in for the finals. However it was newcomer Brad Robertson making it all the way to the finals. Unfortunately for Brad his reaction time and ET just couldn’t compete with Gene in the finals. Gene took the win with a 6.72 @ 93mph.
Our two fastest classes of the day proved to be exciting as well. The ECPRA Pro Stocks made their first appearance at this event and brought 7 of the fastest naturally aspirated Vw Pro Stocks in the nation. In the finals it was #1 qualifier Jason Poynter from Texas against Oliver Frey from Virginia. Jason has a brand new Geers Engineering powerplant that’s been tearing up the ECPRA Pro Stock Class in 2017. However Oliver Frey had his number in the finals. Ollie was out of the gate first with a better reaction time and posted a 6.24 @ 108mph to Jason’s 6.27 @ 109mph.
In our fastest class of the day we decided to merge the Vw Heritage Series A/GAS with the ECPRA Pro Mod Class. Our rules are pretty much the same with a few minor differences. The results were astounding, we had one of the largest Pro Mod style events ever on the east coast. With a total of 13 entries mixed with Turbo Cars, Nitrous, Air cooled and Water cooled it proved to be some of the most exciting racing of the day. At the end of qualifying it looked as though #1 qualifier Stephen Hawes and #2 qualifier Gene Collier was going to run away with it. Stephen qualified with a 5.57 @ 134mph and Gene with a 5.63 @ 125mph. The rest of the field was 6.13 and slower. However we don’t race on paper and with so many cars on property it was going to be an endurance test on both drivers and equipment.
In the 2nd round things got exciting for some and depressing for the #1 and #2 qualifiers. At the conclusion of the round Gene was down with a broken transmission and Stephen was had engine problems. Since this is run on a Pro Ladder Stephen still had the semi final bye run into the finals. The other side of the ladder paired 2 cars from New York and they couldn’t be any different. It was Tim Vinkuns in his Turbo/Nitrous assisted air cooled beetle against Mike Pauciullo’s water cooled turbo powered GTI. Tim was out of the gate first with a .091 against Mike’s .232. However at the top end the GTI was chasing him down but Tim edged him out with a 6.07 @ 120mph against Mike’s quicker but losing 6.03 @ 132mph.
Our next and final A/GAS race is on September 17th at Maryland International Raceway in conjunction with the iRev (Import Revolution). Our final race for I/GAS will be on September 23rd at Numidia Dragway.