There are a couple of wild finals at the 2017 US Street Nationals and we have both of them on the blog for you today. The Limited Drag Radial final saw one car blow up and the other wheelie through the lights. We have that video on the front page as well. This time we’re looking at the Pro Drag Radial Warz/Radial Wars/Radial vs The World class final that pitted Barry Mitchell and Mark Woodruff against each other. These were the two best and most consistent cars of the weekend with Mitchell having reset the radial world record about 48 hours before this match up. Woodruff was a model of consistency, living in the 3.80s run after run.
To get to this point Mitchell waded his way through the field but Woodruff had a different path. A first round bye and then a second round break single afforded his team what amounted to a pair of test runs. They handed their business in the semis and were clearly thinking of stepping on it for the final against what is now the most brutal radial equipped car on Earth.
As you will see, Woodruff comes of the starting line clean and things seemed to be working well until about the 330. At that point the car lost traction and Woodruff had to call on every ounce of his sizable experience to prevent an absolute disaster. Yes, he hit the wall but this could have been a truly horrible wreck had he not wrestled with the car. You’ll see what we’re talking about below.
All accounts are that Woodruff plans on being at Lights Out 8 in just a couple of weeks! The trash is already going hard.
Going to ask possibly stupid question here. Could the cars have yaw sensors that automatically pop the chute when they get crossed up like this?
Good thinking Mr. Benning! Crazy trimarans/ catamarans have newly designed release mechanisms for their sheeting lines, releasing the sails when they’re soon to tip over. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on drag cars when the driver’s got his hands full, literally.