(Words and Photos by Doug Gregory) We caught up with the Straight-Axle Mafia for the first time in 2022 at Edgewater Sports Park. If you’re unfamiliar with Edgewater, it’s a 1/4mi track located in the extreme Southwest Ohio township of Cleves (which coincidentally is near the Gravelrama site). This is a great facility that has been rejuvenated in the last few years and has seen a resurgence in popularity.
If you don’t know about the Straight-Axle Mafia then let me give a brief description. SAM is a bunch of fun-loving racers that don’t let the quest to win get in the way of a good time. To keep things simple there aren’t a lot of rules with chief among them being: straight axle, pre-1980, doors, no EFI, and race on a 0.25 second index bracket. Why a 0.25 index ladder…? Because it keeps costs down and competition tight. Typically in the early rounds cars with the same or similar indexes are paired so the runs are more heads-up. The thing is there are super low-budget cars and some immaculate, expensive rigs and all of them play well together. With the focus being on fun and there being little fussing this group has grown in popularity and cars have traveled from as far as Alabama, Illinois, and Michigan to run with SAM on the tracks they frequent in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio.
SAM runs an eclectic mix of cars with a near-equally diverse array of power. There are many Fords and Mercurys with actual Ford power including big-blocks. There’s a Pontiac with a real poncho 455. A ’55 Chevy and an Anglia sport 409, W-motor goodness. Yes, we have a plethora of SBCs as well, but one of those stands out and it was the first time I’d seen it since the 2015 HRR at Beech Bend. Blew-by-U was acquired by one of the Mafia (Chris Crable) and he’d only made about a handful of passes before this event. It’s my understanding the car has sat for a few years and needs a bit more tweaking. However, it’s also my experience this car is seriously fast, but I still have not seen it leave the starting line on an arrow straight pass.
This is a two-part report so stay tuned for the rest of the story.
Fantastic feature on *real cars* . Thanks for this!!
We approve!