(Words and photos by Tommy Lee Byrd) – Memorial Day weekend is always packed with activities, so Tommy Lee Byrd hit the road to the small town of Maynardville, Tennessee, which is just north of Knoxville, and home to Knoxville Drag Strip. The event is called Drag Bash and the fellow that organizes it is Scott Abbott. He holds the event twice a year, giving all of his hot rod buddies a chance to get out on the track and make some noise.

Drag Bash is a nostalgia-themed drag racing event, but there was also a car show and swap meet, as well as big wheel and bicycle races for the kids. The weather was perfect for a day at the drag strip, so Drag Bash was packed with awesome cars, including a group of gassers, ranging from a Sunbeam Alpine to one of the cleanest Two-Lane Blacktop ’55 Chevy tribute cars we’ve ever seen.

The final four in heads up racing came down to an Anglia gasser, a ’55 Chevy, a Model A pickup and an International pickup. The Anglia was the most mild mannered of the bunch, with the ’55 boasting a nitrous fed 6.0 LS engine, the Model A pickup with a nitrous fed LS7, and the International pickup with a turbocharged 5.3 LS engine. The eliminations were run off of a flag start with no E.T. displayed, but we’ll tell you right now that the times were awesome. We saw the ’55 bust off a 6.50 pass on a conservative nitrous tune earlier in the day, the Model A truck ran some VERY low 6’s and the International clicked off a 5.83 on a test run. The finals came down to the two pickups, and it was a wild one—both trucks put down more than the track could handle, and John Gray peddled his way to the win in the turbo International.

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