In terms of raw performance numbers, there may never be another small tire drag race like Sweet 16 2.0. The event happened last weekend at South Georgia Motorsports Park and it featured two classes. The monstrous Radial vs The World category was running for $101,000 and the always fun X275 division was up for $50,000 to win. Performance marks were completely and utterly destroyed on every level from personal bests to outright world records. Individual engine combos saw their best passes made, and only 500 people got to see it in person. Wait, what?
This event was designed and is executed because promoter Donald Long wants to have some fun. By only selling 500 spectator tickets at a premium price of a few hundred bucks, he has a nearly empty race track and far fewer (ok, no) distractions or diversions that race teams have to deal with. With just two classes of competition the track does not get abused and the traffic level on it stays perfectly managed. We ran 11 or 12 qualifying sessions of Radial Vs The World over two days before eliminations started. The bump spot was the quickest in history. The field contained the quickest turbo car ever, the quickest small block car ever, the quickest centrifugally supercharged car ever, the quickest nitrous car ever, the quickest bump spot ever, and virtually everyone in it had run a personal best to make the cut. Insanity.
Eliminations were wildly entertaining with the normal upsets and lunacy in round one, plenty of great driving and loads of competition from top to bottom. This video shows you every run and the path that was taken to get to the $101,000 prize awarded at the end of the day on Saturday. Oh, did we mention that the $101,000 is paid in cash!? Yep…because that’s how the Duck rolls.
