(Words and photos by Greg Burrow) – Competitors in the popular Big Dog Shootout at historic Piedmont Dragway have two complete seasons under a new rules package, designed to make competition closer and to allow teams the luxury of NOT having to rebuild engines between rounds. The result was a group of cars that fall into the Top Sportsman format and not the Pro Modified type car. Two of the current drivers that decided to test the week before the event were Scott Lang, with his supercharged Mustang and tuning from Charles Terrell. The other driver was Jason Harris, in the popular red Corvette that Robert Hayes built and guided to wins for Jason.
The result was that Lang was low qualifier and was able to set top MPH in qualifying and rounds one and two. The number was a 4.009 qualifying effort and a top speed of 185.48, before the night was over. For Jason Harris, the Billy Albert powered responded with several 3 second ETs to put Jason into the elite group of 3 second drivers in competition. The number now is 4.
So qualifying went as follows: Scott Lang at 4.009, Mike Graham at 4.025, Brian Shrader at 4.034 and Tim Lawrence at 4.041 for the top four. Fifth was Travis Harvey, last month’s winner, at a 4.042 with Jason Harris at 4.046, Cam Clark at 4.058 and Justin Wall in at 4.073. That gave us a field of 8 cars from 4.009 to 4.073. Did we say close? No able to qualify were Ken Ellison, April winner, Ronnie Gardner, Brett Nesbitt and “The Hook”, Dane Wood with no oil pressure.
As with last month’s event, a drawing of the cards was held, before round 1 and went as follows; Lang with a 4.01 to defeat Cam Clark’s 4.07, Mike Graham used a 4.01 to defeat Justin Wall’s 4.08, Brian Shrader ran a 3.99 at 182mph to defeat Travis Harvey and Jason Harris 4.02 defeated Tim Lawrence. The semi’s went as follows: Jason Harris ran a 3.98 to defeat Mike Graham and become the 4th driver in the 3 second ET zone. Then Brian Shrader ran a 3.99 at 181.81 to defeat Scott Lang’s game 4.02 at another 185 mph. This set the finals with the first time both finalists ran in the 3’s. In a super close run, Jason laid down a 4.02 at 182 with Brian right behind but with a slight bobble close to the finish line. So it was that the May edition of “The Big Dog Shootout” resulted in a first ever win for Wine Racing, both finalists were 3 second cars and were also nitrous cars. Other best included Travis Harvey, no surprise, with the best reaction time at a .013 on the tree.
Ken Myrick won the 7.49 Rico’s Reel Street, and Todd Comer won the 6.00 Outlaw Door Slammer bracket, presented by Carolina Classic Car Restoration, over Bill Ritts. Finishing up the April event, Chris Dixon won the O’Reilly Auto Parts, Outlaw Door Slammer bracket.
Hope to see all of you in June at “The DoorSlammer Capital of the World”, Piedmont Dragway.
