(Words and Photos by Darr Hawthorne) -After spending the last six weekends at one dragstrip or another and a week at the Vegas SEMA Show, for me it was a coin flip if I’d do it on one more weekend for the Southern California Sand Drag Association Finals at the Soboba Casino in San Jacinto, CA. Saturday was cloudy with off and on light drizzle, but the smell of 2-stroke and racing fuel out on the riverbed behind a busy SoCal IndianCasino told us we’d arrived at the right place. With heavy-duty farm equipment supplied by motorsports legend and local mega-farmer Larry Minor, his crew repeatedly groomed a finely manicured 300-foot sand and dirt dragstrip and shutdown area all day and late into the night over the three days of racing and timed runs.
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The staging lanes had a steady stream of Jr. Dragsters, ATV’s and paddle-tires on bikes with expansion chambers separated from the faster and larger air-cooled buggy’s, dragsters and tube chassied “Jeep” replicas. Many of those racecars sport AJPE and BAE on the billet cylinder heads with immense twin-screw superchargers.The SCSDA has assembled an enthusiastic following of racers who spend as much time pounding the sand as they do hanging out together in the pits with their families, friends and fellow racers.
After two days of qualifying for hundreds of vehicles, Sunday eliminations in the quickest classes found Billy Morris double-dipping by wining in Top Eliminator driving a dragster tuned by drag boat racer Eddie Knox, over Paul Graham who broke in the Semi’s. Morris also won on a solo run in a pink Top Fuel dragster running a final round 2.382 elapsed time at 142.04 mph tuned by funny car crew chief Jake Sanders – down the 300-foot dirt track.Gary Mink dominated Top Alcohol with repeated 2.4-second runs, defeating Jim Hammond in the final round. Jimmy DePasse made history in the potent DePasse & Otis supercharged Jeep, who not only won Pro Mod Unlimited – he also set a new A/Pro Jeep World Record of 2.796 seconds making DePasse the first ever Jeep in the 2.7-second zone.
This is a list of the winners at SCSDA Finals at Soboba Casino.
Top Fuel: Billy MorrisTop Alcohol; Gary Mink
Top Eliminator: Billy Morris
Fast Fours: Daniel King
Pro Mod Unlimited: Jimmy DePasse
Motorcycle Pro 1: Brad Olson
Motorcycle Pro 2: Jeff Coale
Junior Dragster: Ryan Rodriguez
Juniors: Kolton Wolfgang
Mini Junior Dragster: Levi Suggs
Peewees: Deegan Gutierrez
GALLERY:
Damn fast on the dirt! Awesome that Larry Minor is still playing on the dirt too.
We have concrete and asphalt where I live. Used to do this when horses were still in the barn.