As you read yesterday, Milan was not kind to either myself or Angry Grandpa, with our luck running out right about the first elimination run in the Modern Street Hemi Shootout bracket race. But that was only one story out of many that occurred on the strip during the MSHS HEMI’nsanity race. HHP Performance’s record-holding Hellcat was on fire, fogging the starting line for mosquitoes and just about every other possible flying creature before ripping off another nitrous-infused run down the track. The Hellcat Brackets had cars howling down the track, but meanwhile, in the East Coast Moparts pits, there was a different kind of howling: Burleson, who recently made a bunch of changes to his Magnum wagon, was finding no love on the track. Except for an anomaly 10.9 blast, the Magnum was more on par with our 300C…it launched softly, shifted early, and pissed off the owner at every turn, it seemed. Meanwhile, Patrick Zabst was working both the MSHS Bracket class and the Super Street class over. Wendy Robertson and the “BRMSTK” Charger were out when the starter cooked itself, and as for John Lewis and his orange Challenger, every time it fired off to go to the staging lanes was an event that usually included the words, “Start, you bitch!” from someone, but once it got to the lanes, it couldn’t be stopped.
As I walked around shooting photos, I noticed an interloper on the other side of the track. I didn’t get much information out of the owner of this monster of a 1968 Dodge Charger, except that it’s “a dog”, “not that fast”, and would be a disappointment if I stuck around to see it run. Point blank, I called bullshit on everything he said. If you don’t know why seeing the name “Moran” on this car has meaning, go do some research on Mike Moran and his Pinto, Camaro and Monte Carlo.
(Editor’s Note: I was running on four hours of sleep a night for a week and was brain-fried from the heat, but that still doesn’t excuse bad information. My apologies for the paragraph that was here. Here is correct information, provided by Erik of BFNY Performance. -McTaggart)
The next race I caught was between John Lewis’s orange Challenger and Troy Aves’ Dart (the one that won the original Roadkill Nights last year) for the Super Pro title. With the majority of the East Coast Moparts group hanging near the finish line, we watched what proved to be the closest race of the event: Lewis came off of the line sketchy, but by the end of the track had freight-trained his way to the point that if it weren’t for the scoreboards, we wouldn’t have known who won. That close. And just as we were coming to terms with Lewis’s win, Burleson noticed that the orange Challenger was sitting just off of the return road and not moving. Crap…did the nitrous prove to be too much? A few of us started to run before we learned that he had (finally) aired out the laundry. After a moment the Challenger fired up and a manic Lewis pulled into the pits.
In the King of the Hill race, Lewis faced off against the Pro car of Chris Harrigan. Harrigan’s all-black Charger is a legitimate badass, even by the upper-eschelon groups, and even though Lewis gave it one hell of a run, Harrigan took the King of the Hill honors.
After packing up the trailers, loading up the cars, and enjoying a nice cruise back to the hotel in Wixom, we settled down the ways we all deserved: beer and liquor for some, barbecue for others, a celebratory burnout or three for someone…and as for me and several others, a detailing by Motor City Detail before calling it a night.
