Two races for the half of each fleet that got shut out of the 1st round of the “64-Pack” inaugurals!
The harsh format of Drag City’s elimination series racing always eliminates half the fleet right out of the gate. This rarely means that these are “bad cars”or “bad drivers.” While its true that there are some cars that are poor performers, its equally true that just having a bad day, a bad start, or even a single bad move can eliminate a strong contender right at the start. While this is still a better format than always letting the fastest overall cars win, it does not provide the more finely honed trials of round robins and other more complex models of elimination-style competition. For this reason, the track has brought in a new series.
The “32-Car Hard Luck Hoedown” for muscle cars, and the “32-Car Slo-Mo Sloedown” for sports cars, are ways to give strong competitors who got eliminated in the first round of a full “64-Pack” competition a second chance at the trophy. The first two of these races were run in early April.
The run order of each race is determined by the race time turned in during the 64-pack competition, making it likely that each car is paired up with one it has a realistic chance of winning against. A slight handicap is built-in by the faster of the pair running on lane 2, which is fractionally slower than lane 1.
The 32-Car Hard Luck Hoedown
The overall winner was a crowd pleasing upset: Jeremiah “Lucky” Logan in his ’67 Chevy Nova SS. Named “The Slider” (officially: after the classic song by T-Rex, unofficially: due to the car’s tendency to slide off the track on the #8 banked turn at DC Mk. II), this Nova is powered by a radically built 327 small-block featuring solid lifters and aftermarket aluminum heads. He barely edged out the favorite for the tournament, Delmont “Digger” Darrow in “Never Been Caught”, the rough and rusty 350-powered ’41 Willys coupe disguising it’s fierce performance under a “barn find” patina. Darrow is consistently one of the fastest of the fast; putting him in second place is an anazing accomplishment for “The Slider!”
The 32-Car Slo-Mo Sloedown
The overall winner here is a textbook example of how a variety of factors, not the least of which is driver skill, can result in a victory by a slower car over a faster one. Most didn’t expect to see a 6-cylinder Jaguar based on a road-going version beat a Ford G.T. 40, but here was that result when the #20 E-type coupe “Guardian” driven by Hank “Hurricane” Houston edged out Kenny “Thriller” Diller in the #27 car named “Fire Engine.”
Houston’s Jaguar is a 1968 car equipped with the 4.2 litre engine custom built by legendary Jaguar tuner Team CJ in Austin, TX and still wearing its stock shade of “Ascot Fawn”, a color that gives the car a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” demeanor that took everyone by surprise…especially Diller!
