DRAGSTERS DOMINATE ULTIMATE SUPER PRO CHALLENGE III

A $5,000-$10,000-$5,000 race at Montgomery (Alabama) Motorsports Park over the Oct. 29-31 weekend for a mere $100 pre-entry fee ($150 at the gate, with $50 and $75 buybacks) turned into a final-round dragster fest as the diggers dominated the 365-car field, although doorslammers outnumbered the rails by three-to-one.

Familiar bracket names also dominated the eighth-mile, one-buyback-per-race Ultimate Super Pro Challenge III event, including "Mr. Montgomery," Hugh Meeks III, who won on Friday, "Neon" Leon

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Robertson (above) of Nashville, the $10,000 winner on Saturday, and Bruce "Ty-Ty" Mouat, who hails from a south Georgia town named Ty-Ty, who won on Sunday. Runners-up Brandon Carr of Athens, Alabama, David Seay of Dothan, Alabama, and Mike Smith of Roanoke, Alabama, like all three Montgomery winners, also shoed dragsters.

Remarkable too was the fact that winners Meeks and Robertson were in borrowed cars. Meeks, who has won Super Pro races at Montgomery eight times in 2004, was driving the dragster owned by friend David Simmons of Suwanee, Georgia, while Robertson was the "hired driver" of pro bracket racer Scotty Richardson of Hendersonville, Tennessee. Mouat and Smith wheeled their own dragsters.

A fourth edition of the Ultimate Super Pro Challenge, with the same low entry fee, is planned for MMP in 2005. (Dale Wilson photo) [11-11-2004]

WENTZVILLE, MO TRACK CLOSES

Urban sprawl claims another racetrack with the news that historic Mid-America Raceway in Wentzville, Missouri will be closing. The small town, 40 miles west of St. Louis, is growing quickly and a new subdivision brings more "Benjamins" than a dragstrip. Besides, after Pro Mod pioneer Bill Kuhlmann moved out, it no longer was the Mecca of the Midwest. The Agent spent many years attending the venerable track, one of the few with covered grandstands. [11-11-2004]