SCSS SHOOTOUT RESULTS -- AUG. 17, 2004

Robert Buhl received plenty of help from Lady Luck to become the third driver to win multiple events in the 2004 Southside City Speed Shop Street Car Shootout Series. One week after dominating the event for his first win, Buhl was anything but the favorite to win the fifteenth SCSS race.

Josh Horton's Desoto, Missouri, racer's 2003 Cobra unleashed an 11.09 at a whopping 129.65 miles per hour to lead qualifying and easily became the quickest and fastest modular-engined machine in the 2004 series. Buhl made it an all-Ford final round by qualifying second in the program, but his rare Larry Shinoda-designed '94 Boss Mustang was considerably slower than its 10-second pace of the previous week with a mysterious ignition miss. Horton had redlighted by four thousandths of a second on his qualifying run and Buhl knew he'd need a Reaction Time advantage in the championship round, but was as stunned as the fans when Horton redlighted by only seven thousandths of a second in the trophy match, wasting an 11.20 at over 128 mph.

"It was fluke and I really shouldn't have won", admitted Buhl. "My car still had the miss and then I had transmission problems, to boot. It was pure luck, but a win light is a win light."

Clayton Albrecht's '93 Mazda RX-7 had a tough night. The Fenton, Missouri-based rotary not only just missed the SCSS Series Rotary Track Record by a mere seven hundredths of a second, it also became the first machine in the 2004 series to miss earning a Qualifier sticker by a mere one thousandth of a second with a 12.978/107.25 best!

Al Schwartz's 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX (St. Peters, MO) ran 13.00/105.83 for the best All-Wheel-Drive numbers, Cliff Hughes' '87 Regal T-Type (Gillespie, IL) was the quickest 6-Cylinder at 13.07/111.11, and Justin Bondurant's '04 Neon SRT (Fenton, MO) took the 4-Cylinder and Front-Wheel-Drive honors at 13.15/110.29, narrowly beating out Brad Gross' '99 Grand Prix GTP FWD best, (13.21/104.15).

SCSS SHOOTOUT RESULTS -- AUGUST 10, 2004

Robert Buhl, who has thrashed his Mustang to a two-second improvement over the past twelve months, became the eleventh different winner in the fourteen completed events of the 2004 Southside City Speed Shop Street Car Shootout Series. Buhl won the first "all-team member" final round over close friend Laurence Bass, whose Mustang earned its second straight final round after winning the SCSS trophy on August 3.

Buhl's rare Larry Shinoda-designed '94 Boss Mustang owned the event from start to finish. Just after the beginning of qualifying, Buhl's bright red Ford ran 10.83 at 130.77 mph, becoming only the fourth machine in the SCSS series to reach that speed, and was never headed. Bass improved from an early 11.65/121 to hold the second spot throughout qualifying despite 11.70s from fellow Mustang racers Chris Koch and Eddie Pilla. In the championship round, the two Buhl Auto Repair-backed Illinois Fords staged with Bass knowing well his only chance would be on the Christmas Tree; his gamble missed with a redlight by seventeen thousandths of a second. Buhl caught the gloss black Mustang quickly and thundered to an even quicker 10.82-second run at the same speed at which he'd qualified...130.77 mph. With his #2 qualifying effort, Bass earned a record tenth "Fastest Street Car Qualifier" decal, four more than three- time winner Daryl Jauernig's Missouri Mustang or Clint North's Illinois Trans Am.