"OUTLAW" FUNNY CARS

The Outlaw class was defined as nitro burning flops that didn't meet theVRA rules. That meant these cars could have 526 inch engines, 44 amp mags, big fuel pumps and 14-71 blowers. On paper these should have been the quickest and fastest cars on the premises, but they were neither.

Racers that competed under the Outlaw format included local favorite Greg Jacobsmeyer's 1970 Challenger, Rob Bruce's '69 Charger, Virgil Hartman's much-anticipated '71 Mustang and Eric Martin's '01 Charger Hustler tribute car which features an original chassis built for Farkonis-Coil-Minnick by the legendary Romeo Palomides

The quickest and most entertaining of the "Outlaw" cars was Bruce's Zombie. It ran a cone crunching, guard wall to guard wall 6.201/ 227.27 lap that had the crowd on their feet.

Virgil Hartman's Mustang had plenty of experience in the camp with Virgil tuning, son Richard driving and son-in-law John Smith assisting. Their first lap was impressive for about 300 ft until the car got squirrelly and Hartman had to lift. On their next lap Hartman stayed in the throttle but the blower lifted at about 150 ft and the Hartman camp was done for the event.

Martin never did get his Chi-town car down track as he was shut off two or three times for small oil leaks. The winner of the class was Jacobsmeyer who ran about 20 percent in the tank and steady 6.80's to get the money over Bruce who broke in the finals.

VRA LEGAL FLOPS

An even half-dozen VRA legal flops showed for the race but they were among the best the sport has to offer. Dale Pulde, Randy Walls, Jeff Utterback, Mike Savage and Ed Swarz made the tow from the left Coast for this race and for the most part they performed very well.