In round one at Valdosta, Eaves beat a tire-shaking
Bruce Boland with a 6.34-second pass at 223.88 mph, his
best in the car so far after about 30 runs. He ran 6.34
at 223.77 against Wayne Torkelson in round two and appeared
set to win it all when mechanical disaster struck 3.8 seconds
into the final round.
“The burst panel on the blower let go
but it kept spinning and spewed fuel all over the front
of the engine. I had a pretty good fire going down there;
it was all over the car. It’s too bad, too, because
it was on a good pass,” Eaves said. “We learned
something, though; a Brad Anderson hemi don’t like
9,200 rpm on nitro.”
Defending Nitro Coupe champion
Randy Adler qualified his basic black ’57 on top at
Valdosta with a 4.169-second pass over the eighth-mile at
174.93 mph. Adler, from Tinley Park, IL, beat Mike Swinarski
in the opening round, but fell to Howes in round two when
the second-gear lever popped out of his transmission about
300 feet out and he was forced to shut off. “It came
out of there like a rocket,” he said. Remarkably,
it marks the first time since Adler joined the circuit last
year that he didn’t advance to the final round.
Concord, CA’s Wayne
Torkelson Jr. qualified second with his 1954 ‘Vette
and beat Jeff Merritt before falling to Eaves in the semis.
“We were fighting transmission gremlins all weekend,”
Torkelson said. “We were burning clutch packs up and
changed everything before we found out it wasn’t getting
enough air pressure at the right time to make the shifts.
It looks like the shifter air knobs are the problem.”
Additionally, the south Georgia race was the first time
Torkelson’s team tipped 15 percent nitro in the tank
after running with 10 percent at the season’s first
two events.
After starting from the
fifth slot, Dave Tomasino got a big jump on Howes in the
opening round with a .022 reaction, but drove through the
clutch on hitting second gear. “It never did lock
up,” the Holley, NY-based racer said. “The computer
shows it was still slipping at the finish,” after
going 6.803 at 208.00 mph.
