Jenkins was doing double duty at South Georgia Motorsports Park, qualifying his own 1968 Camaro on top of the Pro Nitrous field with a 4.020 lap at 182.75 mph. He easily handled Ron Smith in round one, defeated Charles Carpenter in the semis, and capped it off with another 4.007 (.985 and 2.652 incrementals) at 184.42 to edge Keith Baker in the final. The win came on Jenkins’ 51st birthday, but he wasn’t quite satisfied with the present. "I wanted that three-second run so bad I could’ve just cried," he said. "I wanted that just as much as I wanted the win. I wouldn’t have cared if it was 3.99 with a nine. I just wanted it so bad and we came so close."

The last first-round pairing of Sunday’s ADRL Team Challenge also served as the anti-climactic Pro Extreme final after the real final was scuttled by a starting system malfunction. Tension was high when Bil Clanton (far lane) and Joshua Hernandez staged Saturday night and the tree failed to activate. As both drivers brought their supercharged entries up in rpms, they held on for an agonizing six or seven seconds before Clanton finally slipped through the beams about the same time Hernandez let go and made a solo run to the top end. Apparently, human or mechanical error led to the mix-up and, with a noise curfew looming, ADRL officials made the decision to run the race the next day. In that match up, Hernandez left first, but immediately lost traction while Clanton laid down a winning 4.022-second pass at 178.95 mph. The wait hurt Hernadez’s chances, he figured, since his team had to replace the clutch "after last night’s fiasco" and the track had changed from the previous night, developing a bald spot near the start line. Clanton also said he’d have preferred to race the night before. "I didn’t sleep very good worrying about it," he said. "I was nervous right up to doing the burnout, but then all the butterflies went out the window."