The semis featured three cars with one driver being especially fortunate. Lang drew the bye, when he went into violent tire shake, header pipes scraping the wall, and shut-off early. Murphy was not so lucky. When he purged the nitro system, Little noticed only one system purging, but had Murphy stage the car anyway. A subsequent 6.89/191 failed to deal with Joseph’s 6.63, 219.91.

Joseph had it easy in the final or so it would have seemed. Lang was unable to get his Corvette started and Joseph in the spirit of wanting to give the crowd a good show, made an all-out solo for the $5,000 first prize check.   Near the end of his run, Joseph’s big nitrous motor exploded causing a trackside grass fire that required the attention of the fire truck. You can bet that spectator arithmetic indicated that the cost of the fried engine possibly exceeded the first place money.

The 10.5 show? Not all that much there save for Mark Micke’s ’68 Camaro, which qualified low with a 7.57/198.67 and won rather handily.  The opening round began with Micke’s low qualifying match of 7.57 at 183-mph solo shot after Harold Warren Jr.’s Camaro suffered a nitrous explosion just off the line. Tim Slavens’ Camaro logged a 7.79/174 bopped Jeff Reeder’s 9.41, and Ron VanMeter’s ’69 Camaro  took an 8.25 to 9.63 win over Jeremy Jenson.

Micke took an easy bye into the final, while Slavens slipped past VanMeter, 8.09 to 8.18.  In the final, Micke’s river card was a low ET 7.37/181.09, making mincemeat out of Slavens.

In so many words, the “Fastest Doorslammer Shootout” succeeded well on the Pro Mod front. The left lane was sloppy, but did on occasion bolt down a few good elapsed times.

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The right lane? It was better; most of the good numbers and wins came in that tunnel.

As for 10.5, well, if numerically graded, it would rate about a 3.5. Basically, Micke had the only car that ran worth a damn, with the other drivers struggling to make a full pass. Rumor had it that the purse wasn’t good enough to attract more than six cars to the Kansas City oven. More money equals more cars and more performance. A big 10.4 if that’s the truth for this 10.5.