Clanton beat Neal Jr. before facing the “old man” and catching the lucky break that set up a showdown against Lynam. Knowing he faced a slight performance disadvantage going into the final, Clanton admitted all he could do was “try to get him on the tree and stay out in front of him.” As it happened, Lynam left with a slim .004 advantage, but Clanton’s 4.055-secs pass at 175.98 mph was enough to edge the 4.105 at 180.79 laid down in the opposite lane.
“In the end there we had a little glitch, something electronic in the car was cutting it off intermittently down the track,” Lynam said of his slowest pass all day. “But that’s part of the race; you’ve got to run all the way down the track, that’s as important as cutting a light or anything else.”
It wasn’t an easy win for Clanton and his “Big Money” ’53 Studebaker.
“We changed three rearends throughout the day,” he said. “The first one was locked up when we rolled it out the trailer so we changed it and we had to change it again after the first pass because I didn’t like the ratio. Then we borrowed another one that was the right ratio and broke it, so we had to go back to the one we didn’t like and it worked out for us after all.”
On Sep. 30-Oct. 2, Carolina Dragway in Jackson, SC, will host Dragstock II, the fifth of six ADRL points races this year.
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