Words by Jeff Burk
Photos by Steve Gruenwald and Ron Lewis
3/22/06
wenty-two Pro Mods came to Gainesville for the first event of the 2006 10-race AMS Staff Leasing-backed NHRA exhibition series. While the total number of cars showing up for the event was smaller than in past years, the quality of the cars more than made up for the lack of competitors.
How good were the performances at Gainesville? Well, during a single qualifying session Troy Critchley (shown) drove his brand new Jeffers Pro Cars-built ’70 'Cuda (still in primer) to the best speed ever recorded for an IHRA-legal Pro Mod at 237.90 mph. He also recorded a career best ET of 6.05 on that lap. Five of the 16 qualifiers made runs under 6.10 in qualifying. Fifteen of the qualifiers were supercharged, with the lone nitrous car in the field being the Shannon Jenkins-tuned Mike Castellana Cavalier, which ran a strong 6.144 to qualify. 
There was to be no Cinderella story for the fans of nitrous when Castellana (shown) and Canadian Glen Kerunsky met in the first round of eliminations on Saturday night and Kerunsky used a .004 reaction time holeshot to hold off the New York racer with a round with a 6.158 to a 6.152 win. The rest of the first round saw the top half qualifiers take out the bottom half qualifiers. Only Jay Payne, driving his Brad Anderson-powered Dodge, was able to run a sub-6.10 time. His 6.07 clocking thrashed Texas racer Brandon Pesz’s 6.242.
The Pro Mods returned to action Sunday afternoon in front of what NHRA says was a SRO crowd and with radically different track conditions. For the tuners and drivers it was the difference between night and day. They went from cool night air and a cool track to blazing sun and a track temp over 100 degrees. All of the racers and tuners except the teams of Jay Payne/Brad Anderson and Glen Kerunsky lost some performance.