Thornton takes PSCA win
Words by James Drew
Photos by James Drew and Darr Hawthorne
The Pacific Street Car Association brought their first event of the season, the Borla California Nationals, to California Dragway in fontana. There were 14 classes including Hughes Performance Pro Street, Toms’ Differentials Outlaw street, Borla Exhaust X-treeme Street, Edelbrock Nitrous Systems Real Street, Edelbrock Hot Street, Calvert Racing Products True Street, Product Engineering Heavy Street, Deeds Limited Street, Mickey Thompson Tires Wild Street, Orme Brothers Open Comp, JE Pistons Quick Street, CRT 10.60 Index, Billet Fabrication Bracket 1, and Borla Exhaust Trophy Class. Temperatures in the 80's made for good performances from all attending.
The track e.t. record got reset quite a few times over the three days of racing by the PSCA Pro Street class. In addition, both ends of the track record were reset by Mike’s Transmission Top Eliminator West by NHRA TAD A Fuel dragster of Johnny Athen (shown above), who took the runner up spot over Las Vegas racer Paul Crifasi. Athen laid down a great 5.90 e.t. at 231 mph for the new track records. Crifasi left on Athen, but the 7.642 e.t. for his Racer Chic Honda bodied alky funny car was closer to the 6.30 index, pushing Athen to break out. Both ran close to their dial-ins, as did TAD Larry Miersch. All three teams used this race as a test session for the upcoming NHRA Division 7 Lucas Oil series race on June 23-25.
Ed Thornton was the Pro Street winner in his twin turbo extreme 1957 Chevrolet over points leader Steve Paulauskis's Chevrolet Cavalier. Thorton ran a 6.868 at just 191.00 mph to a 7.029/201.04 for Paulauskis. Thornton is seen here running against Monty Berney in the first round. (Darr Hawthorne photo)
Low e.t. for the Pro Street class was 6.58 for this beautifully painted Cavalier of Steve Paulauskis. (James Drew photo)