Words and Photos by Bret Kepner
8/8/06
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When the ProMedia Motorsports Group first announced their plans to hold the event, it was met with shock and skepticism. It was to be called the “Super Bowl of Street Legal Drag Racing” and would involve the running to completion of two separate National Events held by two separate Street Legal sanctioning bodies in one weekend. ProMedia, the owner of both the National Mustang Racers Association and the National Muscle Car Association, then included the lofty goal of crowning overall champions in special run-offs between the winners of NMRA and NMCA eliminator categories which, in many cases, involved competition between two vastly different divisions. The race earned a position in drag racing history books by planning a total of THIRTY-FIVE FINAL ROUNDS to cap the event. The most common response from folks first hearing of the plan was, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
Slowly, it gained support from the many fans of heads-up street car racing and, eventually, it achieved legend status before it ever began. Despite the fact that few people felt the race could be finished in the scheduled three-day span, just about everybody planned to be at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Illinois, as witnesses.
 NMRA Race Pages Editor Paul Huizenga echoes the sentiments of incinerated racers and fans who survived the Joliet radiationfest. Brutal midwest heat wave affected attendance of many outdoor events; Super Bowl was no exception. |
It may have been the most ambitious effort in the annals of drag racing but, by gosh, they got the thing finished. Regardless of the monumental, (and unprecedented), logistics of such an undertaking, ProMedia Event Directors Gene Bergstrom and Lynwood Dupuy and Route 66 bossman Chris McMahon somehow managed to put over 550 racers through qualifying and eliminations for twenty-four eliminator divisions and run another eleven “overall championship” division finals in 57.5 hours!
The sole detriment to the event’s allure was the stifling 101-degree heat which baked spectators and competitors on all three days of racing. The track surface reached 130 degrees on multiple occasions but, thanks to an astonishing job of track maintenance by the Route 66 crew, still
managed to produce several new National Records. Quickly renamed the “Super BOIL of Drag Racing” by the DRO staff, the race was impressive enough to warrant battling Mother Nature for the opportunity to watch history unfold. With only one car making guard wall contact and minimal oil-down time during the event, fans were treated to no less than 220 “ten-five” entries and a huge assemblage of machines in the four most popular categories, NMRA’s DiabloSport Pro 5.0 and MSD Super Street Outlaw and NMCA’s Denso Pro Street and Nitto 10.5W Super Street. Although the Overall Championship finals were, at best, thrilling and, at worst, bewildering, (the Nostalgia Super Stock-versus-NMRA Factory Stock match pitted Shawn Johnson’s modular-motored ‘99 Mustang against Bud Cochran’s 427-powered C/Factory Experimental ‘66 Fairlane!), the battle for bragging rights between NMRA and NMCA winners came down to the very last drag race of the weekend. It was a Pro 5.0-versus-Pro Street war, Tony Bischoff’s nitrous-fed ‘02 Cougar defeated Brian Robbins’ blown ‘72 Hurst/Olds Cutlass to gain the crown for the NMRA.
The level of industry involvement, from event sponsor Motive Gear and presenting companies Denso Irridium Spark Plugs and Nitto Tires to a jam-packing Manufacturers’ Midway, left no question of a second annual event. With a little mercy shown by the Weather Gods, the Super BOIL could easily become the sport’s biggest street-legal bash.