BROTHER ACT
The one-day ADBA Wildbunch race came down to a pairing of siblings in a pair of split-window '63 Corvettes late Saturday afternoon, as brothers Quain and Mitch Stott faced off on the hot Atlanta asphalt. Mitch left the line first in his Radiac Abrasives-backed ride and looked to have the race in hand until his engine let go about the 1,000-foot mark, allowing Quain to scoot past for the win.

Fresh off an IHRA national event win the week before in Leicester, NY, Quain clearly was the class of the field, as he was the only driver able to make it down the slick track with a decent pass during two rounds of qualifying. Despite using what he called "a real soft tune-up," Quain drove his Inman, SC-based Lee Boy Paving Equipment machine to a respectable 6.543 at 215.34 mph. His brother was second at 7.039 at 216.38 mph, Wally Bell was third at 7.864 and 184.45 mph, and Charles Carpenter struggled mightily in both passes with 20-seconds plus efforts. Quain dispensed Carpenter in the sole round of preliminary eliminations, while Mitch received a bye run after Bell blew his engine up in qualifying.

When the final round began, Mitch staged quickly to throw off his brother's timing and after Quain rushed to stage; the ADBA starter threw the switch before he had his Lee Boy engine up to speed. "I was done then. If he hadn't cooked his engine, there's no way I was gong to catch him," Quain said afterwards. "He had me by half a car length when his laid down, but when I saw his nose drop, I knew, it's over now."

Mitch's starting line tactics translated to a full tenth holeshot, as he left with a .491 to his brother's practically lethargic .596 reaction time. He faded to a 6.642-seconds pass at 197.39 mph, while Quain also posted his best of the day at 6.502 and 214.31mph. "Oh yeah, that was a lot of fun," Mitch claimed, despite the loss and expensive engine failure. "It's always fun to run him. We've always been real competitive. We used to settle our differences with fistfights, but now we can take it out on the track. We're a lot more mature now."

WILDBUNCH WOES
Poor Charles Carpenter and Wally Bell. The two North Carolinians just couldn't get their cars to perform at the ADBA Nitro Classic. Carpenter, who was experimenting for the first time with a bronze-coated floater in the clutch of his NOS Chemicals/Custom Auto Sound '55 Chevy, struck the tires in the launch of his first qualifying attempt, then broke the car's rear end ring-and-pinion gear on the second pass. He also came uncomfortably close to hitting the right guardwall the second time out. You've just seen a third of the aborted runs I've made in three years of running this car," an exasperated Carpenter said afterwards. "I think I'll be going back to the all-steel floaters." "But you have to try to learn," he added philosophically. "As long as you learn something, it's not a total loss, and we learned lots today."

The veteran match racer finally made a full pass during eliminations against IHRA regular Quain Stott, going 6.743 seconds at 211.30 mph to Stott's winning 6.530 at 214.31 mph. "Considering how our day went, I'll take that," Carpenter said. "We usually run in the 6.60s. We don't run the thing on kill-it's more important for us to just get down the racetrack."

Bell would've welcomed another opportunity to go down the track, but during his second qualifying pass, the crankshaft broke in his Camaro Specialty/Fat Man Fabrications '92 Camaro just as it hit third gear, sending a rod through the right side if the block and breaking the starter housing.

"This is a disaster," Bell said."I already had that engine sold, 'cause we've got a new one ready to go in at home. This was supposed to be it's last race. I guess it made sure of that." Bell claimed he hoped the engine's buyer might not want it anymore because he didn't want to fix it. It was hard to tell how serious he was."It couldn't been the tune-up that caught up with it," Bell said, admitting he had to lean pretty hard on the 632c.i. powerplant just to keep up with engines like the 706 he's installing. "But I don't think so. I think it was just fate."

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