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SUPER PRO STREET
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Marc Dantoni took the
Super Pro win. (Steve Gruenwald photo) |
Super Pro Street, the quickest and fastest of all the
classes contested at this race is basically Weisinger's heavyweight
version of Pro Modified except that they're allowed turbo-chargers and
many have working headlights, taillights, brake lights and, in some
cases, even FM radios. Blower cars with Lenco style trannys had to weigh
in at 3,000 lbs. Depending on the transmission, block and power adders,
the minimum weight could be as little 1850 lbs if the car had a nitrous
oxide-injected small block under the hood. Power plants at this year's
race ranged from small block Fords to big, big Fords (810 cubic inch),
to 813 inch Rat motors to blown 526 cubic inch Hemi Chryslers.
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Going into the event the
buzz was that "Bad Bob" Reiger's twin-turboed, big block Chevy
powered, '57 Shoebox was going to be the trick set-up. (Adam Cranmer
photo) |
The rumors were that Rieger's turbo motor made 2700 hp
on engine builder Ken Dutweiler's dyno. Unfortunately for Bob and fortunately
for the other 52 competitors in the class, the combination didn't work
like Bob wanted and the best he could muster during the weekend was
a 6.80.
In the end the blower cars dominated the performance side
with Jeff Miller's Viper (above) setting Low ET and Top Speed of the
meet at 6.65/219.35. Miller had a little help from Kobelco supercharger
wizard Darren Mayer who had a new design blower on the Hemi engine for
that race. The second and third qualifying spots also went to the supercharged
cars of Ron Huenks and Kevin McCurdy. The quickest qualifying nitrous
car was driven by race winner Marc Dantoni who ran a 6.71 and the quickest
turbocharged car was John Gullett whose turbocharged, 375 cubic inch
small block Ford made enough ponies to pull the 'Stang to a stout 6.785/210
pass. In all, 15 of the 32 qualifiers were in the six-second zone. Doug
Horween's '68 Camaro held down the 32-car bump with a 7.410/186.72 lap.
In eliminations, though, the nitrous oxide-injected cars
had dominated as the supercharged and turboed cars fell by the wayside
with only one, Todd Shepherd's Hemi-powered '62 Fury wagon, getting
to the final four. The final round was a match-up between defending
champ Dantoni using a Pat Musi-built EFI/Nitrous motor in his '68 Camaro
matched up against Ronnie Gardner's Gene Fulton equipped split window
'Vette. The race was over by sixty feet as Dantoni put a tenth of a
second holeshot on Gardner and ran his third sub-6.80 pass. Dantoni's
6.759 easily covered Gardner's game 6.795 and got the Staten Island,
New York racer his third straight StreetNationals win.
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