Curtain Up in SoCal

Story by Darr Hawthorne
Photos by Zak Hawthorne
3/19/04

t's being compared to the '50s. It's said to be in its infancy, but the reality is that when the curtain was raised on the 2004 NHRA Summit Sport Compact Series opener at California Dragway in Fontana, the actors were not ready for center stage.

Stout performances were never lacking with 2003 Hot Rod Champion Marty Ladwig setting a new national record in Saturday qualifying with a run of 8.34 at 170.62 mph in his new Pontiac Sunfire. Ladwig had a single run in Sunday's semi-final, however the transmission let go on the burnout.

The Circuit City/Street Glow-sponsored purple Toyotas out of New Jersey's Bullish Racing put both George Ioannou and Ara Arslanaian in the top two slots of Pro Rear Wheel Drive, marking the new dragway's first 200 mph runs. They would have met in the final had there been enough parts, so Ioannou went on to single in the Pro RWD final.

It looked to be a competitive race without many racecars, since less than 45 cars showed up for the 5-eliminator categories, making for very short fields. There were plenty of no-shows, but it looked as though building a one-off car for the professional categories in NHRA Sport Compact racing takes a lot more time than most of the teams had anticipated.

Example: Mopar's Shaun Carlson had a busy off-season. Not only did he sub for injured Darrell Alderman at the Winternationals, he also built two Dodge Vipers for the new D1 Drifting series. So much of Shaun's new Dodge SRT-4 is purpose-built that he needed to cannibalize parts from last year's race car and had no back up to race.