In staging for the final, Miller lit the pre-stage bulb in the left lane, but just as Barfield was about to join him, he backed up instead and restarted the procedure. “I wanted to run up and tell him to back out of there,” Miller’s father and team owner Bobby Miller said. “I warned him there might be games at the line.” Regardless, once Barfield was staged and the lights came down, he left with a .471 reaction to Miller’s .506. Barfield also had a better 60-foot time at 1.172 to Miller’s 1.207, but Miller recorded a better 4.828 e.t. at 150.95 to Barfield’s 4.846 at 151.20 mph.

“I picked a bad time to have a bad light. That’s the worst light I’ve had here ever,” Miller said later. However, he insisted Barfield’s staging practice had nothing to do with his loss. “He made a good run and we made a good run; it was just a good drag race and that’s the way you like to end one of these things. I’m not upset at all. When Jack backed up I could’ve backed up, too, cleared my head, that sort of thing, but I just got outrun, period.”

Jack Barfield (near lane), from nearby Pembroke, GA, and Savannah’s own Craig Miller squared off in the Outlaw 10.5 final round, where thanks to a .035 holeshot, Barfield beat Miller by just 12-thousandths at the top end.

“I just didn’t feel quite comfortable. I felt the car was aimed left a little bit,” Barfield explained about his starting-line delay. “I didn’t want to hold him up, but I like to make sure everything is just right before I go.” Once they left, Barfield said he was aware of Miller all the way down the strip. “I kept seeing the nose of Craig’s car sneak on up there and it was kind of a see-saw battle there. And right before the end we broke the tires loose and I could see him good. I knew we were ahead of him, but I was just worried about hitting a bald spot on the track and losing my momentum.”

SHOOTING GALLERY

Marcus Birt made it to the semis, but was fortunate even to be competing at Savannah, as his VIP Racing team discovered a broken rocker arm shortly before qualifying began. With no spare on hand, it looked like Birt’s day was over until fellow outlaw Jim Arpin went to his nearby shop and returned with a replacement from his Pro Mod engine.