7.0 INDEX
After David Johnson (shown), Chris Sloan and Timothy Proctor all went 7.004 after three rounds of 7.0 qualifying, the top spot went to Blackshear, GA’s Johnson based on him going .17 mph faster than Sloan, who was just .55 mph faster than Proctor. After a bye in the opener, Johnson went a perfect 7.000 in a second-round win over Richard Dukes, but his 351-powered ’85 Mustang broke out by .002 against Clint Wood in round three.
One of the more interesting entries on the grounds at Carolina Dragway was David Powell’s 1990 Mustang LX, which made its debut with an inauspicious 28th-place qualifying run in the 7.0 class. The car runs a “bone-stock” 302 with two stages of nitrous
backed up by a stock Ford five-speed, Powell said. “The hardest thing is getting the five-speed to work with these drag radials.”
Now for the interesting part. Powell tested the car for the first time at Steele, AL, on Friday night and twisted its driveshaft. So he drove it—drove it on the same Mickey Thompson drag radials that he raced on at the track—for three hours through the night to Barnett Performance in downtown Atlanta and swapped in a new driveshaft before making another two-plus hours trek to Carolina Dragway. With a full spool and 4:10 gears in the stock rear housing, Powell knocked down 21 mpg at about 65 mph on the highway. “It actually drives pretty good,” the Cedartown, GA-based racer said. “There’s a little chattering when you go around corners real slow, but it’s really not that bad.” Unfortunately, Powell suffered engine woes later in qualifying and was unable to make the call for eliminations.
The window says it all. With a runner-up finish at Carolina, Calera, AL’s Ricky Pennington successfully defended his Atlanta Speed Shop 7.0 title after one of the tightest contested points races this year. Pennington qualified his classic ’64 Chevelle fourth, and made it to the final against Ed Bendahl and his Chevy stationwagon.
Number-14 qualifier Ed Bendahl (near lane) got a .011 jump on Ricky Pennington in the 7.0 final, then laid down a winning 7.005-seconds pass to Pennington’s 7.047 effort. “I knocked a few of them out and moved up (in points) myself,” Bendahl said after the win. “Helped out Ricky a little bit, too. He came and hugged my neck. He didn’t want to shake my hand, he just hugged my neck. He was so happy.”
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