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| Michael Robinson heats the hides of the VIP Racing Camaro before his final-round match against Marcus Birt. |
With 19 cars qualified, ORSCA implemented a 32-car ladder, giving most entries a bye run to the second round. Both finalists had tough ladders to climb, though, as after dusting off Bobby Cole in round two Birt made it past second-place points man Mike Hill and current points leader Steve Kirk before reaching Robinson in the final. Meanwhile, Robinson needed holeshots to get around Tony Johnson and Robbins before overcoming Craig Miller, who had a holeshot of his own in the semis.
Birt put together a string of impressive lights throughout eliminations, but it was the raw power of his Randy Conner-tuned ’68 Camaro that ultimately propelled him to victory lane, as he posted a 4.621-seconds pass at 161.95 mph to overcome a slight .005 starting-line advantage by Robinson, who went 4.674/159.17 in the final round.
“When we left we rattled the tires a little bit and that’s when I saw him go,” Robinson said. “And you don’t catch them in high gear out here, not unless he had a problem, too.”
Birt said his car performed almost perfectly in the final. “We set it up to where we thought it would run about a .58 to a .62, but the tires chattered when the second system [of nitrous] came on and that’s where we lost a little E.T.”
After an admittedly inconsistent first half of the season for Birt and teammate Jack Barfield, the Gray, GA-based driver said he hopes the recent victories represent a lasting turnaround for the Team Skull gang.
“I think we’ve found our problem. We were trying some new stuff in our (engine) tune-up and the car didn’t really like what we were trying, so we went back to the basics of getting it from A to B, working the first hundred feet. We were trying to race and test at the same time and it’s just too hard to do that,” Birt said. “We’re just going to try to keep where we are now, get some points the rest of the way and climb back into the top-five or so in this ORSCA deal.”
LIMITED STREET
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| Taylorsville, NC’s Darrin Hoyle finished runner-up in the rain delayed Farmington race on Saturday night, then made it to the semis on Sunday, but came up just a little short to Eric Dillard. |
Cooner’s top qualifying 4.926 not only earned him Saturday night’s Nitrous Express Limited Street win, but stood up as low E.T. for the weekend, while Keith Szabo set top speed of the meet with a 159.26 mph pass in a first-round win over Jason Etheridge. Also running strong was Eric Dillard, co-owner of Pro Line Race Engines, who qualified second at 4.965/154.24 and made it all the way to the Atlanta final.
After an opening-round bye, Cooner beat David Reese and Carlton Thompson to reach Dillard, who also had a free pass to the second round in car owner Todd Berry’s 1988 Mustang. Dillard then dispatched Jerry Gunter and number-three qualifier Hoyle to advance to the money round.
