EZ STREET
Local racer Shane Stack lived up to the advance billing on the spectator bridge that spans the staging lanes, qualifying number one with a 4.89/151.21 pass and repeating his TCI EZ Street win from the ORSCA season opener at Huntsville Dragway.
Stack was all smiles after opening his march to the race win with a 4.97 bye run. He then ousted T. Lyons and Billy Smith to reach the final against 2007 NMRA Drag Radial champion John Kolivas, who started number three and previously eliminated Heath Bell, Brandon May and newly crowned ORSCA EZ champ David Reese. Kolivas left with a sizable .047 holeshot, but his 5.00/150.00 combination couldn’t hold off the 4.88 at 153.48 put together by Stack in his single-turbocharged ’86 Monte Carlo.
All David Reese had to do to clinch his first ORSCA EZ Street championship was qualify well at Huntsville and he did that with a 4.93 pass at 155.49 that put him in second place behind Stack. Just that he was competing was a testament to Reese’s family-run team, as he suffered a devastating mid-season crash at Phenix City, AL, that injured his back and destroyed the record-setting car he started the year with. An interim loaner from fellow EZ Street racer Tommy Brewer got Reese through until this new Procharger-equipped ’93 Mustang was completed in less than two months. After a first-round bye at Huntsville, Reese eliminated G. White before losing a close one to Kolivas in the semis.
MODIFIED STREET
The red light tells the story of the Race Coach Sales Modified Street final, as Richard Reagan left .029 too soon in his 1980 Mustang, handing the win to number-one qualifier and inaugural class champion Ryan Rakestraw. “He redlit, but I had no idea. It was going to run a .30-something judging by the 330 numbers, but all of a sudden it came out from under me. It turned toward the centerline and I got out of it and got back in it real quick and I still didn’t know he went red,” said Rakestraw, who posted 5.61/106.96 winning numbers. “I was still mad at the far end when we shut down until I got out and asked a guy down there who won and when he said the blue car, I was pretty surprised.”