Hernandez reached the final with his Howard-Moon-tuned ’68 Camaro after initially ousting Stott with a 5.972-seconds pass that also stood up for low E.T. of the meet. His next victim was Matt Hagan and he met Jay Payne with a similar entry to his wife’s in the semis.
Hernandez took a slight advantage off the start, then powered through in 6.034 seconds to beat the 6.097 by the defending series champion. Unlike Commisso, Payne said he had no trouble with seeing the tree, but being put in the left lane definitely factored into the loss. “This was one of the few times that lane choice really mattered. It took the tire off and he was quicker than us, so it was a good ol’ race; I was just on the wrong side of it.”
Defending series champ Jay Payne qualified his ’05 Stratus 4th at Atlanta and made it as far as the semi-finals before event winner Josh Hernandez ended his day.
Regardless of the result, Payne was encouraged by his team’s performance at Atlanta. “We worked over the winter and made a little more horsepower and it’s taken this time to learn how to handle it and make the curve work properly,” he said. “The first two races we stumbled really bad with the car, but at least now we have a car that we can race. We weren’t the fastest car here, but at least we gained a lot of ground so we’re happy.”
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That left only the numbers-one and -two qualifiers to decide the final, but as mentioned it was over before it started. “We didn’t want to win it that way, but obviously we’ll take it,” Hernandez said. “We had actually backed it down because we knew the track was deteriorating, but we just didn’t back it down enough. There was a little too much of Dr. Moon’s power for the final there.”
SHOOTING GALLERY
Australia’s Troy Critchley, now living in Wylie, TX, qualified his ’70 Cuda 5th with a 6.030-secs blast at 240.08 mph. On raceday, he ran another 6.03 to get past Bryan Seward and his late-model Mustang, but fell to Jay Payne in round two.
