The last Outlaw 10.5 victim in round three was “Turbo Tim” Lynch, who won the delayed Carolina portion of the event the previous day. At Huntsville, Lynch’s twin-turboed Mustang left ahead of Johnson’s blown Camaro, but soon went into severe tire shake and started skating about the left lane as Johnson powered past for the win.
Tony Johnson reached the semis with his supercharged ’69 Camaro, but lost to Ragsdale when his blower belt let go as the light turned green. Johnson said he felt “very lucky” to get as far as he did after qualifying 12th. “We didn’t figure out until after the round against Steve (Kirk) that the transbrake was sticking,” he said. “My reaction times were up around .20 and .30 and I thought it was just me. Actually I woke up this morning and lay in bed for an hour thinking about how I had to do something about my reaction times. But we found out it was sticking and got it somewhat fixed and the reactions got a little better. You could see on the data logger that the motor would rev, but then it would flatline as the transbrake would catch it and then it would let go and rev on up. It was killing my 60-foot time, too. The way it was leaving is it would roll out there with the transbrake sticking and then all the power would come on and then it wanted to go into spinning the tires because it wasn’t planted. I figured Steve would take me out and I just knew (Tim) Lynch would take me out, so I was lucky to get by those guys for sure.”
Texan Todd Moyer always seems to do well at Huntsville Dragway, but he also felt fortunate to reach the final round against Ragsdale after struggling with a faulty fuel-injection system all weekend. Ragsdale left first with a .048 advantage, but Moyer said he stayed with him until about half-track. “I was holding him off until about 400 feet and that’s where our gremlin shows up. By 500 feet he just leaves me,” Moyer said. “I was just waiting for the gremlin. I heard him beside me, but I knew I was holding him off because I glanced over and saw a fender, but it was a bad feeling because all of a sudden I saw taillights.”
