Sunday the semifinals were run at 2 and the finals scheduled for 5 p.m. It could have been much later as a Nostalgia Super Stocker had a major, major tranny explosion on the starting line requiring the track crew that formerly prepped the now defunct Mid-America Raceway into an hour-and-a-half right lane repair. But the crew was up to it and the race went off as scheduled.

The weather was improving somewhat with corrected altitude dropping to around 2100 feet and some of the humidity drying up. Worden could choose whether to run in the first or second pair in the semifinals and chose to be the first pair in his match-up against Jacobsmeyer. Worden treed Jacobsmeyer and then abused him, running another 6.14 clocking but this time at a tick over 237 mph. Jacobsmeyer ran one of his best ET’s going 6.302/222.71.

But the bombshell was about to explode. Romine lined up against Dunn for the other semi. Dunn is about the only racer with a mathematical chance of overtaking Romine for the DRO points championship and evidently Romine and his team weren’t taking the privateer lightly. Romine proceeded to drive his Mustang to the quickest and fastest pass in the DRO series history, stopping the clocks in just 5.835 seconds at a speed of 248.48. Dunn gave it his all, recording an equally stout 6.101 and just 222.55 mph. That pass stunned his competitors as well as everyone else on the property.

So the final round would be between the “Man O’ War” Mustang and the “Twin Town Shaker” Arrow --  a classic Ford vs Mopar matchup.
Immediately after the semifinals a check of both teams’ pits found them working. The Stanke team had the plugs out and were putting fresh oil in the car and when asked, the crew chief replied, “We didn’t hurt a thing.” In the meantime Romine and crew were in the process of replacing a couple of nicked pistons in their engine with fresh ones. The Romine crew was in full thrash and said they would have the car ready by the 4:15 lane call.

Then just a few minutes before the call the Stanke crew informed DRO series administrator Jeff Burk that they had stripped a sparkplug hole and couldn’t fix it or replace it with a spare head. Since they had told Burk earlier that they had no damage, no provisions had been made for an alternate. Romine was going to get a bye run for the event win and would be guaranteed to be the first team to win twice in the DRO series.

The team rolled under the bridge at KCIR right on time. The car was started and Romine made the burnout. He staged the car and at the flash of yellow drove the Mustang straight down the left lane and out the back door even though he was on a single run. The board flashed a 5.87/247! Good enough to back up their semifinal lap and re-set both ends of the Series record.

On the final single the team completed a feat that rarely occurs in professional drag racing. They qualified number one, won the race and re-set both the Series ET and Speed records, thereby accumulating all of the points they possibly could have in one event.

After the race, tuner Mike Cavalieri said, “We replaced some pistons after the 5.83 and I’m sure we’ll have to do it when we look at this motor but we didn’t want to let the fans down so we fixed our motor and made a hard lap.”

The next and final race of the DRO AA/FC Challenge series will be at the Goodguys Nostalgia Nationals at Bowling Green, KY, on Oct. 16-18. It easily could have the biggest field of five-second AA/FC cars outside of the West Coast in attendance. 

Current Points and Records

Drag Racing Online.com AA/FC Challenge Points*
Paul Romine	Indianapolis, IN	79 Mustang	561 **
John Dunn	Monticello, IL	73 Duster	431
Greg Jacobsmeyer	Florissant, MO	70 Challenger	330 **
Shawn Bowen	Grand Blanc, MI	77 Firebird	320 **
Doc Halladay	Egan, MN	79 Ply Arrow	292 **
Kevin Lennon	Merrillville, IN	78 Ply Arrow	237
Randy Baker	Waukee, IA	70 Maverick	260
Steve Nichols	Maryland	70 Camaro	186
Kris Krabill	Orange, CA	77 Ply Arrow	129
Mark Worden			98

Speed Record  
248.48, Kansas City, Sept.  13, Paul Romine, “Man O’ War” Spitzer

ET Record
5.835, Kansas City, Sept. 13, Paul Romine, “Man O War” Spitzer

** National Event Winner