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Along with Simmons, Cummings also defeated Michael Lyons, Missy Phillips and Tracy Robbins in the opening rounds to win his first championship since 2004.

“This championship is great for my guys at Moser and my whole family. This is my anniversary weekend. Actually this weekend is keeping with a tradition in my family,” Cummings said. “My dad brought my mom to a race on their anniversary and he won and my brother and I did the same thing so we kept the tradition going. My wife has been telling me she is bad luck, but she was here for my world championship here today.”

Beard produced one of the best stories of the night in the Stock ranks with the largest payout of his career after years traveling up and down the quarter-mile. Beard also collected his second championship with the win over Darroch.

Beard ran an 11.116 on an 11.11 dial to Darroch’s 10.667 on a 10.69 dial. Beard also cut a solid light to gain an early advantage.

“I was lucky enough that the last couple weeks I have been practicing running Top E.T. where you really need to be sharp on the tree. I only had one light worse than a teen all day long,” Beard said. “I knew I hit the tree good, but Frank comes up right alongside me through the traps and I just went for the brake pedal and stabbed it and had a sinking feeling. When I saw that win light I covered my mouth with my hand because I was stunned. I couldn’t believe I won.”

Beard, in the famed Duct Tape Volare, used a string of strong runs to eliminate Darroch, Craig Marshall, Slate Cummings and Myron Piatek in the opening rounds.

“It is a lot like the bracket finals. It is a similar deal where you have to qualify for it, but this is a more compact field, but most of this field is a bunch of assassins,” Beard said. “When I won the Spring Nationals last year I thought this was going to be easy until I realized the guys I would be going up against.

“It is very cool. I won this with the old point system back in 2003, did it that way and now this way, I also won a bracket finals in NHRA and last year won IHRA Division 2 bracket finals. I have done a little bit of everything, but man against this field of hitters they can’t take anything away from this win.”

In the rod categories there was repeat champion and two new champs as Upton (Taylor, S.C.) roared past Matt Weston in Quick Rod, Maedgen (Troy, Texas) defeated Donald Webb in Super Rod and Mayers (Frutland, Md.) won over Doug Wood in Hot Rod.

Mayers won his second championship in Hot Rod with his other title coming in 2005. While the road to the championship wasn’t easy, winning the final was as Wood went red to give Mayers an easy victory.

“I got lucky today, but either way the right man came out on top,” Mayers said. “We won this race because we beat everybody that is somebody. It is all the tough people. Almost everybody has been a champion or earned the right to get here so this was really a battle of the big ones.”

Mayers eliminated Wood, Glenn Ferguson, Tony Elrod and R.L. Koontz on his way to his second title.