The final group up was the Prostalgia Funny Cars. The story of the event is the return to the race track of the legendary Dale Pulde, who has been battling the symptoms of Valley Fever for nearly a year now. These symptoms nearly cost Pulde his life, but he is now on the road to recovery. Sitting in for Pulde is young journeyman driver James Day.  Day has been nothing but stellar in the seat of the War Eagle. Day proved he has the talent to drive funny cars earlier this year by winning the IHRA event at Tucson and setting a track record in Denver, Colorado.  In the first round Mark Sanders’ Mr. Explosive Nova took on Roger Garten in the War Horse. Garten was out on Sanders until about a thousand feet, when Jake’s tune up took effect and put a nose in front of the War Horse for the victory. Then it was Brett Harris alongside Michael Greukel in the classic black Plueger & Gyger Mustang. Brett used a huge starting line advantage to take care of the Mustang.  Next was Todd Lesenko in the Jolly Rogers Mustang alongside James Day in the War Eagle.  At the green it was Day who left first as Lesenko was in the other lane shaking the tires, and skating around. Day kept his car in the center of his lane and took the 5.95 to cover the 11 second run by Lesenko. The final pair pitted Mike Savage in the Candies and Hughes tribute car against Tim Boychuk in his Edmonton, Alberta based Trans Am. This baby was over right at the start as Savage was red light and good night with -.016 while the Leong tuned Trans Am posted a very nice 6.09 at 226 mph to take the win and would meet up with Day in the final. 

In the final this was a rock fight from the start, as both drivers had identical reaction times, and were glued together until the Mark Leigh’s tune up started to take over and War Eagle pulled ahead to take the win and another IHRA Ironman for Day and Pulde. 

A very excited James Day at the top end of the track said, “This baby was a handful. At about 800 feet it made a move to the wall and it was all I had to get the thing back but Dale said, ‘Do what you gotta do kid,’ and we did it.”

Pulde was obviously very happy with the way the night went for them.  “I watched the final from the side of the hill and I was really impressed. Mark had a great tune up; the kid (James Day) did a fantastic job driving. I was surprised it ran it fast as it did as cold as it got.” Pulde was also very grateful to John Powers. “Without John Powers this car wouldn’t be out here running, along with the great people in the Tejon Indian Tribe."