K&N NHRA Sport Compact Nationals - Results

Modified Class
Alex Dieguez and his '82 Corolla completely strolled through the entire field of competitors this weekend. Alex was the Number One qualifier running 8.050 @ 164.93 to take the top spot from Stephan Papadakis, Chris Rado, and a host of others, with the next closest qualifying run coming from Carlos Gonzales at almost 0.25 seconds slower. During eliminations Rado made his best run to date in the new Celica with a 9.043 on his way back into the 8-second club, but it was no match for Alex and his 8.131 @ 157.98 mph. Stephan and the AEM Civic took out Paul Efantis and his Toyota with a solid 8.564 @ 170.34 against Paul's 9.125. Matt Hartford from Summit Racing was piloting Paisley's rent-a-Supra for the weekend, running a 9.168 solo run against Nelson Hoyos and a broken Bothwell Motorsports Cavalier. Unfortunately, something went amiss with the Supra leaving Matt out of the eliminations, forcing Alex and his old-school Toyota to take the solo run. Papadakis broke a connecting rod during his semifinal-winning run against Carlos Gonzales, leaving Dieguez to take another solo run for the overall win.

Hot Rod Class
Hot Rod Class is one of the largest classes in the Summit Sport Compact racing series but attrition can whittle the numbers down to a mere few very quickly. Bruce Mortensen stepped up as number-one qualifier over JoJo Callos with an 8.77-second run versus JoJo's 8.912, but had trouble holding the Venom Civic together to finish what he had started and didn't make it past Round One eliminations when transmission failure reared its ugly head against Angela Proudfoot and her '00 Civic during round two. Angela, though she was experiencing engine troubles of her own with a blown head gasket, was at least able to make it down the track as all her competitors broke on the line, leaving her to face JoJo in the final round. Callos made short work of the Proudfoot Civic as he piloted the Castrol Integra in 8.876 @ 160.46 mph to take the Hot Rod Class win for the weekend.

Street Tire Class
Ari Yallon showed up with his RX-7.com Mazda in all its red, white, and blue glory to try to keep his name in the Street Tire Class books, but Mark Mazurowski and his '94 Supra were not having it. There were only four drivers competing in Street Tire this weekend but breakages and red lights quickly narrowed the field down to two as Ari faced Mark at the line for the final round. An earlier driveline problem came back to haunt Yallon who red-lighted anyway, leaving the win in the hands of Mark and the Titan Motorsports Supra who ran under his own new record with 9.245 @ 156.19, but ran too fast to be backed up by earlier runs.

All-Motor Class
Jesus Padilla and his '85 Mazda RX-7 finally had some competition during the weekend when Scott Mohler and his Dodge Neon showed up to challenge Jesus' number-one qualifying spot with a 10.765 versus Padilla's 10.531. Scott ran high 10s all day as he walked through the competition, but high 10s ended up not being enough to cut the mustard as the final rounds put him up against the RX-7 of Padilla, who had been running low to mid 10s all day. When the chips came down and the light turned green, Mohler's final round run of 10.783 @ 127.43 was not enough to best Padilla's 10.322 @ 129.21, well under his 10.43 record-holding run.