They say everything's bigger in Texas, but who are they really and why must they throw our inadequacies in our faces? We can't choose the cards we're dealt, now can we?! And what if we were in the pool? (You know about shrinkage, don't you?) As we struggle to come up with some way to overcompensate for our, uh, shortcomings, the NOPI Drag Race Association (NDRA) took this Texas battle cry to heart and came out with an even bigger and better series for the 2003 season.
The Fast and The Furious Racing Series (yes, that's the official name) offers racers more than $140,000 in cash and prizes with Xbox Cups awarded to the season champions. In addition to the on-track action, NOPI shows that it still knows how to put on a party with such tasty treats as the Black Magic car show, the OTB Jeans Wear burnout contest, dB Drag wars, a swimsuit contest (our personal favorite), and the NOPI After Dark party with DJs, a foam party, the Street Glow Glow-Off, and the NOPI Night street drags.
Now that you know what happened between the racing action, here's the 411 on everything that went down on the track.
Pro CompactIn qualifying for the NOPI TunerVision Pro Compact class, Matt Scranton looked to continue his reign of dominance over the top tier of sport compact drag racing. His Turbonetics Celica grabbed the top spot with a 6.862 blast at 200.53 mph.After struggling with clutch disc problems in the first two rounds of qualifying, Abel Ibarra returned to his old form as he put his K&N RX-7 into the second slot. George Ioannou held onto the third seed in his 2JZ-powered Street Glow Solara while his teammate, Ara Arslanian, struggled with a faulty fuel pump.
In the first round, Ara was not able to get the power to move past Grant Downing as the Team Venom Tundra took the win. However, George, in the other Street Glow Solara, easily moved into the second round when Manny Cruz and his Cougar couldn't make the call. In an all-Mazda match-up, Abel easily dispensed with Carlos Rivera's RX-7 in order to advance while Scranton enjoyed a free pass with a bye run. In round two, Grant lit up the track with a 7.07 @ 197. However, he was lined up against the Turbonetics Celica and Scranton nailed a 6.97 @ 200.71 to make it into the finals. The big grudge match between the K&N Mazda and the Street Glow Toyota didn't go down as George also suffered a fuel pump failure, sending Abel in to face Matt in the final round.
Given the last two seasons, it would have been easy to write off Abel coming into the Pro Compact final. The Scranton Brothers are a model of consistency with some serious speed and power to back it up, and everybody knows it. On the way to the line, someone forgot to tell this to Abel as he launched out of the hole with a slight advantage. At the top end, Matt's 7.079 @ 193.05 mph was quicker than Abel's 7.102 @ 193.09, but the RX-7's holeshot was enough to make up the difference, giving the Flaconator a well-deserved win in one of the closest races of this new season.
Pro OutlawWhile there were only three cars in the NOPI.com Pro Outlaw class, they were three very fast contenders. Jimmy O'Connor grabbed the pole with an 8.21 @ 162 mph. Carlos Montano took the second spot in his Pepe Loco Datsun, and Brent Rau took third on the grid in his 4G63-powered Osofast Eclipse. A mechanical gremlin in Brent's Mitsubishi put Carlos in the finals with Jimmy. But Carlos went loco at the line as he red-lighted in an attempt to get the jump on the Venom Supra. Jimmy still put on a show with a very respectable 8.041 @ 166.54 mph for the victory.