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Mission National Open Results - Capp Takes NFCA Feature
Gerry Frechette - July 17, 2007
The first appearance of the Nostalgia Funny Car Association from California at Mission Raceway Park was a big success, and Canadian veteran Terry Capp walked away with all the marbles.
The Nitro show was part of the annual NHRA National Open presented by Lucas Oil Products of Canada, which combines all the regular sportsman eliminators with several booked-in feature attractions.
Six nitro cars made up the show, with a seventh making licensing runs, and four of the best teams from the Southwest met up with two new cars from this corner of the continent, Bucky Austin's Arrow and the Bubble-Up Firebird run by Canadian legends Ron Hodgson, Gordon Jenner, Bob Papernick and driver Terry Capp, with icon Roland Leong “the Hawaiian” completing a team with a zillion years of nitro experience.
Conditions were unusually cool (23C) and cloudy for mid-July at Mission, resulting in sub-1,000 foot corrected altitude, and the teams responded with record performances. Only two spots remained in the official Nostalgia Nitro FC “Five-second Club,” with three of the cars not yet in easily capable of running fives, so the battle was on.
Austin came close in qualifying at 6.00, but it was the first round that would seal the deal. Capp stepped up first with a sweet 5.92 to win his race, and then it was the match heard around the Nostalgia world, with Mike Savage in the Speed Sport Cuda getting out first and hanging on with a 5.98 / 243 to defeat Austin's stellar-but-late 5.91, ironically the quickest ever, but the 5.98 came up first and gets the last spot in the club.
Savage backed it up in the semis with a 6.03 to win, and Capp ran a planned shut-off run, promising that the Firebird would “have its tongue hanging out” in the finals.
That it did, as Capp rocketed to a quickest-and-fastest ever 5.85 at 249.03 beside Savage's good 6.10, to up the ante in the Nostalgia performance war, and make MRP a track they all want to return to despite the distance for most.
Alcohol dragsters and funny cars are always a big part of this event, with nine TADs and four TAFCs in attendance this year. The two quickest qualifiers of each type of car would run off for the “A” Group NHRA Wally trophy with TAD vs TAFC in the final, and the rest in the “B” Group would also race for a Wally. The nationally-competitive cars of Shawn Cowie (TAD) and Roger Bateman (TAFC) ran 5.40s and 5.70s respectively to get to the “A” final with a .20 handicap in effect, where, in a strange one, both cars shed their blower belts at 330 feet, and the silent coasting race was on, Cowie winning his second Wally in a row, the first one coming last week at the NHRA Division 6 race in Oregon.
The “B” final saw Ed Verenka's Alberta A/FD take on Randy Parker's TAFC, and when the dragster's motor blew at 60 feet and deposited its oil down the entire left lane, it gave Parker the trophy and the hard-working MRP crew a mammoth clean-up job that would take too long to run the remaining sportsman-class finals.
Ed Douglas and the Nitromoose dragster had a difficult weekend. The only qualifying attempt (the second one fell to the curfew Saturday night) saw fuel system problems that made the car lose fire when staging. Then, in Round One, Ed was timed out when staging, but ran the car down the track, with no time recorded. On the bright side, crewman Mike Cox showed he would be on board for the long haul by showing up with the Nitromoose logo tattooed on his right forearm. Atta boy, Mike!
Also booked in were the popular IBAA group from Alberta, also known as the 7.50 Alky Funny Cars, except that they all agreed to run off a 7.20 dial for the first time, given the Mission conditions. Darrell Webb ran 7.24 and 7.43 to make the final against Tim Boychuk who was dialed-in with 7.21 and 7.23 victories. The final was a good one, Webb getting the jump and hanging on with a 7.29 to Boychuk's later 7.27.
The Nitro Harleys were on hand for an 8-bike open field, and as usual, Ron Houniet was the favourite after his stout 6.44 / 212 qualifier, but he lost first round and it came down to Mike Scott from Fort St. John, B.C. and Steve Dorn from Portland in the final. And what a race it was, Dorn getting out first by .007 and running 6.586 to beat Scott's 6.584 at top speed of the meet 214 mph, for a MOV of .005.
The Canadian Pro Street Assoc. had its finals “oiled out,” so the Pro Street finalists flipped a coin and the winner was Rash Dhaliwal, who had run as quick as 6.69 in his supercharged Mustang.
Other finals completed saw the following Canadian winners:
Super Pro - Curtis Munson, Sechelt BC, '81 Malibu
Pro ET - Ted Miller, Cloverdale BC, '70 Nova
Sportsman - Brad Porcellato, New Westminster BC, '86 Chevy P/U
(Photos by Gerry Frechette)
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