 ADRL Race V of the 09 Racing Season Martin, MI9 June 2009 – Terry, MS Tammates Tim Savell and Stan Allen departed on Wednesday morning June the 3rd in order to make the long haul to Martin, MI for the Ford Drive One Summer Drags V at US 131 Motorsports Park on June 5 & 6. To say that this ride was uneventful would be an understatement as a lot of drama with ADRL officials was rather traumatic for both Michael Bankston and driver Tim Savell. We have made an official statement concerning this issue and it is posted here on this site in the news box. In an unfortunate turn of events crew member John Miller, who serviced the clutch for Stan Allen's 68 Camaro, resigned his duties due to conflicts with his job. Thank you for the last 3 years of your dedicated work for Michael Bankston. Along with Stan Allen came David Shelton who will be a new crew member for the remainder of the season. David has many years experience working on big tire Pro-Mods down south and we would like to personally welcome him into the Bankston Boyz Racing family. Also along for the ride was one of the all time Pro-Mod fans from Chac Bay, La, Melvin Landry, who had recently been diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Melvin is just coming off chemo and radiation treatments and felt well enough to make the long trip with us to Michigan. Stan Allen and his wife Amy made him feel right at home and he was a pleasant compliment to our crew for the weekend. We all enjoyed his presence and hope he can make the trip with us to Topeka in a few weeks if he feels well enough to make the trip. Special thanks goes out to his wife, Lutzy, who cooked up 12 quarts of some of the best shrimp gumbo I ever placed betwixt my teeth! Saturday the 6th of June marked the 39th birthday for car owner Michael Bankston and it was celebrated in the pits late Saturday night. With a large chocolate birthday cake Leslie Bankston made the birthday official and everyone in the Bankston Boyz pits enjoyed the celebration. See video under this site for the Martin race in the miscellaneous file. We began our weekend by setting up our pit areas on Thursday and dressed it out with banners from our new sponsor, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and I must say that it looked pretty good! Running on a skeleton crew Bankston Boyz Racing was able to manage and service the cars by having crew members cross over to work on both of the ’68 Camaros as needed. Their effort and dedication to team goals was unsurpassed and truly impressive. Testing began Friday with the Pro-Nitrous class being first out, which was good because it allowed all three Bankston Boyz Racing's entries three attempts on the racing surface prior to qualifying round one later in the evening. The track was good and tight all weekend long with corrected air around 1800 feet or better, water grains under 30, and track temps running around 93 degrees. The weather on Friday was really nice with over night temps running just a little under 50 degrees and day temps running in the low 70's with a mild breeze from the southwest. Our testing efforts were challenging in that neither Tim Savell nor John DeFlorian were able to get good data collected to tune on. John was experiencing severe tire shake at the hit and Tim fought tire shake and a faulty Christmas tree. With testing under our belts we were ready for qualifying to begin and first out was Tim Savell in the 'Blue Beast' running the left lane with track temps around 88 degrees. Tim Staged the car and when the tree dropped the car immediately went right and almost hit the 60' cone forcing Tim to abort the run. This may seem to some as insignificant, but in the big picture he really needed a good clean run in order to qualify for the Martin race so that he could focus on racing eliminations rescheduled from Memphis in qualifying rounds two and three on Saturday. Next out for our team was John DeFlorian in the left lane for his first qualifying attempt. John staged his Jerry Haas ZO6 Corvette and left the line fairly well and when he hit the 1 - 2 shift went into tire shake causing him to pedal it before going out the back on a less than desired run of 4.676 ET and 163.01 mph. Last out was Stan Allen in his Tim McAmis Reher-Morrison powered 68 Camaro. There were noticeable bald spots in the right lane as compared to the condition of the left lane making it appear to be the worse of the two. After lighting up the Goodyear slicks on an impressive burnout, Stan staged the car and when the tree dropped Stan had driven out the back with the best time ever recorded for the Michael Bankston tuned 68 Camaro, running a 3.959 ET and a mph of 189.62 placing him in 4th after one round of qualifying. When we got back to the pits to look at the data a large smile came across Michael's face because our 60' and 330' times showed there was still room to step it up. We returned all 3 steeds to their respective stables for a good night's rest. When I arrived at the track Saturday morning I immediately noticed that Tim was outside working on the generator that supplies power to his motorhome. He said that he had been up working on it since 4:00 am. It just seems as if Tim had been shot in the foot for the weekend. With the cars serviced and ready to go we pulled them into the staging lanes on Saturday morning for qualifying round two. Tim would be the last out for the team as he was contesting the semi-finals from the rescheduled Memphis drags. John DeFlorian was the first to make a hit from the right lane. Once again he was a victim of tire shake before making the 60' mark forcing him to click the run. Second out this morning was Stan Allen as he took the left lane for his second qualifying attempt. Stan got out of the box quite well only to have his machine go hard right towards the center line causing him to abort the run early as well. With Tim Savell being last out for the team, and still not qualified for the Martin race, he was racing team Al-Anabi's driver Mike Castellana, for the semi-finals carried over from Memphis. When the tree dropped it appeared that Mike broke giving the win light to Tim Savell. The run for Tim was less than spectacular due to his car also going hard right to the center line. Tim had no clue as to what happened to Mike and he must have driven a full quarter mile in only 660' with the Blue Beast dancing from right to left through the entire run. Fortunately he made it to the finals, and unfortunately his ET, 4.962 was not good enough to get into the 16 car field as the bump at the time was a mere 4.76. This was not good for him in that now when he meets with Jim Halsey in qualifying round 3 he needed to focus more on qualifying the car rather than being able to race for the win. In qualifying round 3 John DeFlorian was unable to get his Corvette qualified for this race forcing him to put his ride on the trailer for the remainder of the weekend with a D N Q. Stan had a clean run on his third attempt running a 4.02 ET and was solidly in the field from his stellar pass on Friday night. So with this done it was time for Tim to get his steed qualified for this race and to also take a shot at Jim Halsey for the final round of the Memphis drags. The bump coming into round three was a 4.15 and we were more focused on qualifying. When all was said and done Jim Halsey had defeated Tim Savell in the finals, however Tim was able to get under the bump with a 4.05 on the run to have his Blue Beast qualified on its last attempt. When the cars were returned to the pits for servicing we noticed a problem with number 4 cylinder on the leak down for Stan's car. After pulling the valve cover on the right bank it was noticed that the rocker arm for the exhaust valve was not properly on the seat and some damage had been done to the rocker itself. So we replaced the rocker and were aware that we had merely mended the problem rather than fix it the way it should have been done. We were forced into this decision due to impending rain and round one of eliminations being moved up by the ADRL in order to beat the rain.   The remainder of this event will be contested at Topeka, KS which is the next event on the schedule for the weekend of July 4th. We look forward to seeing you there! Regards, Mark Teague |