Under Pressure!26 August 2009 - With the 2009 points season rapidly approaching its end the pressure to be in the top eight for the Speedtech Battle for the Belts couldn’t have been greater. This pressure was certainly felt by Bankston Boyz Racing’s own Stan Allen, who finished the 08 season third in the world. Allen comes into the Columbus Ohio National Trails Raceway sixth in points after falling from fourth in a dismal outing in St. Louis, MO. Allen stated, “If I intend to race for the belt in Dallas I better go rounds. If I can’t make it to at least the semis in each of the following races I don’t think I can hold my place in the points, this means I have to go 4 of the last 8 rounds at a minimum.”  With the stage set we roll into Columbus, Ohio with two of three cars and one of them has to have a new motor installed. The Blue Beast had a major failure at the St. Louis race and that initiated a series of events involving John DeFlorian’s power plant. As fate would have it, Michael Bankston had a deal set up to sell the Blue Beast following the race in St. Louis in running condition. After the severe mechanical failure endured at the Hardees Independence Drags we were forced to swap motors. We pulled the motor from DeFlorian’s ZO6 Corvette and placed it in the Blue Beast so that the car could be sold turnkey. Well, to sum it up, the deal fell through! So, with the blown motor on its way to Pilcher’s machine shop we left St. Louis with DeFlorian feeling like a hot shaken beer in that he had the best outing of his career and ended up going home with a car that had no motor. I can’t imagine the emotional ride he took this weekend. We get to the track on Thursday and have to put a motor in John’s car and make some minor changes to Stan’s car prior to round one of qualifying on Friday morning. The track itself on Friday could only be described as AWFUL in that there were severe cracks, patched holes, bumps, and little to no rubber down for racing. This was by far the worst looking track we have seen all year and probably for the last several years and I would not have given a plug nickel that we would see the level of competition that we did on both Friday and Saturday. I came in thinking that the track could work in our favor in that it would become an equalizer in that the cars making more power would have to back down in order to make a full run. Boy was I wrong! Kudos goes out to Bubba Corzine, ADRL Director of Competition, for track preparation. Great job Bubba! The track just kept getting better and better all weekend as rubber was put on the racing surface.  In round two of eliminations Stan Allen was matched up against eventual Pro-Nitrous winner Thomas “Slick” Meyers of Grandberry, TX. Stan fired his machine and in a display of true sportsmanship waited until Thomas Meyers could get his machine fired up. While patiently waiting in the water box for Meyers to get his car to start ADRL Official Quick Vandiver asked team owner Michael Bankston what he wanted to do and offered us a bye run due to Meyers inability to get his ’63 split window Corvette to fire. It seems that he brought his steed to the starting line without having a single plug wire hooked to this Reher-Morrison powered machine. Michael Bankston told Quick that we would wait on Thomas because we came there to race and did not want to take a win light in this manner. Don’t get me wrong, we certainly needed the points and who knows how far we could have taken the black and gold this day. But in the spirit of sportsmanship we waited and it cost us the win light with a margin of victory for Meyers of 0.1832 seconds! So with this our race weekend was over. We know that we made the right decision in waiting for Slick and want to congratulate him and wife Rebecca for their first ever ADRL Minuteman trophy. They have been racing with the ADRL since its inception 5 years ago and they have more than paid their just dues. It is in this spirit of sportsmanship that we proudly represent our fine sponsors for without their assistance we could not make these fantastic events. Special thanks go out to Mississippi Foundation Repair Specialists, TeaCo Geophysical, Speedtech, Reher-Morrison, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber for their continued support. See you in Rockingham, NC for the last race in this points season! Regards, Mark Teague |