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Flowmaster Dragstock VI Wrap Up - Rockingham, North Carolina

17 September 2009 – Sorry for the delay in getting my stuff together from the most recent National Guard ADRL event, Dragpalooza VI, held this past weekend at Richmond County Raceway in Rockingham, NC. Expectations were high this weekend due to the point’s race for the Speedtech Battle of the Belts in the Pro-Nitrous Class. Stan Allen comes into this event sixth in points with 4 rounds of racing left for the 2009 season with contenders Steve Vick, Pat Stoken, and Burton Auxier joust for the final positions. Driver John DeFlorian comes into this event sitting in twelfth place in the points and Tim Savell in at thirteenth position.

Stan Allen was pitted by track officials way down at the top end around 1000 feet, with DeFlorian being stuck in the grass under some pine trees, much closer to the staging lanes! Apparently no benefit in parking is realized by teams that properly manage their time in order to be one of the first in the gates. The distance between the team pits was considerable and caused some minor problems over the weekend between the two pit areas, but distance was more of an inconvience than anything. I do however feel that there should be more consideration to all teams in every class that is in the top eight in points for pit selection. The reason I say this is that each driver in the points chase deserves to be there and with many others on the outside looking in, I feel some sort of recognition should be afforded those teams leading their respective classes in points and preferred parking should be considered. I feel that a preferred pit would be beneficial to the ADRL in that you can always have your top eight in each class in one spot for each race. This predictability allows fans to find the most popular drivers in one spot that would consist of 48 teams if all classes were included. With over 150 entries at each race this would cull out a little over 30% of the teams. Now the obvious downside of this would be what happens to the multi-car teams who have 4 cars and 2 drivers in contention? Should these guys break up their pits? I don’t know for sure but I can say there was a considerable absence of fans in our pits this race and this is probably due to being all the way down by the scales. The absence of fans in the pits decreases our ability to get our sponsors names and products marketed, and as I have witnessed this game for the last 5 years marketing is becoming bigger each year in the ADRL and in order to compete at this level we must market our sponsors.

I got to the track early Friday morning to begin a day of fun and play at “The Rock”! I met Stan and David early this morning and shot the bull as we downed a cup of coffee. When they went out to begin servicing the ’68 Tim McAmis Camaro I decided to go out and walk the track. I went to the line and walked out to about 330’ and recorded a video of this and it is on this site under misc videos. The racing surface was incredible with little to no prepping required at 9:00 in the morning, except for maybe a light mist of VHT. The Rock in comparison to National Trail, the race prior to this at Hebron, OH, was like night and day where Hebron was dilapidated and cracked up this surface was smooth and FAST.

The day started at noon eastern on schedule and the Extreme Pro-Stockers were first out followed by bikes, Jr Dragsters, 10.5, Pro-Nitrous, and Pro-Extreme. By the time we got to the line it was around 1:30 and the racing surface was in great shape for anything within reason. In the first round of qualifying we had Stan Allen racing the right lane stage up against teammate John DeFlorian in the left lane. The scene was partly cloudy with a mild breeze running from left to right and density altitude for this run came in around 1500 feet. With both drivers completing the systematic process of pre-staging the cars, Stan rolled in first with John coming in immediately after. When the tree dropped they had both gone the full distance with John performing better this run with a 4.03 and 182.95 mph as compared to Stan’s slower 4.125 ET. After bringing the cars back to the pits we were notified by ADRL Officials that due to car count there would only be two qualifiers this day with one remaining on Saturday. This changed some thinking in our pits in that we were sort of counting on that last pass later in the night to give us our best shot on qualifying. Upon completion of only one round of Pro-Nitrous qualifying it becomes apparent that this is going to be a fast field with the bump set at 4.08 and six cars already under 4 flat! So, with this change in qualifying we made appropriate changes on both tune ups in hopes of getting both our steeds into the top 16 out of 39 Pro-Nitrous entries.

Friday night qualifying, or round 2, saw ET’s and speed get just plain stupid in this class of cars with seeing Mike Castellana uncork a 3.862 and Halsey’s run of 194 mph we knew the chore ahead of us as did each and every competitor in this class. By the time Bankston Boyz Racing’s first car comes into the staging lanes we had John in at a 4.03 from earlier with a bump of 4.06 and Stan is on the outside looking in due to a dead cylinder in his previous attempt of a 4.125. Stan rolls into the left lane nearest the packed grandstand as Doug Riester stages in the other lane on the pit side of the track. Before the tree drops Stan rolls into the beams deep causing the top bulb to go out indicating a deep stage situation. In this case the car is closer to the finish line and as a result his elapsed time is slower than it should be because the car did not have the benefit of a “running start”, whereas the mph appears nice. This is the case with Stan and is reflected in his unimpressive 4.015 ET and 188.23 mph, had he not deep staged this should have been a run around 3.95 – 3.97 range. Unfortunately this run of 4.015 was good enough to lower the bump to a 4.02 ET and bumped teammate John DeFlorian out of the 16 car field.

John DeFlorian was next out in the Michael Bankston tuned ’06 ZO6 Jerry Haas Corvette and had the right lane for his second qualifier. “When the tree dropped the Reher-Morrison powered machine growled to life an instant before the first Speedtech nitrous stage came in and forced the car up on the tire making it haze for about twenty feet and then it was just gone”, said Dan Helmer (aka: Ichabod, and King of da Wild Frontier, if others are known please let me know) concerning John DeFlorian’s personal best with an ET of 3.989 and a mph of 187.03 that I did not even record. It is at this point that I sincerely wish for John’s forgiveness concerning my ineptitudes with videoing the best run of his life. I was filming from the 330’ marker and a very large Arabic photographer filled my camera as soon as he passes and as a result the video was deleted, sorry John! To somewhat compensate his ego for this effort I will now include a picture of him leaving the line…

Lifelong racing friend and ADRL pit announcer Bret Keppner raced to the top end to interview John after this run and almost wrecked his rental car into a concrete culvert trying to get there. In his vigor to congratulate John, Keppner said that he doing just fine on the service road and then there it was all the sudden like. What the hell Bret? He said John was certainly excited when he got out of the car and gave everyone at the top end a special thrashing with his enthusiasm. On Saturday morning when I talked with John he was still pumped and said that the car felt good at the hit and “got up on those Goodyear Tires and checked out”.

As a result of Friday’s qualifiers Stan Allen’s 4.015 did not hold up and was bumped out after 2 rounds. It was good to see John bump in strong but at Stan’s expense? Turnabout is fair play aint it John? Hey this is just the game we play and sometimes this is just the way it works out! Now coming into Saturday’s final round of qualifying we have John solidly in the 16 car field and Stan in at 18th place after 2 rounds, needing to get in. This was a season defining run for Stan in my opinion in that he is in 6th place in the Speedtech Innovative Systems Battle for the Belts championship for 2009 and needed to qualify to protect his place in the points. I know that even if he had a DNQ he would have still been in the top 8, but I was concerned with how the final pairings would work out in the championship. At 6th spot we would have raced 3rd spot, Mike Castellana, and in 7th place would have matched up on #2 Shannon Jenkins, and at 8 we would have been matched up against 1st place Jim Halsey. So with this considered I came to the only obvious conclusion that just being in the Battle for the Belts is great because however the match ups work out in the end we are guaranteed there will be no easy wins for anyone in the fight.

So coming into Saturday’s final qualifier Stan has been bumped out last night and John DeFlorian is in on a strong 3.989. The bump is now a 4.014, the quickest pro-Nitrous field in the history of the ADRL, and Stan is 17th qualifier on a 4.015 and on last attempt to get in. Conditions were basically the same as the prior day in that track temperature was in the 105 – 115 range and the density altitude checked in a little higher than Friday around 2300 feet, partly cloudy and 90 degrees or so.

By the time that John DeFlorian rolled into the left lane this afternoon the bump had gone even lower to a 4.00 flat! John completed the burnout procedure and staged the Nitrous Express sponsored Corvette into the beams for his final qualifier in the 2009 edition of Dragpalooza Dragstock VI. He had a good fairly straight run with the Goodyears hazing slightly off the line then hooking throughout the run of 4.014 and a mph of 185.13. The second pair behind John was Stan Allen needing to get into the game and he was just as relaxed and cool as he could be. I honestly think that the more stress he comes under in racing the more he is at ease with it and those who really know him know the truth I speak.

When the time had come for this final qualifying attempt the bump remains at a 4.00 flat and Stan is on the outside looking in. Stan stages his Mississippi Foundation Repair Specialists; Michael Bankston tuned 68 Camaro in the right lane against Ed Burnley in the left lane. When Allen’s car left the line it pulled the front left around 150 feet and settled down before going out the top at an ET of 3.991 at 187.73 mph putting Stan into the field with few cars left in the lanes to bump him out. By the end of final qualifying the world sees its first ever Pro-Nitrous field qualified less than 4 seconds at 3.999!

So after the excitement is over in our pits it is back to work on servicing the cars and making them race ready for eliminations later this afternoon. After getting the cars ready and in the staging lanes for round one I took drivers Stan Allen and John DeFlorian to the ADRL’s Driver Autograph Zone for some time with our race fans. Bankston Boyz drivers joined Pro-Extreme drivers Joshua Hernandez and Travis Swerengen in the interactions with our fans. We are always pleased to interact this way with our fans and encourage all to come see us run for the championship at Ennis, TX in October. While this was underway we had the Goodyear representatives in our pits for an early dinner consisting of steak, potatoes, salad, corn on the cob, and garlic bread. We are sorry we missed you all but am sure that you were made to feel right at home by Amy Allen and Leslie Bankston and we sincerely thank you for your sponsorship support.

Round one of eliminations began on time and right around dusk with Stan Allen qualified at 15th and matched up with 2nd qualifier Jim Halsey, and John DeFlorian is in at the 13th spot and is paired up with 4th place qualifier Shannon Jenkins. The first out for Bankston Boyz Racing was John DeFlorian and he was in the left lane against “The Iceman”. The cars staged and left the line with identical reaction times of .021 and John’s Corvette drifted a little right before he brings it back on a losing run of 3.982 to Jenkins’ 3.926 with a margin of victory at the line of 0.0645 seconds, about 18 feet! What a great weekend for John and his crew in finding a consistent 3.98 tune up and representing Bankston Boyz Racing in such a professional manner.

Next out was Stan Allen who met up with Jim Halsey, again. Allen comes out two pairs behind DeFlorian and is put into the left lane due to Halsey having lane choice over Stan. When the lights had dropped Stan’s ’68 Tim McAmis Camaro also drifted right towards the centerline making Stan drive it left and back into the groove. Stan loses to Halsey on a run of 3.977 and 188.20 mph to a 3.927 and 193.07 mph, great speed for Halsey. Stan Allen had an advantage off the starting line by .035 seconds by his quicker .014 reaction time as compared to Halsey’ reaction time of .049 and made Halsey run him down for a margin of victory of 0.0153 seconds which equates out to about 4 feet. Seems as if we have lost several races by these slim margins more than once this year and with the level of competition we are now seeing it is no surprise and is expected well into the future.

With Stan going out in the first round we see that he swaps places with Burton Auxier who was 7th in points before this event. So we know now as it is we will see Stan Allen match up against long time friend Shannon Jenkins who holds the second place in the points. The stage is set for Ennis, TX and I would not miss it for the world and recommend you don’t either! The race in Ennis is not only the race to crown class champions for the 2009 season, it is also the first official race for the 2010 points season which makes it a race within a race. How cool is that?

With this I must close this race’s summary and would like to thank all of our sponsors: Mississippi Foundation Repair Specialists, TeaCo Geophysical, Speedtech, Reher-Morrison, Goodyear, Tim McAmis, Jerry Haas, Nitrous Express, Penske Shocks, and Autometer. We have just been informed that we will have a feature on Bankston Boyz Racing in next month’s issue of RPM Magazine and features John DeFlorian’s Corvette on the cover.

Regards,

Mark Teague