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| The big winner in Outlaw 10.5 was Joey Martin of Milton, Fl, who was doing double duty by racing car owner Tim Tindle's Camaro PLUS his "Batman" Pro Mod Willys. |
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If the first 2005 Outlaw All-Star Shootout held at Huntsville (Alabama) Dragway over the March 19-20 weekend is any indication, heads-up racing has found a niche in Alabama and indeed a whole lot more of the South.
More than 200 “real” race cars --- no dragsters, altereds or Funnies allowed --- answered the call for eliminations on Sunday in the first of a series of heads-up, Pro tree drags to be put on by the Outlaw Racing Street Car Association, based in Loganville, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama-based race promoter George Howard, he of the Million Dollar Drag Race fame and his series of low-buck/high payout series of bracket races. “This is great, the wave of the future of sportsman racing,” he said late Sunday.
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Howard provided the track --- Huntsville, the self-proclaimed “Bracket Racing Capital of the South” --- while the ORSCA provided the rules for a variety of classes, from Outlaw Automatic Pro Modified, for Pro Mods with Powerglides, to Outlaw 10.5, for cars with mufflers and street slicks, Limited Street, Easy Street (both with weight breaks), and 5.30, 6-oh and 7-oh-indexed cars. All except Pro Modified had stock-appearing bodies. Howard, who invited the wild, guardrail-to-guardrail southern Outlaw Pro Modifieds to race for big bucks, had his own rule for that class: “The only rules are, there aren’t any rules,” he says.
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| Ronnie "the King" Davis, of Commerce, Ga, one of our Top 10 Sportsman racers of all time, leaves in his Sagon RV Supercenter-sponsored split-window Vette. Davis won Outlaw Automatic class in his Top Sportsman car. |
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Except for the indexed classes, the final rule was simple: Whoever gets to the finish line first wins.
Qualifying a surprising second in Pro Mod, Bil “Big Money” Clanton, from Rome, Georgia, won class in the family Studebaker over the No. 1 man in the field, Ron Stokes in his ’53 Corvette from Columbus, Mississippi. Clanton, who races with his veteran gasser/altered/Pro Stock father Ralph, mom Marvine and crewman Larry Jones, hit a best of 4.03/175 mph in eliminations, beat Stokes in the final when the latter lifted downtrack.
No surprise here, but Ronnie “the King” Davis, of Commerce, Georgia, a many-time NHRA and IHRA champ in Top Sportsman, won the Outlaw Automatic class in his split-window Fulton/TCI-powered T/S Vette with bracket-like times between 4.34 and 4.35, all at 167 mph. And in the hot Outlaw 10.5 class, Joey Martin, of Milton, Florida, won in his boss’s ’68 Camaro, a 4.50-second car that was built for Tim Tindle, owner of Emerald Coast Dragway, in two-and-a-half months. Martin also drove Tindle’s radical “Batman” Willys in Pro Mod.
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| Newcomer to Outlaw heads-up racing is Nicky Ewing of Loganville, Ga, who won 6-oh class. Ewing's father and uncle raced Super Stock and Pro Stock in this same car. |
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In the 5.30 class, Lison Walker of Hiram, Georgia, won in his “Ms. Pearl” ’68 Camaro, while Limited Street was taken by Terry Woodson of Dallas, Georgia, in his ’81 Z-28. Heath Bell of Huntsville won the Easy Street class in his ’69 Camaro, while Nicky Ewing of Loganville, a member of the famed Pro Stock Ewing family, captured the 6.0 class in dad Lamar’s and uncle Billy’s ex-Pro Stocker. And Kevin Thompson of Glasgow, Kentucky won 7.0 in a rare heads-up race car, a ’70 Olds F-85 that originally came with a GM six-cylinder engine.
Other ORSCA/George Howard Productions races will follow, and will be
held at Atlanta Dragway, Fayetteville (N.C.) Motorsports Park, Memphis
Motorsports Park, and in the season-closer in October, at Huntsville Dragway.
Call Howard Racing at 205-251-7311 for more info.
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© Competitionplus 2005
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