Late Friday night, John Montecalvo led the winners’ parade for the rain-postponed Hardee’s Independence Drags IV from Topeka with his fourth-in-a-row ADRL Extreme Pro Stock event title. Also adding to winning streaks were Rickie Smith with his third-straight Pro Nitrous win and Ashley Owens with his second Pro Extreme Motorcycle win in as many events. Also scoring Topeka titles were Gary White with his third Extreme 10.5 win of the year and Sheikh Khalid Al-Thani, who turned in a dominating performance to take his second Pro Extreme trophy this season.

Eliminations for the delayed Topeka race were held within qualifying sessions for Saturday’s ADRL Hardee’s Independence Drags III at Gateway International Raceway, lying practically in sight of downtown St. Louis, just across the Mississippi River in Madison, Illinois.

Late Friday night, John Montecalvo led the winners’ parade for the rain-postponed Hardee’s Independence Drags IV from Topeka with his fourth-in-a-row ADRL Extreme Pro Stock event title. Also adding to winning streaks were Rickie Smith with his third-straight Pro Nitrous win and Ashley Owens with his second Pro Extreme Motorcycle win in as many events. Also scoring Topeka titles were Gary White with his third Extreme 10.5 win of the year and Sheikh Khalid Al-Thani, who turned in a dominating performance to take his second Pro Extreme trophy this season.

Eliminations for the delayed Topeka race were held within qualifying sessions for Saturday’s ADRL Hardee’s Independence Drags III at Gateway International Raceway, lying practically in sight of downtown St. Louis, just across the Mississippi River in Madison, Illinois.

Driving a pair of ’08 Chevy Cobalts, both drivers in the Extreme Pro Stock final made their best passes of the day in the final, but it was Montecalvo’s 4.07 at 176.47 mph that put away the 4.13 at 173.83 combination by Jeff Dobbins over the Gateway eighth mile. Montecalvo, who qualified fourth back in Topeka on the July 4th weekend, defeated Scott Hintz, Bob Bertsch and Cary Goforth, going quicker each time to reach the round that counts.

“Any time Jeff and I go to the line it’s going to be a battle, but it’s all in good fun. I told him he was going to think it was the jet car running beside him,” the man they call “Monte” said about a brief starting-line duel with Dobbins.

“But I owe it all to my crew,” he continued. “They are giving me an absolutely great car right now and we’re going to see if we can make it five in a row. But I’m not being cocky; I want to stay grounded, but I want to be feeling positive, too, and I feel like there’s no reason we can’t do it. Of course, this is drag racing, so who knows what’s going to happen?”

The Pro Nitrous final certainly produced a fascinating story, too, but it wasn’t just about the seven-thousandths-of-a-second margin of victory for Smith over Jim Halsey. Rather, it was the personal journey for Smith, who two weeks earlier had dedicated back-to-back wins at Houston to his ailing 79-year-old father, Burke, who died just one day before the Gateway event.

“I can’t help but feel the Lord let me win this one,” Smith said, his voice cracking in an emotional winner’s circle ceremony. “I dedicated those last two wins to Daddy, but this one’s for my mother (Dorothy), who’s still alive back home (in North Carolina).”    

Out on the track, Smith won the closest final of the night thanks to a .022 holeshot that allowed the 3.89 at 190.67-mph pass by his ’68 Camaro to beat the quicker and faster 3.87 at 193.99 by Halsey’s similar machine. Smith also made his quickest pass of the day in the final after taking out Dave Pierce, Halsey’s teammate Pat Stoken and Dan Stevenson to get there.

Owens continued his remarkable dominance of the ADRL’s two-wheeled class this year with his second straight Pro Extreme Motorcycle event title, but also his fifth win in six races held this year. With only an eight-bike field from Topeka, Owens had only to beat Brunson Grothus and Eric McKinney to reach the final, where he left with a solid .031 advantage, then ran a class-leading 4.10 at 174.14 mph to handily defeat the 4.19 at 168.56 by Canadian rider Terry Schweigert.

“He’s simply the best; I have the greatest rider in the world,” team owner Paul Gast said after Owens’ latest victory. “People don’t realize how hard it is to ride these bikes and Ashley Owens is the absolute best at it. I’m in awe of his abilities.”

A sheepish White admitted in victory lane that his own abilities nearly let him down in staging for the Extreme 10.5 final against Jeff Naiser.

“I forgot to set the boost switch and I realized it wasn’t making any boost when we were staging so I had to slip it into neutral and hit the switch just as Jeff turned on the second (staging) bulb,” said White, who enjoyed a rather easy path to the final with a first-round bye followed by another solo pass when Judd Coffman was disqualified from round two for rolling through the beams and a strong semi-final win over Topeka native Dustin Miller.

“I thought I was finished then, but it made just enough boost to leave and get the job done,” White said about the 4.00 at 185.79 that got the job done while Naiser had problems early in his run and had to shut off early.

Sheikh Khalid, the number-four starter from Topeka, served notice straight off the trailer he would be a force this weekend, advancing past Al-Anabi teammate and defending class champion Todd Tutterow in round one of Topeka eliminations before easily handling Wes Johnston and overcoming a near-perfect .001 start by Gaylen Smith in the semis.

Al-Thani’s final-round charge against Frankie Taylor, a winner at Houston, also produced his quickest and fastest pass of the weekend so far, giving him not only his second Pro Extreme win, but also the Gateway Drags III provisional pole with a track record 3.66 at 208.84, while Taylor went a solid but distant 3.80 at 195.48 mph.

Jimmy Sackwich, the 10th-place qualifier in Pro Jr. Dragster, won his first ADRL race with an 8.12 run at 80.93 mph against an 8.11 dial in when opponent Kendall Thiesse redlighted away her Topeka final-round chances.

Significantly, all five winning Independence Drags passes stood as number-one qualifying times for the pros heading into a fourth and final qualifying session Saturday morning before eliminations begin for the ADRL Gateway Drags III.