Kalitta Racing tuner Nicky Boninfante and two-time NHRA Funny Car champion Frank Hawley won convincingly in their first round matches to advance to the semis of the 6th Annual War Stories Showdown presented by CompetitionPlus.com.

Boninfante, in the No. 1 seed, won by the largest margin ever in the history of the War Stories Showdown by garnering a 91.9-percent share of the votes as he beat out Roger Gustin. The key to Boninfante's victory was an incredible tale of a fiery pit bike/rental car incident at The Strip at Las Vegas. For his part, Gustin told a great story of a UFO sighting back when UFO's were deeply feared, unfortunately the tale came up against a Boninfante buzzsaw.

In his battle, Frank Hawley commanded the lead early in the match against John "Tarzan" Austin and never relinquished the top spot. Hawley's winning story involved an incident with federal immigration agents during his first championship run at Indy. Hawley deported but the historical tale was enough to overcome Tarzan's story of Jim Nicoll's unfortunate Tequilla incident.

Boninfante and Hawley will line up against each other in Thursday's semi-final round.

The other half of the first round matches will be decided later today. Chip Woodall holds a lead over Paul Candies, and Jim Nicoll is ahead of Sid Waterman. Voting for those races ends at 8 PM this evening.

NO. 2 CANDIES VS. NO. 7 WOODALL - Voting ends Today!

NO. 3 SUPERMAN NICOLL VS. NO. 6 WATERMAN - Voting ends Today!

Voting has ended but you can still read these great stories ...

NO. 1 BONINFANTE VS. NO. 8 ROGER GUSTIN

NO. 4 HAWLEY VS. NO. 5 TARZAN AUSTIN

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