ADRL GATEWAY DRAGS III - EVENT RESULTS

SATURDAY FINALS - GATEWAY DRAGS WRAPS WITH FAST FINALS

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The stars and cars of the American Drag Racing League (ADRL) saved their best for last, with three of the five pro class winners of the ADRL Hardee’s Gateway Drags III turning in their best efforts of the event in the final rounds at Gateway International Raceway, with the other two victors coming very close as well.

Pro Extreme winner Alex Hossler capped off the weekend with a tremendous 3.69-seconds blast over the Gateway eighth mile, while Shannon Jenkins turned in his best run with a 3.88 to take the Pro Nitrous title and Extreme 10.5 winner Chuck Ulsch made his first three-second lap of the weekend with a 3.99 at 206.35 mph that also set a new national speed record for the class.

Meanwhile, at 4.11 seconds in the Extreme Pro Stock final, Brian Gahm ran just one-thousandths of a second off his best time of the event in successfully defending his 2009 victory and Pro Extreme Motorcycle rider Ashley Owens finished less than a hundredth off his best time of the weekend with a 4.09 pass that provided his second win in two days.

After placing fifth in the supercharged Pro Extreme class with a 3.71-seconds qualifying pass in his 1970 Camaro, Hossler initially eliminated Steve rossler_px Wiley with a 3.74 and then had to face ADRL elapsed time record holder Frankie Taylor. Hossler made it past a traction-challenged Taylor with a 3.76 effort, only to meet up with number-one qualifier and winner of the previous night’s rain-postponed ADRL Independence Drags from Topeka last month, Sheikh Khalid Al-Thani of Qatar.

Hossler put Al-Thani on the trailer with a 3.75 run, but the Canton, Illinois-based driver said he and crew chief Chris Duncan knew they’d have to step up for the final against Texas racer Gaylen Smith, who held lane choice with his ’57 Chevy after going 3.72 in the semis to beat defending class champion Todd Tutterow.

“Not to toot our own horn, but we did go through a pretty tough line-up; we never could let up at all,” Hossler said after defeating Smith’s best-of-the-day 3.71 at 204.85-mph pass with his own 3.69 at 203.89 that took him perilously close to the left guardwall as he approached the finish line.

“I don’t think you could’ve fit a fingernail between the zoomies (headers) and the wall,” Hossler said. “But with it being the final and Gateway being my home track and I had more than a hundred friends and family members here and knowing the ADRL has no disqualification rule for touching the wall—there was no way I was going to lift!”

Still, Hossler admits he was far from confident the car would stick and run so fast in the final.
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“We were chasing it and made changes every round, but the engine wasn’t responding the way we expected,” he explained. “By the time we figured it out, to be honest I thought we might’ve given it too much and I was prepared to pedal. But it felt real good and I’m thrilled to get the win and move back up in the point standings.”

Driving the same ‘68 Camaro that teammate Mike Castellana drove to victory at Gateway last season, Shannon Jenkins also started from the fifth position, but then ran quicker and faster in each round of racing until culminating in a 3.88-seconds pass at 193.13 mph to beat the 3.95 at 191.10 by Randy Weatherford, who was going after his first ADRL win. The run gave Jenkins a class-leading ninth race title and his second of the year.

“No matter how many you win, they’re all pretty special,” said Jenkins, from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “You always know it’s going to be tough when you let the clutch out because the guy beside you wants it just as bad and is letting the clutch out, too.”

The Extreme 10.5 final was a repeat showing from last year when Billy Glidden got the best of Chuck Ulsch, who lost traction after dominating the entire urist_xtf weekend. This time around, though, it was Glidden who suffered race-ending problems.

After leaving with an absolutely perfect triple-zero reaction time, Glidden’s nitrous-assisted 2010 Mustang immediately fell silent and coasted to a quick stop while Ulsch and his supercharged ’68 Camaro streaked into the ADRL record books at 206.35 mph. The speed was backed up within the required one percent for an official record by the 205.22 mph that Ulsch posted in a second-round win over Jeff Naiser.

“It turned out to be a great weekend,” Ulsch said in victory lane. “It didn’t start out the way we wanted, but we thrashed on the car in the pits and it came around for us.”

Brian Gahm ran consistently all weekend after qualifying his ’07 Mustang third with a 4.11 pass at 175.16 mph, then going 4.13, 4.15 and 4.13 again to eliminate Trevor Eman, Doug Kirk and Cary Goforth, respectively, before posting a remarkably long .684 reaction time, but another 4.11 at 174.98 mph to take his second race win in 2010 and successfully defend his Gateway Drags event title from last year.

It was an easy win for Gahm as he made a solo pass in the final when opponent Cale Aronson was timed out by the automatic starter after taking more than seven seconds to go from pre-staged to staged. Afterward, there appeared to be some discussion around Aronson’s car over whether something unintentional had tripped the pre-staging beam, but no definitive reason was given.
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Ashley Owens was the only winner of the rain-delayed Independence Drags to enjoy a double-up weekend at the Madison, Illinois, strip, as he won his fifth and sixth of seven Pro Extreme Motorcycle events run so far in this year’s 10-race schedule.

Owens qualified his ’09 Suzuki on top of the 16-bike field for the Gateway Drags with a 4.10 pass and then set low ET in each elimination round with a best of 4.08 in a second-round win over Ronald Procopio. He faced off against first-time finalist Kim Morrell, who earlier set top speed of the meet for the class at 176.14 mph, for the race title and led stripe-to-stripe to earn a class-leading eighth win.

Owens left first with a .013 light, his best of the day, then ran 4.09 at 174.68 to beat Morrell’s .028/4.16/169.89 package by two or three bike lengths.

“All the credit goes to my team and the guys back at the shop,” Owens insisted. “I’m just the guy that’s lucky enough to ride this thing.”

The Gateway Drags Pro Jr. Dragster title went to first-time winner Alexander Oppen, who broke out with a 7.93 at 80.96 mph after dialing in at 7.96, but Kyle Dvorak went red off the start in the final by 46-hundredths of a second.