Yesterday was a great day at US 131 Motorsports Park all in attendance as racers had to turn testing experience into qualifying results. While a few of the larger classes kicked off early elimination rounds last night, today is the day where every run counts, and all the work leading up to the event matters. 

 

The index and heads-up racers run through eliminations today, but racers in the Dodge // Mopar Hemi Shootout and Torqstorm Superchargers True Street classes made all the passes that count on Saturday to crown champions in a wide range of elapsed-time categories from the overall quickest average to the closest to a 15-second average.

 

Today the eight quickest machines from the Dodge // Mopar Hemi Shootout roster move on to the HHP Performance Quick 8 competition, which will determine who has the baddest modern Hemi machine on the property. 

 

Follow along on this page and our social channels for updates throughout the final day of the race, and click these links to view the NMRA QUALIFYING, NMRA ELIMINATIONS, NMCA QUALIFYING, and NMCA ELIMINATIONS.

Here is the schedule for today’s action at the 2nd Annual Arrington Performance NMRA/NMCA Power Festival Presented By TorqStorm Superchargers at US 131 Motorsports Park in Martin, Michigan.


Defending NMCA VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod champion Chip King and his team have been working hard all year trying new parts to improve their racing program. They qualified 2^nd at the first two races and first at the last race in St. Louis, but have yet to take advantage of that momentum. This weekend, King put his Mach 1 Mustang at the top of the qualifying sheet with a 3.69 at 196 mph. Could this be the weekend he takes it to the winner’s circle?


Just after going through the traps, Holley EFI Factory Super Cars points leader Chuck Watson had his parachute get tangled up in the wheelie bars of his Ford Performance Cobra Jet, and a subsequent brake lockup spun the car into the retaining wall. Watson’s crew members, Craig Spuhler and Kyle Koehler assessed the damage and said we can fix it, and Watson Racing team member Gardner Stone pulled his Cobra Jet over so they could swap the necessary front end parts to make Watson’s car whole again. When you’re the points leader and number one qualifier, you pull out all the stops to get to eliminations.


Edelbrock Xtreme Street points leader Bill Trovato fought some issues with his new fuel injection setup early in the weekend, but his Camaro showed promise early on and when Q4 was completed, Trovato sat on top with a 4.59 from his LSX-powered 5^th-Gen Camaro.


Aaron Puff enjoys racing with the NMCA and is competing in Stock Eliminator this weekend with his four-eyed, Fox-body Mustang. The Liberty manual transmission kept trying to kick the shifter out of his hand, so he and a bunch of guys pulled the trans and stuffed in a replacement. The car Explorer-based 5.0liter engine was back up and running in under 2 hours.


Keiffer Simpson and his Haley James Racing S197 Mustang were looking good in Xtreme Renegade qualifying with passes in the 4.6s, but on his Q2 run, he felt something during the run and clicked it off. Back in the pits, crew chief and engine builder Dwayne James found a broken timing chain and the crew spent the night and early morning pulling the engine to get it back in fighting shape. Simpson said they should be ready for eliminations on Sunday.

Things didn’t go as planned for John Leslie Jr. in Richmond Gear Factory Stock. His Fox Mustang hooked hard, but then the heavy metal noise growled from the back of the car. It wasn’t loud guitars though, the Rock Star snapped one 35-spline axle and twisted another, which cramped his style on the eve of eliminations. Sadly he had a 9-inch rearend ready to go back at his shop but wanted to upgrade the bearings before installing it in the car, so it wasn’t on hand for an easy fix.
 

A Ford engineer by trade, Dave Henderlong swapped a stock Godzilla engine into his Thunderbird — which was the first car he ever bought for the princely sum of two movie tickets and a bucket of popcorn. After the turbocharged LS engine slated for the car died on the dyno, he picked up this used 7.3-liter engine plucked from an Amazon truck. He reversed the exhaust manifolds to clear the steering rack and added spacers to the K-member to drop it into this Fox T-bird built up with used suspension and rearend bits. Under the sway of an OBR Control Systems controller, his Gozilla is upgraded with a Callies camshaft and PAC valve springs. His goal is to dip into the nines in naturally aspirated trim before bolting on a turbocharger.
 

Chris Hammon's 1993 Mustang LX coupe evolved from every stage of Fox modifications from bolt-ons to its current Vortech-boosted Coyote engine running on about 10 pounds of boost. He says modern engines are so much more tunable and reliable. Apparently, they are also quite consistent, as he qualified in the top spot in Exedy Racing Clutch Modular Muscle at Norwalk and the second spot here at US 131 Motorsports Park. He’s been running in the class for two and a half years and tries to dial the car to run the same number in any weather, and he hopes that pays dividends this weekend. The vintage 5.0 Mustang magazine license plate is certain to bring a little good karma along for the ride. He is running this weekend in ARP Open Comp.
 

Sondra Leslie rolled into the 2nd Annual Arrington Performance NMRA/NMCA Power Festival Presented By TorqStorm Superchargers with her Strange Engineering-backed four-eye Fox ready to rumble in VP Racing Madditives Renegade. Unfortunately, one of the aluminum tubes in her Vortech supercharger plumbing cracked, so she turned to the Haley James Racing team for some welding assistance. With the tube repaired, she was back in action.

Striving to meet his lofty standards this weekend in G-Force Racing Transmissions, Kevin McMullen started the weekend on a sour note. A broken clutch set him back to square one on his setup. He’s been sneaking up on it this weekend and hopes to go rounds today. McMullin plans on racing in some H-Pattern racing classes between now at the World Finals. 

Larry Firestone's been fighting the setup on his 2008 Mustang all weekend long. We caught up to him while he dried the car off from last night’s rain, but it was a torque converter switch before the race that put his HP Tuners Super Stang machine a second behind its usual pace. He is working through the tuning with Brenspeed and hopes to have it fully sorted out before the last race of the season. 

Breakage at the track can cause a great deal of frustration, but often the vendors on the Manufacturer's Midway come through in the clutch. The distributor gear in Junior McKenzie’s 408-cube Windsor broke and he tracked down a new one at Florida Performance. The car was all buttoned up and ready to go for eliminations where he hope to make the most of this 16th-qualified position in ARP Open Comp. 

This weathered $5 bill has a long history of trading hands between Exedy Racing Clutch Modular Muscle racers Andy Russell and Charlie McCulloch. They placed a bet years ago and whichever racer beats the other gains possession of the cash. Currently on a hot streak, Russell plans to hold on to the five spot. Between this event and the finals, Russell is getting a hip replacement. "The car is hanging in there, but I am worn out," he joked.

In the combined NMRA/NMCA TorqStorm Superchargers True Street category, stalwart racer Randy Thomas represented the Holley NMRA Ford Nationals Series well by averaging an impressive 8.68 seconds across three runs yesterday in his 2010 Shelby GT500 to earn the runner-up honors  at the 2nd Annual Arrington Performance NMRA/NMCA Power Festival Presented By TorqStorm Superchargers.


VP Racing Lubricants points leader and Bradenton winner, Derek Ward, is happy with the performance of his Noonan Race Engineering and Screw-blown powerplant and its performance so far this weekend. He’s qualified 7^th in the 15-car field going into the first round of eliminations.


VP Madditives Renegade racer Bob Zelenak has been trying to find his Mustang’s happy place after pulling 75 lbs of weight out of it due to a class rule change. He’s qualified 10^th out of the 24-car field with a 4.7452.


David Fallon has been a tough competitor to beat in the ARP Nitrous Pro Street category, and after qualifying first with a 4.30, he leads the rest of the field going into the first round of eliminations today.


Adapt and overcome is often the mantra of successful racers, and NMRA Renegade champion Joel Greathouse has certainly proved that he is. After a severe overnight downpour, the team and to adapt to their pit surroundings and the new river running across the end of it. Greathouse qualified 4^th with a 4.642 at 153 mph.


With his latest turbo combination down a good bit of horsepower, Edelbrock Xtreme Street racer Nick McGrath brought in a fresh pair of eyes, those of his daughter Julia Rose, to look over the data and the tuneup in the Big Stuff 3 Gen IV EFI.