Regardless, with Scruggs—the ADRL Pro Extreme record holder—out with a broken four-link on his ’63 Vette’s rear suspension, Daniels took advantage by steering his own Vanishing Point-built, split-window Corvette past Thomas Patterson’s ’41 Willys in the opener, then upsetting the heavily favored Joshua Hernandez and his ’68 Camaro in round two. That pitted Daniels against number-six qualifier Bubba Stanton in the semis, after Stanton took care of Hernandez teammate Troy Critchley and his wild-looking, tire-shaking 1970 Cuda and Todd Bauknecht’s ’63 Vette in the early preliminaries.
Stanton lost traction almost immediately off the start, allowing Daniels to become the first alternate qualifier in either ADRL category to advance to a final round. There, he met
number-one qualifier Mike Neal in Don Stroud’s ’53 Studebaker, after Neal defeated Dwayne Watkins, chassis builder Tommy Mauney substituting for Terry Leggett in Leggett’s ’41 Willys, and local favorite Toney Russell in the semi finals.
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Neal posted the only three-second pass of eliminations in his win over Russell, going 3.994 at 181.31 mph over the Huntsville eighth mile to gain lane choice for the final, while Russell had to abort his run when his ’55 Chevy “Lowmad” veered close to the left guardwall. “The one thing I fight with this car is its short wheelbase (108 inches),” Russell said later. “I have quite a bit of weight hanging on the front end, but it wasn’t enough to keep it straight this time.”
Going into the final round, Daniels admitted he hoped “the luck train keeps on rolling,” but added he felt confident with teammates Brandon Pesz and Sam McCarrey calling the shots in the pits on his Brad Anderson-built hemi. “I know with them working on the car I have a chance,” Daniels said. “If you don’t think you’ve got a chance to win, there’s no use in coming through that gate out there.”
His feelings proved prescient, as Daniels left with a .084 light in the final to Neal’s .144, which spelled the difference at the top end with his 4.097 at 180.58 mph beating the quicker 4.040/179.86 posted by Neal by just three thousandths of a second—which coupled with the five thousandths he initially missed qualifying by adds up to the eight thousandths that defined his weekend.
“My main thought was that I wanted to get him on the tree,” Daniels said. “And he went an .03 and we went .09, so that tells you what happened on the starting line. But what really impresses me is that we were running the numbers. Other than that little qualifying glitch we had a pretty good weekend.”
Floridian Mike Neal made just one test pass in the heat of the day on Friday afternoon and led everyone with a 4.01-seconds pass, then went out that night for the first round of qualifying and secured the top spot with a 3.971-seconds effort at 181.74 mph. The Stroud Racing team opted out of Saturday’s two qualifying rounds, but retained the number-one starting position, then raced to a runner-up finish in eliminations.
