“That brought back old memories,” said Smith, referring to the staging battle he had with Gillig in the final. “It brought back memories of me and Ronnie Sox and Warren Johnson because we had those kinds of burndowns. It really gets the fans into it. It came out in my favor this time, but could end up on the other side the next time. But I love the game and love being back over here in IHRA.”
PRO MODIFIED
Everyone (including this writer) was expecting to see the first IHRA legal five-second pass in Pro Mod history. Pro Mod crew chiefs on Friday night, especially those with supercharged cars, were licking their chops in anticipation. The air temp was in the middle 60’s and the air was dry. Royce Miller and the IHRA track crew had the MIR surface prepped to the max.
It turned out that the track was actually better than the tuners thought, causing the first three or four pairs of cars to shake, which caused the tuners to back their combinations down. Both Jim Oddy and Scotty Cannon later admitted that they missed their chance. How good were the conditions? Six-oh’s were common for the blown cars, but the nitrous cars really made a statement.
Jim Halsey’s ’69 nitrous Camaro ran a career-best lap of 6.117/230.84, the second quickest nitrous lap in history. Billy Harper also had a personal best 6.156.
The next qualifying session Saturday afternoon really put the Pro Mod field in twilight zone territory. Scott Cannon ran the quickest time in IHRA Pro Mod history at 6.019. Canadian Ray Commisso, with tuning help from ex-Jim Oddy driver Al Billes, ran the fastest speed in Pro Mod history at 239.44. Steve Bareman, current Oddy driver, set the IHRA speed record with a 238.93 lap. As for that 5-second ET, as the say at the carnival, “close, but no cigar!”
The final Saturday session saw yet more unreal performances. Ed Hoover’s 6.165 ET made the field the quickest in history and it ended up being the bump. Eleven of the 16 qualifiers ran under 6.10 seconds to qualify, four teams recorded times under 6.20 and didn’t qualify, and only three nitrous-injected teams made the 16-car field. Cannon drove to a 6.061 in the last pair of the session to back up the world record. 
Eliminations weren’t quite as dramatic as the qualifying, but they did deliver one of the most unusual final rounds in Pro Mod national event history. The first round saw most of the cars in the top half of the field overpower the race track, putting six of the top qualifiers on the trailer after the first round. Quain Stott and teammate Tommy D’Aprile battled their way to the final round.
D’Aprile edged new record holder Cannon in the race of the event when he used a massive holeshot and a 6.099 to ease by Cannon’s 6.056. The math shows that D’Aprile crossed the stripe nine ten-thousandths of a second before Cannon. Despite a cracked main cap, Stott ran yet another 6.08 to get by Carl “Big Dog” Spiering in the semi-finals.
The Pro Mod final was yet one more bizarre incident in a race that was full of them. Stott needed to win the final round to go into the last race of the IHRA series at Rockingham leading the championship by 10 points -- a championship he has finished second in too many times to count. Stott and D’Aprile ran a couple of 40-second laps with Stott finally creeping across the finish line first. A Pro Mod field that saw the quickest and fastest passes in history, and the quickest field in history was decided by a race where the winner ran a 41.828/25.24 lap to hold off his opponent’s 44.480/28.04 top end charge.
“For a lot of years I’ve watched these two-car teams, and sometimes not teammates, play the game of laying down,” Stott explained, “and that was the first time I ever did that.”