Long-time drag racing publicist, track promoter and a good friend of mine, Steve Earwood, took over the reins of the "Rock" and has taken it full blast into the 21st century. The improvements he's made in the past few years have made it into one of IHRA's best facilities and with his promotional skills and all the media coverage he generated it resulted into the track's biggest one-day crowd for Saturday night's "Night of Fire" as a reported 30,000 fans showed up for a great show. Now I've been to a lot of drag races in my many years doing this and I'll tell you this, the crowd was huge.
Most of the time it rains sometime during the weekend at Rockingham but this weekend was the exception, sunny skies, daytime temperatures in the 80s were great for the fans but made the track somewhat slippery and most of the pro racers had a hard time maneuvering the quarter mile.
(Linda Brock photo)
Ten cars showed up to do battle in Top Fuel. Doug Foley lead qualifying with a 4.55 but when the dust cleared it was T.J. Zizzo (shown above) getting the victory over Bobby Lagana. Dave Settles strikes again...
Nine floppers were on the property and the field was led by Paul Smith with Jon Capps aboard at 4.97 and the rookie driver went to the finals where he lost to Jack Wyatt who won his third race in a row at Rockingham. Can anybody beat this guy in North Carolina?
(Linda Brock photo)
Rob Mansfield (shown above with John Montecalvo) led the Pro Stock field with the help of ex-Greg Anderson/Jason Line crew chief Jeff Perley with a 6.33 and the bump was 6.43, a tenth of a second spread from first to last. I don't usually pay attention to the Pro Stocks but I watched a few sessions and I'm really impressed about how hard these mountain-motor cars leave the line. John Montecalvo took the Ironman over Pete "Bunsen" Berner with one of the closest races of the event, a 6.38 to a losing 6.39.
