First Day Complete

Day one and round one of qualifying on the books

Drag radial has been all the talk with six entrants, all very strong contenders. Steven Fereday and Late Model Racecraft is among the top, who suffered a transmission fire during test and tune. However, the crew was able to replace their converter, some plumbing, and the parachute, which were all damaged in the fire, and make it to qualifying a few hours later. Their twin-turbo Firehawk hit 193mph with a conservative 7.763. The top qualifier so far, though, is Andy Essary in the '02 Trans Am with a 7.53 at 189. Andy put on a strong showing at the LS Fest and is looking to build on that in Indy. Brian Krzewinski (aka Fireball) has the three spot with a 7.82 at 185, and Michael Meeks is at the number four with a conservative 7.99 at 162 (after short-shifting) as Mike Brown and Mark Carlye are still sorting out issues with their new combos.

All Motor currently has Joe Huneycutt from LMR as the number one qualifier, having taken full advantage of test and tune to get his Camaro dialed in to an 8.56 at 156. Chris Fowler of Extreme HP in the third-gen Camaro ran an 8.99 at 153, and Robert Strong in the Monte SS is sitting in third with a 9.26 at 151. Texas Speed is working on a new solid roller combo for their stock bottom-end 346cid Camaro that has them at a 9.68 at 138. And Judson Massingill and the SAM crew are still tweaking their Camaro after an aborted run.

Adam Preston looks like the man to beat, qualifying with an 8.45 at 160 in his new fourth-gen Camaro. Meanwhile Ted Timmerman's '02 Trans Am convertible is starting to shape up, the new converter had the single turbo setup hit an 8.85 at 156 for the number two spot. Charles Polly's six-speed, nitrous Camaro is number three with a 9.08 at 153 and Paul Falcon's '01 Formula was a touch off-pace with a 9.17 at 145. Look for Lingenfelter to get their Camaro back on-pace today, and challenge for the number two spot. Some issues for Jon Ebert and LPE had them a second off with an early shut-down, and we hope to see Greg Harmon's '00 Trans Am back into the single digits this morning as well.

The Fifth-Gen Challenge attracted two very fast east coast cars, currently ranked very high on our Fastest Fifth-Gen List, including the Farks Supercars/ARH '10 of Louie Filippides and Matt Sorian's cam/blower-only combo from East Coast Supercharging. Flilippides went a 9.57 at 148 and Sorian is sorting out a tach issue that has kept him to a 10.49 at 132 so far.

There are also some unbelievably fast cars in Rumble (Index) including Greg Edwards '02 Camaro with a Speed Inc twin-turbo kit that clicked off an 8.69 at 162, Rodney Massengale from RPM Transmissions went a 9.58 in his blown C6 Z06, Don Dixon's Goat hit a 9.84, and '00 Camaro from Burkhardt Chassis was well into the 8s though some issues during qualifying kept them to a 10.03. Of course the Mustang-Malibu tandem from Mast Motorsports is both running well, with the Fox-body hitting a 9.34 and the G-body running a 10.59.