Mother’s Day Saturday gave a perfect opportunity for a one day VP Racing Fuels ET Bracket Racing series event to get our drivers one step closer to a series championship at the end of the year. Saturday brought sunny, clear skies and high temperatures in the upper 60s making it a perfect day for drag racing and over 250 racers thought the same thing as the crowds piled into Virginia Motorsports Park on Saturday morning. A huge shoutout goes out to all of our marketing partners, our racers and the staff at Virginia Motorsports Park for a well-run event yesterday with the finals being run at 9:30pm, even after a long delay due to sun location and the car count that was on the grounds for the day.
Hoosier Racing Tire Super Pro carried the largest car count of the day, as per the usual, with over 125 entries going at it to see who took home the $3,000 pay day with the increased payout due to car count. As the rounds clicked down, JT Taylor’s Camaro and Gordon Holmes’ dragster were the final two standing when it all came down to the wire. Taylor took the better reaction time in the finals and parlayed it into a double-breakout victory as he ran a 5.169 off the 5.17 dial while Holmes was trying to make up ground going 4.604 off the 4.62. Travis Sink and Randy Smith were the semi-finalists for the evening while Tyler Colbert, Darryl Morris, Delton Hairfield and Michael Adams bowed out the quarter-final round.
Pro nearly reached the car count mark for the increased payout, narrowly missing it, but a great crowd filled the lanes throughout the day with some of the toughest racing of the day as well. Cody Kirk’s Mustang and Chris Moren driving Seth Phillips’ Barracuda showed off to pair themselves in the final together. Both drivers were great on the starting line, only .009 separating the two as they raced towards the top end. Moren dropped to be two above while Kirk ran one above to take the victory in his Richmond, VA based Ford Mustang. Rodney Lunsford was the lone semi-finalist for the evening while David Saunders and Phil Rutherford rounded out the quarter-finalists.
Pro Bike saw the familiar faces in the lanes and deep in the elimination rounds. Buddy Marable outlasted the pack on his ’02 Hayabusa and defeated Luke Boykin IV in the finals by running dead on his 9.50 dial-in. Marable and Boykin were virtually dead even off the starting line but a break-out run from Boykin handed the victory to Marable for the evening. Roy Johnson and Luke Boykin III were the semi-finalists for the evening.
Battery Barn of Virginia Jr. Dragsters brought in a great crowd of over 40 juniors fighting it out for the event win on Saturday evening. Young racers from all across three states joined in on the action along with others getting their licenses and going through the processes in preparation for their competition debuts in the coming weeks. Zach Shirkey from Ridgely, MD outlasted the field and stood in the winner’s circle at the end of the evening. Shirkey defeated 2020 Track Champion Louis Crockett in the final round as Crockett’s car has troubles and Shirkey lifted early to not break out. Ashley Franklin was the lone semi-finalist for the evening while LaVar Lewis, Jr. and Hunter Cunningham were eliminated from competition in the quarter-finals.
Round by round results for all categories can be found on our Results page in race central, also featuring each winning driver’s winner’s circle photo taken by our track photographer, Clarence Hannon from Black Dragon Photography. Updated points series standings will be updated in the coming days, as well, also found in the race central section of the website.
Our next VP Racing Fuels ET Bracket Series event is next weekend, a double header, with a Saturday & Sunday showdown on May 15-16.
