NHRA Hosts Several of The Quickest Drag-And-Drive Rides at the Peak Street Car Shootout at Route 66 Raceway
In recent years, the drag-and-drive community has grown by leaps and bounds, with more enthusiasts and 30 individual events scheduled for the 2023 season, showing the platform is more popular than ever.
This weekend, eight of the quickest street-legal drag-and-drive rides were invited to be a part of the Gerber Collision and Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals presented by PEAK Performance at Chicago’s Route 66 Raceway.
The inaugural PEAK Street Car Shootout is jamb-packed with some well-known drivers, including Tom Bailey and the world’s only 5-second street car, the Sick Seconds 2.0 1969 Chevrolet Camaro.
Joining Bailey would be Steve Morris and his ‘Boostmaster’ Chevrolet station wagon, Hot Rod Garage host Alex Taylor and her patina’d ‘55 Chevy, and Bryant Goldstone’s unique AMC Javelin rounding out the 6-second big-tire rides.
Leading the quartet of small tire drag radial rides is Clark Rosenstengel’s 200 mph 2010 Camaro, former Major League Baseball pitcher Clint Sodowsky and his wheelstanding ’68 Camaro, Rick Trunkett’s factory-looking ’72 Duster, and the modern HEMI-powered Fox Mustang of Bob Hess Jr. rounding out the eight-car field.
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The experience for some of the group started on Thursday with cruising the streets of Joliet, and making a stop at the Joliet Correctional Center, the prison featured in the motion picture The Blues Brothers, as well as stopping to visit renowned car builder Troy Trepanier at the Rad Rides by Troy Inc shop.
For Alex Taylor, her and father Dennis would be in the middle of a mad thrash Thursday to fix the engine in her ’55 Chevy.
After fixing broken doors from a testing incident less than two weeks ago, the family was loading up to make the trek from Arkansas to Illinois on Monday, when the engine didn’t sound just right.
A compression check returned one cylinder was shockingly low on compression, and further inspection revealed a bad piston and two bent connecting rods.
After multiple calls to find parts, the Taylors put together a plan with some used parts they had to rebuild the engine at Morris’ shop. “We got no sleep for two days,” said Dennis of the thrash.
The engine was finished Thursday night, fired at 10 pm and the family left for the track just past midnight.
The PEAK Street Car Shootout gathered at Route 66 Raceway for racing action on Friday, hoping to get a time shot before eliminations would begin.
Due to rain and race delays, the time shot would be scratched from the schedule, and the eight drivers would go straight into eliminations with no test runs.
Elimination rounds will be run shootout-style, with a total of three rounds available to every competitor over Friday and Saturday action. A random chip draw is used to determine the pairings. The final round between the two drivers with the most round wins will be contested on Sunday.
The first round chip draw pairings had Bailey facing Goldstone, Alex Taylor and Rosenstengel pitting their Chevrolets against one another, Hess pulled Morris’ chip, and Trunkett would bat against Sodowsky.
With the last light of Friday night fading, the competitors rolled to the staging lanes for round one of eliminations.
Bailey and Goldstone were the first to line up, and Bailey got the win with a coasting 7.84 at 87 mph over Goldstone’s 8.60 run. Alex Taylor clocked low e.t. of round one with a 7.11 at 166 mph in defeat of Rosenstengel’s troubled 12-second pass.
Sodowsky struck out Trunkett with a 7.72 at 183 mph lap, and the final pair witnessed Hess get the better of Morris with a 7.76 at 173 mph.
The PEAK Street Car Shootout at Route 66 Raceway is scheduled to run two rounds of competition today, with round two slated to take place a little after noon, just before the day’s first qualifying session of the professional classes.
The third round for combatants will line up between 4-4:30 pm to determine the winner of the inaugural PEAK Street Car Shootout. Then the final two will make their preparations for one last shot during Sunday’s elimination rounds.
If you’d like to attend, the NHRA is hooking up Sick fans with a discount! Get your discount tickets now at this link: https://bit.ly/NHRADragDriveTom
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Chuck Stefanski, Dennis Taylor, Sick the Magazine and EJ Naegeli.
If you have thoughts / feedback / ideas, please e-mail us at derek@sickthemagazine.com
