Tom Bailey and Jeff Lutz Stage Up for Quickest Side-By-Side Street-Legal Run in History, As Winners Are Crowned at Sick At The Rock Presented by Motion Raceworks at Rockingham Dragway!
With north of $50,000 on the line in payouts for the first Sick At The Rock Presented by Motion Raceworks, Rockingham Dragway saw some solid competition show up to battle in North Carolina.
Despite the cool temperatures and losing a day on track to weather conditions, winners were determined on track before the clock struck midnight on Saturday April 12th.
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Leading the headlines was the new Sick Street Challenge class, where Tom Bailey put up more than $30,000 for 32 categories. Originally designed to be a 2-day drag and drive, competitors would be required to turn in a minimum of one time slip from Friday and one from Saturday.
Because of late night Thursday showers, Friday’s racing was nixed. But the Sick Street Challenge class competitors would do the street drive and check point photos to cover half the requirements. Saturday featured four chances to make runs, with a competitor required to submit a pair of time slips for their average.
At the front of the pack was Jeff Lutz, who thrashed just to make the cruise on Friday after engine damage presented itself during earlier testing. After Lutz and Bailey completed the cruise in their Chevrolet Camaros, they lined up for a side-by-side pairing during round one qualifying for Pro Mod, and the result was the quickest side-by-side run of street-legal cars in history. Lutz got the bragging rights, posting a 3.84 at 196 mph run to stay ahead of Bailey’s 3.86 at 206 mph.
Lutz added a 3.842 at 195 mph, giving him a 3.8463 average, earning his ‘Mad Max ’69 Chevrolet Camaro the ‘Quickest Chevrolet in a Chevrolet’, ‘Quickest Big Block’ and ‘Quickest Turbo’ category wins.
Chuck Stefanski doesn’t fly under the radar with his zoomie-equipped ’81 Pontiac station wagon, and thanks to a pair of 4.55 runs, he earned a trio of category wins: the ‘Quickest Supercharger’, Quickest 4 Door’ and ‘Most Consistent’ when those runs varied by only .0020 of-a-second!
Three-time Sick Week participant Houston McClain took a pair of category wins back to Florida, as his 2014 Mustang scooped up the ‘Quickest Ford in a Ford’ and ‘Best Street Race Average - 5.35 or Slower’ titles.
After a successful outing with his supercharged HEMI-powered ’55 Chevrolet at this year’s Sick Week, Mike Finnegan made the trip to Rockingham pay off when ‘Blasphemi’ earned the ‘Quickest Stick Shift’ and ‘Quickest Gasser’ awards, thanks to Finnegan’s 5.53 average.
Michael Lyons did some impressive work in his V-6 powered ’87 Buick Grand National, tallying a 5.19 average, good enough for the ‘Quickest Buick in a Buick’ and ‘Quickest 6 Cylinder’ wins.
The ‘Quickest 275 Radial Tire’ and 'Quickest 235 Radial Tire categories went to a pair of 1966 Chevy Nova models, with Graham Hayes scoring the 275 tire win with an outstanding 4.16 average, while Justin Lynch did the deed on the small 235 radials with a 6.27 average.
The ‘Quickest Pontiac in a Pontiac’ category title went to Nathan Cesler when he produced a 6.77 average in his 2008 Pontiac G8.
After rescuing a barn-find 1972 AMC Javelin to participate in Sick Week last year, Jacob Davis put together a 6.85 average in said AMC to win the ‘Quickest AMC in an AMC’ category at Sick At The Rock.
The clean 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass of Daniel Watts scored the ‘Quickest Oldsmobile in an Oldsmobile’ category with an 8.48 average.
Eric Yost returned to drag and drive action with his ’68 Camaro at Rockingham, and the leaf-spring car picked up the ‘Quickest Small Block’ accolades with a solid 4.90 average.
Rick Trunkett’s 1972 Plymouth Duster snagged the ‘Quickest Mopar in a Mopar’ category win with a 4.85 average with his stock-suspension ride.
The ’64 Chevy II of Casey Banner collected the ‘Quickest Naturally Aspirated Big Block’ win with a 6.60 average.
The ‘Quickest Naturally Aspirated Small Block’ went to the clean ’85 Ford Thunderbird of Thomas Palmer, who clocked a 7.33 average in the refrigerator white blue oval.
James Burnthorne Jr. sprayed his way to the ‘Quickest Nitrous’ category win, thanks to a 6.33 average from his 2019 Dodge Hellcat.
The ‘Quickest Hot Rod’ at Rockingham was Corey Haugland, who took his clean ’34 Ford coupe to a 6.35 average for the trophy and $1,000 check.
Yvonnda Hutchins came out on top of a very competitive ‘Best Street Race Average - 7.36 or Slower’ category, putting down a solid 7.361 average for her efforts.
The ‘Quickest with a Tailgate’ category went to the pick-up of Maddy Batson, as her Chevy S-10 averaged 7.40 for the accolades.
To cut a good reaction time in competition can be difficult with a 4-tenth pro tree start system, but Gavin Black made it look easy, with his .009 reaction time average earning the former Street Race 8.60 class champ the ‘Best Average Reaction Time’ title.
Rockingham Dragway merged their season starting event for their Pro Mods At The Rock series with Sick At The Rock, and eighteen cars rolled into qualifying hoping to grab a sweet sixteen spot for round one. Tom Bailey and Jeff Lutz even qualified their street-legal rides for the field, making a side-by-side pass where the 3.84 of Lutz edged out Bailey’s 3.86 run.
After three rounds of intense racing, the final would pit the number one qualifier Mike Decker Jr. against Scott Lang in an all-supercharged Camaro final. After a lengthy clean-up late Saturday night, the final two would stage up, where Lang’s ProCharger-powered Chevrolet would clock a 3.62 at 207 mph to deny the 3.85 at 169 mph from Decker.
Sick At The Rock featured two heads-up drag racing classes run in naturally aspirated form, and the quickest is the Small Tire Pro Stock class. Based around minimum weights on engine design, cubic inch displacements and components, as well as body design, class leading competitors would normally collect time slips in the 7.6-second range.
The newly formed class would have an eye opener of a race for their 2025 season. Dwight Ausmus would not only be the first to clock a 7.5-second time under the class rules at 7.59 in qualifying, but he’d add three more between qualifying and the final round, the best being a 7.54 at 180 mph blast in the semifinals. Ausmus would face fellow Pontiac runner and former National Muscle Car Association (NMCA) champion John Langer, but when Langer’s can couldn’t fire for the final round due to the isolator on the ignition coil breaking, Ausmus singled for the win.
The second naturally aspirated formatted class is the popular Coyote Stock category. Based around a Ford Performance sealed Gen 3 Coyote engine and spec tuner, the cars must meet a 3000-pound minimum weight and use a 28 x 10.5-inch width tire. When the clutch pedal is released, it’s not surprising to see the cars go near the bumper when grabbing the next gear in the manual transmission while hunting for mid 9-second time slips on the quarter-mile distance.
One of the quickest in testing was Aaron Worstell’s ’92 Mustang, and he rode a pair of 9.5-second time slips to the final round to face Chad Stephens, who qualified his Ford Thunderbird on the pole at 9.59 at 137 mph. After discussing the cold temperatures and late night final round possibility, Stephens and Worstell opted to split the money and call it a night instead of running the final round.
A popular class born in the National Mustang Racers Association (NMRA), the Street Race 8.60 class features small tire, street-legal rides based on an 8.60-second quarter-mile index and a pro-tree heads-up start. Eleven cars qualified, but the final would be the Fords of Paul Sienkiewicz and Logan Day. Sienkiewicz qualified number one, but he turned on the red-light in the final to swing the victory to Day’s supercharged 2021 Mustang.
The Open Comp class, based on a handicap format using personal indexes and a five-tenths pro tree, had thirty-three entrants in Rockingham. Junior McKenzie would be the top qualifier with a near-perfect .0002 reaction time, but after four rounds of racing, it was Anthony Cupolo, Will McKay and David Woodside remaining in competition. The trio decided to split the remaining money due to cold conditions, and David Woodside won the coin flip for the winner’s trophy.
The Nostalgia Super Stock and Nostalgia Muscle Car Combo class presented by Driven Racing Oil combine together for the Sick At The Rock and Sick On The Green events, and some period-correct / nicely restored rides come out to clock 8-15 second times in the index-based class. All big three manufacturers were represented, but after three rounds of racing, it would be an all-Plymouth Belvedere final, where David Horton took the class victory over Bill Boomhower.
With all four of our major Sick The Mag events sold out, Sick At The Rock and Sick On The Green are one of your last chances to compete in a Sick The Mag drag and drive in 2025. Sick On The Green is next, May 29th – 31st. Street machines and race cars will come together for an action-packed three days of racing and fun, with over $50K in payouts!
To find out more about the Sick On The Green event, CLICK HERE!!
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Sick the Magazine.
If you have thoughts / feedback / ideas, please e-mail us at derek@sickthemagazine.com