Sick Week Competitors William Lujan and Jeff Smith Score Victories at National Mustang Racers Association opening event at Gainesville Raceway
The National Mustang Racers Association (NMRA) holds six events a year, with their opening event taking place in Florida each season. For 2024, the NMRA hosted their 30th annual Spring Break Shootout event at Gainesville Raceway for the first time.
Friday would find mother nature reigning supreme with several showers that only allowed eight pairs of cars to make a pass, but Saturday and Sunday produced beautiful weather that brought record crowds and saw some familiar faces in the winner’s circle.
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One of the biggest deals of the Spring Break Shootout is the True Street class, where competitors in street-legal rides do a 30-mile cruise, return to the track and then make a trio of back-to-back-to-back runs without making any adjustments or changes to said vehicles, and hoods must remain shut.
Some familiar names from the drag-and-drive community were amongst the runners, including recent Sick Week participants Gaby Lujan, Jonathan Whitaker, Rick Doern and Brian Slow, and Sick Summer Stick Shift runner Dan Watts.
At the end of the runs, the averages found Sick Week 2-time champion William Lujan scoring the runner-up spot with an 8.88 average, while fellow runner Adam Kuffel scored the 9-second title with a 9.01 average from his yellow ‘85 Mustang.
The top sixteen averages would advance to Sunday’s Spring Break Shootout class, while the top eight averages for stick shift rides would move to the Stick Shift Shootout.
The Spring Break Shootout class would require single-digit time slips to get a win in nearly every pairing, and it wasn’t surprising to see William Lujan and Adam Kuffel advance their Mustangs to the final round for the chance to earn the title of Spring Break Shootout champion.
Kuffel’s nitrous-assisted ’85 Mustang came in the underdog on performance, but he got off the starting line ahead of William Lujan. But Kuffel’s lead over the supercharged ’90 Mustang GT of Lujan would evaporate by the finish line, as Lujan’s 8.58 at 161 mph would score the win over the holeshot-aided 8.77 at 153 mph from Kuffel.
Jeff Smith, who recently participated in his first drag-and-drive at this year’s Sick Week Presented by Gear Vendors Overdrive, qualified third in the Stick Shift Shootout field, but rowed his way through the first two rounds of the eight-car field to make a final round appearance against fellow Florida racer Karl Goin.
Smith would start the finals with a reaction time deficit to Goin, but the competition orange Cobra would get to the finish line first via a 9.41 to Goin’s 10.46, scoring the fourth Stick Shift Shootout victory for Smith.
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of BME Photography and NMRA.
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