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F.A.S.T.
Musclepalooza SPRING Nationals
Hemmings Musclepalooza is a favorite of F.A.S.T. racers, with cool spring air and a good biting track. It makes for great racing for both the racers and fans. In fact thousands of fans line the grandstands when the F.A.S.T. cars are called to lanes.
The Spring Nationals draws racers far and wide to upstate New York's Lebanon Valley Dragway. The long haul award this year goes to Wayne Nelson from Minnesota and Steve Hodges from Kansas.
Racers started to arrive at the track as early as Friday and by Saturday morning the F.A.S.T. pits were buzzing with activity. Saturdays atmospheric conditions were the best all weekend and produced some of the quickest ET's. Saturday was an all day Qualifying session, Their best ET was used to build qualifying ladders and pair up the 2 out of 3 shootout participants. We had full fields in both our F.A.S.T. and Factory Stock divisions. Ken Veit brought out his ultra clean blue 1969 Camaro with a new engine but ran into some bad luck when on his first qualifying pass of the day, he broke off a rocker stud boss on his aluminum heads. A tough break, as many was looking forward to see Ken's car run in the Tens. Ken said that he will fix the head and he will be back.
When Qualifying ended, we had a list of some very fast cars in both divisions. Several racers had new engines that they were testing for the first time, such as Darrell Theriault's 1967 Cornet R/T. Darrell raced in the Factory Stock division last year, but over the winter Darrell has been busy building new F.A.S.T. engine and he was rewarded with 12.50 ET's at over 111 MPH. Darrell's Cornet is no lightweight, he still has a period correct 8-track player in the car, and it works too! Harry Chargois made the trek to Lebanon Valley from his home state of Virginia. Harry's first taste of F.A.S.T. racing was at our 2007 Fall Nationals held at Virginia Motorsports Park. Harry started in the Factory Stock class but he also built a new F.A.S.T. engine and ran some incredible 117 MPH runs! With a little more seat time Harry will be solidly in the 11's with his SuperBee.
Saturdays qualifying session was dominated by 2 Hugger orange L88 Corvettes. Terry and Julie Pennington's brought 2 cars in from Indiana. Terry races the F.A.S.T. class Vette and Julie competes in the Factory Stock class. Both cars qualified in the number 1 position in their respective classes. Terry with an awesome 10.41 at 134.27 (A new F.A.S.T. MPH Record!) Julie easily lead the F/S class with a 11.45 at 121 MPH. Right on Terry's heals was Dave Dudek with his Hemi powered Plymouth Roadrunner, Dave was running in the 10.60 range. Saturdays qualifying session gave the racers 7 opportunities to run their car allowing for a lot of testing and tuning.
F.A.S.T. cars are very sensitive to there tune and setup. Ed Cooks 440 Six Pak Roadrunner was on cloud nine at the F.A.S.T. Regional race held at Maplegrove Pennsylvania, running 10.90's at that event. Well for this race, Ed had new tires on the car and the car did not like them. Ed was skating down the track fighting to find some traction, having a hard time to run in the 11.60's. No matter what Ed changed, his car did not like the new tires at all. Before the final qualifying session, Ed was on the outside looking at the Quick-8. In a last ditch effort to qualify in the Quick-8, Ed borrowed a well used set of tires from another racer and managed to lay down an ET good enough to get him into the #6 qualifying position with a 11.38.
Lets not forget about lunch and dinner cooked at the track by the racers. You name it and it was there, Salads, Burgers, Hot-dogs, Sausages, Corn on the cob, Lobster, Did you say LOBSTER??? Someone brought a steamer pot and cooked what must of been 3 dozen live lobsters, at the track, right in the pits!! Everyone enjoyed each others company and had a good time well into the evening.
Sunday was the big day for Hemmings Muscle Palooza, a huge car show and 7 bracket classes plus several exhibition classes and the main attraction, F.A.S.T. and Factory Stock cars! The weather men forecasted a chance of showers and that may of kept a few show cars from attending, but it didn't slow down the number of muscle cars racing. Due to the potential storm showing on the radar, it was decided to limit the racers to 1 time trial. The single time trial was no problem for the F.A.S.T. and F/S racers as qualifying was completed the day before.
Terry McGean, the Editor of Hemmings Muscle Machines came over to discuss the Hemmings $1,000.00 Bounty. The Bounty is for the racer that breaks the previous F.A.S.T. class low ET at a Hemmings event. The previous low ET set last year by Dave Dudek was 10.53. Terry Pennington had already run a 10.41 during Saturdays qualifying session, but Hemmings event is only on Sunday, so the 10.41 on Saturday was not eligible. Terry McGean decided that the racer that ran quickest under 10.53 during Sundays event would receive the $1,000.00 Bounty check.
Sunday was a busy day with hundreds of F.A.S.T. and F/S fans browsing at all the Stock looking Muscle cars in awe of their performances. The new F.A.S.T. T-shirt was going F.A.S.T.. (Pun intended) When the F.A.S.T. and F/S cars were called to the lanes, it was like someone with a time-machine spun the dial back to 1970! Fords, Plymouths, Oldsmobiles, Chevys, Pontiacs and Dodges, No matter what your favorite car, it was represented in the staging lanes, looking all stock and resting on reproduction bias-ply tires. The first round of eliminations went well with only a few upsets. Ed Cook (#6 with a 11.38) was paired up with Steve Hodges 71 Hemi Challenger (#3 with a 11.11) Ed cut an impossible .000 light (on a .500 Pro tree) and unnerved Steve enough, that Steve missed shifted 3rd gear and Ed won in an upset! Terry Pennington ran a 10.47 against Ted Daros in round #1. The 10.47 put Pennington in line to receive the $1,000.00 bounty from Hemmings.
With hundreds of cars in attendance there are bound to be mishaps that delay racing. A few oil downs, a car hitting the wall and a few 2 minute sprinkles of rain slowed the event down a little initially, but unexpected down time is countered with the F.A.S.T. guys cooking food! The Lebanon Valley track crew cleaned up the track after the oil downs or rain and kept the starting line in superb shape. Immediately before the F.A.S.T. cars would run, it was standard practice for Track Manager, Steve Robelotto to call the starting line on the radio and request that the lanes be prepped for F.A.S.T.!
Round two called 4 cars up to the lanes: Terry Pennington vs Dave Finn and Dave Dudek vs Ed Cook. Pennington and Dudek both took care of their opponents and set the stage for the final round battle. For the final round Dudek knew that he needed to dig deep and pickup his car to have a chance against Pennington's Vette. All weekend Pennington's Vette was consistently 2 tenths of a second faster than Dudek's Hemi. Back in the pits before the final round, Dudek was busy trying to coax out any advantage possible. Icing the intake manifold, cooling the engine by changing the coolant water and fine tuning the chassis for the final round. In a repeat of last year these 2 ten second cars rolled up to the staging lights in the final round. Dave pre- staged and staged his car (as Dave says"to get into his zone" Terry carefully Pre-staged and then staged. All eyes were on these two cars, in a flash the yellow lights flashed and both cars were off. Both cars left the 60 foot clocks with low 1.6's but a little tire spin was heard and it looked like it might be from Pennington's Vette. At the 330 mark Dudek's Roadrunner was ahead, but Pennington's Corvette was charging hard to catch up. Everyone held their breath as the two cars streaked to the finish line, The scoreboards lit up, amazingly Dudek ran his best ET of the weekend 10.46 to Pennington's 10.67 (Terry's worst ET of the weekend) Dave Dudek won the final in the F.A.S.T. class and also ran the lowest ET on Sunday to win the $1,000.00 Bounty check! Congratulations Dave!!
F.A.S.T. Qualifying Order
| Qualifying # / Name | State | Car | Transmission | ET | MPH |
| 1- Terry Pennington | Indiana | 1969 Chevrolet Corvette, L88 427 | Automatic | 10.41 | 134.27 |
| 2- Dave Dudek Jr. | Michigan | 1969 Plymouth RoadRunner, 426 Hemi | Automatic | 10.60 | 133.10 |
| 3- Steve Hodges | Kansas | 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T, 426 Hemi | Automatic | 11.11 | 126.50 |
| 4- James Cook | New York | 1969 Plymouth RoadRunner, 440-6 | Manual | 11.36 | 125.33 |
| 5- Dave Finn | New York | 1963 Dodge 440, 426 Max Wedge | Automatic | 11.37 | |
| 6- Ed Cook | New York | 1969 Plymouth RoadRunner, 440-6 | Automatic | 11.38 | 123.93 |
| 7- Chris Kuskowski | Connecticut | 1972 Plymouth Duster, 340 | Automatic | 11.44 | 120.78 |
| 8- Ted Daros | New York | 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396 | Automatic | 11.61 | 120.53 |
| 9- Brian Wilsey | New York | 1970 Plymouth AAR Cuda, 340-6 | Automatic | 11.70 | 116.282 |
| 10- Mike Cannon | Pennsylvania | 1970 Ford Mustang, 428 | Manual | 11.85 | 121.17 |
| 11- Scott McKenzie | New York | 1969 Plymouth RoadRunner, 440-6 | Automatic | 11.86 | 116.56 |
| 12- Harry Chargois Jr. | Virginia | 1969 Dodge Superbee, 383 | Automatic | 12.05 | 117.31 |
| 13- John Fredricks | Connecticut | 1970 Dodge Super Bee, 383 | Automatic | 12.43 | 110.92 |
| 14- John Gavin | New York | 1968 Dodge GTS, 340 | Automatic | 12.56 | 111.16 |
| 15- Darrell Theriault Jr. | Connecticut | 1967 Dodge Cornet R/T, 440 | Automatic | 12.67 | 110.34 |
| 16- John Suess | New York | 1969 Oldsmobile Hurst/Olds, 455 | Automatic | 13.65 | 99.48 |
| 17- Frank Chicherchia | New York | 1969 Chevrolet Camaro | Manual | 17.49 | 62.97 |
| 18- Ken Veit | Pennsylvania | 1969 Chevrolet Camaro, 427 | Automatic | Broke | |
F.A.S.T. Quick-8 Eliminations
F.A.S.T. Consolation Eliminations
(for first round Quick-8 losers)
F.A.S.T. 2 of 3 Shootouts
(for qualifiers #9 and up, round winner in BOLD)
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