I ventured over to US131 Motorsports Park in Martin, Michigan last Saturday (June, 8th) for Import vs Domestic 6. Danny Garbarino also put together a No Time Shootout for this event and had been promoting it for a couple months, so I decided it was worth the trip. You don’t have to twist my arm to get me to an event at this facility. I love this place.
I guess I’m going to keep this article short because honestly, I wasn’t very impressed. I can say there was a high caliber of cars, but the car count for this event was very low. A generous guess would be 30 cars and most of them taking turns breaking. Sunday’s festivities were rescheduled and ran simultaneously with Saturday’s. This added another 30 or so cars/dragsters. You can imagine my surprise the first time I heard the announcer call Super Gas to the lanes. I’m all for supporting the longevity of this sport regardless of what kind of drag racing it is, and there is room for drag racing of all kinds…BUT… I’d rather watch all 12 of the Fast and the Furious movies back to back twice before I willingly watch throttle stop index racing. With so few Import vs Domestic cars making passes, the only thing left to pass the time was watching these guys go round after round. Ironically, I was hoping Hector and his three Honda Civics with spoon engines would show up but apparently the T66 turbos hadn’t came in at Harry’s yet.
Anyway, moving right along, there were 3 cars in the Quick 8. This was 1/4 mile, heads up racing. The Semi Finals were El Jerry on a Competition Single due to a breakage of the 3rd car, and Skinny Kid’s Olds on a bye for being the number 1 qualifier with a 5.80. El Jerry is a turbo powered inline 6 cylinder that went 247 mph and lit the boards with a 5.87 on his pass. The Olds went 5.78 with the Billy Briggs Screw Blown Hemi but torched a head in the process. Keith Engling, Billy Briggs and the crew tuned that cylinder out between rounds and made a 6.05 pass on 7 cylinders for the win in the finals over El Jerry who ran into some issues mid track. Congrats to Jimmy Detrick for driving the Skinny Kid Olds to another victory.
The Quick 32 had around 16 cars in it and was also 1/4 mile, heads up racing. Quite a few of the cars entered were part of Jimmer Kline’s GoFast crew from up around Grand Rapids. I didn’t stick around to video the finals, but was told it was Ricky Rush over Derik Timmer. Rush went 7.08 @ 193.47 mph in his win. Rush’s car is a turbo’d 1.3 liter Rotary. If you aren’t impressed by that, then you might need to check out some throttle stop index racing.
This isn’t the Quick 32 finals, but here is a 7.15 pass Rush made earlier in the day.
So… that leaves the No Time Shootout. This was 1/8 mile, heads up racing. Sadly, the car count was down for this guaranteed $5000 payout sponsored by Garbarino Construction. As I mentioned earlier, Danny Garbarino put this shootout together and tried his best to get as many cars to enter as he could. He basically called out anyone on a 28 (that was 5″ bore or smaller) for some grudge action but couldn’t get any takers. A few of the guys who may have attended were filming out of town for Street Outlaws and others already committed to different events. Danny has had his car running great all year, but appeared to be having a rough day fighting some electrical issues. Of the 6 cars entered, Dave Strange ended up with the prize money beating Danny in the finals. After watching front wheel drive cars and throttle stop index racers most of the afternoon/evening, it was refreshing to see Dave yank the front tires of his Mustang and carry them down track.
If Jimmer Kline, Danny Garbarino, or the GoFast Productions crew from Grand Rapids are involved, you can always count on me supporting them. You can also count on me supporting all No Time racing here in the North. I wish the car counts were higher, but there doesn’t seem to be the draw here in Michigan for an event like this. I’m super impressed at the fans and crew that travel with the Import cars. Everyone gets geared up with their car and driver jerseys then they get together to have a great time. The majority of the fans were around the import car show, motorcycle show and stereo/sound competition. These sound systems provided Mexican music across the whole facility for the entire day. I even got used to the Mexican music that was playing but was VERY surprised to hear the only song in English played was Whitney Houston’s, “I Will Always Love You”. I don’t condone it and I’m not saying it right, but after the 37th time of hearing this song on repeat at ear piercing levels… …I can understand a little bit why Bobby did drugs and beat Whitney.
We will back to US131 Motorsports Park this weekend (June 15th) for the Motor State Knockout. The total payouts are $70,000 and will have Big Tire, Small Tire, Outlaw Street, Late Model Muscle Stock & Modified classes on a no prep surface.
