The Motor State Knockout is one of the largest paying no prep events in the north. This year there were $70,000 in advertised payouts across multiple classes over two days. I was here for the Big Tire, Small Tire and Outlaw Street Car classes. Like most racers and fans, part of my weekly routine is to check the weather forecast from weather.com. If it doesn’t look promising, I click over to accuweather.com to see if their forecast is any better (or vice versa). This week was no exception as I was looking forward to the Motor State Knockout No Prep event for a couple months. Neither weather website looked promising and word was coming in from multiple racers that the forecast was too bad to risk the costs of traveling only for it to be canceled. I too looked for another event to attend anticipating the cancellation. The call was made at the track to stick it out and try to get the event in, so I showed around 2:30 expecting the event to start at 3:00 as advertised only to find the first round was already under way.
The Big Tire class ended up being a 7 car field. Cars I recognized were Jimmer Kline in his GTO, Del Butler in his Camaro, Bryant Goldstone in his Javelin, Dave Adkins in his Impala, and Ryan Hendrickson in his SVO Mustang. The favorite from the start had to be Hendrickson. His car is setup to compete regularly at the highest level of big tire No Prep. He has raced against just about every TV Street Outlaw, wins these type events regularly, and has the most experience in No Prep. We watched him win Judgement Day at Kil-Kare last month [Judgement Day No Prep – Kil-Kare Dragway (Recap)].
After two rounds of racing, It was Hendrickson vs Goldstone in a turbos vs turbos final. Hendrickson made a fast, clean pass while Goldstone went up in a cloud of smoke on the top end of the track.
The Small Tire class had 6 cars entered. The race of the night in this class ended up being Tony V in his 2000 Camaro against Justin Cyrnek in his 2013 Mustang in the Semi-Finals [Video Below]. Carl Stancell in his 1984 S10 Blazer had a bye into the finals with the winner of this race. The rain came as Tony and Carl were in the lanes for the finals, and they ended up splitting the money.
I mentioned that the Outlaw Street Car class had 20 entries. The field was stacked with racers like Jon Capizzi, Aaron Johnson, Mike Worden, Tom Hersch, Greg Seher, etc, but it was Justin Spiniolas, Kyle Jordan, and Mike Morelli in the semi finals when the event was canceled due to the rain. I wish I had some better videos/pictures, but I missed the first round due to the event starting early and there were no semi finals or finals. I believe this street car type class is growing in popularity and will have a place in just about any type of event. We are headed over to Lapeer International Dragway to cover Payso’s Street Car Showdown at the end of this month.
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The rain has been relentless so far this year and it’s a shame that it deterred so many racers and spectators from this event. Considering the forecast, I think there was a decent car count. I hope Motor State Distributing continues to put this event together in the future. This is a must attend event if they continue it in 2020.
