Mother nature played a roll in the June event at Piedmont Dragway, home of “The Original Big Dog”. The forecast for rain on Thursday prompted the track to move the event to Saturday afternoon and evening. Saturday arrived with a pretty good chance of showers during the racing action. Sure enough mother nature dropped by to visit for a few minutes between qualifying session 1 and 2. The track staff worked diligently to dry the track and we were down for about two hours. At approximately 7 pm we resumed the Big Dog qualifying.
Session two proved to be amazing, with cars bumping in and then getting bumped out. We were blessed to have thirteen teams show up to make a run for the 8 car field. When the dust had settled Jason Harris, driver of the Wine Racing 2017 Z06 Corvette with a fuel injected 700 plus cubic inch Albert Racing Engine bumped his way to the top of the field after an aborted run in Q1. I believe this was the tightest field we have had under the new rules package.
The final qualifying order was,
1. Jason Harris 4.014/181.15
2. Tim Lawrence 4.026/170.64
3. Brain Shrader 4.036/181.52
4. Travis Harvey 4.039/178.46
5. Brett Nesbitt 4.039/178.21
6. Scott Lang 4.040/183.67
7. Danny Perry 4.062/178.74
8. Justin Wall 4.072/178.67
Failed to Qualify,
Mike Graham
Cam Clark
Bubba Turner
Ronnie Gardner
Tommy Hurley
As you can see some of the best in the business didn’t make the race.
It turned out to be a Jason Harris night as The Wine Racing team was honored for their three second run in May. They picked up spot number four on the Three second Shootout Club. Local legend Travis Harvey showed his muscle in the Vaughn Miles owned machine in round one running a 3.998 to get the fifth spot on the list. We will honor these guys next month with a spot on the board for them
Because of the uniqueness of the New Big Dog, chips are pulled for races. The first round proved to be epic. Please watch the live feed from @NCProModerco on Facebook or the edited version on the NC ProModer YouTube Channel.
Jason Harris and Brett Nesbitt marched through the two rounds of racing to square off in the finals. Jason had a slight performance advantage going into the finals. Brett Nesbitt tried to take control of the race, but just missed the tree resulting in a red light giving Jason Harris the win with a solid 4,00 pass which would have been a hard to beat.
I can’t thank all of the racers and teams as well as the entire management and staff at Piedmont Dragway for letting me showcase the “Big Dog” events. Thanks to Wine Racing for putting my decal on the car !!!!!!
I have a great group of coverage partners behind me at these events that I truly appreciate. I couldn’t continually keep going without their support. So thanks you J&J Fabrications, Racewire Technologies, Strutmasters.com, Player1Esports and of course Gopher Utility Services.
The greatest value of the new rules package that many of you complain about is, we ran 1 round of qualifying and 3 rounds of eliminations in 3 hours. The race was over at 10pm with weather looming again. Come on out and see for yourself just how competitive the New Big Dog is!! Many of the racers will tell you its the toughest game around.
Thanks for reading, I can’t wait for the next BIG DOG Race !!!!
