NMCA Superbowl 08 Saturday Coverage

[mark@streetlegaltv]

Notes from Eliminations Round 1

Elimination Round 1 Pictures are here.



Vinny Budano stepped it up for Eliminations Round 1 with the fastest run of the round with a 6.339 @ 222. The 2007 Pro Street Champion has his repeat on the line for 2008, but efforts like this show that he can turn things around.



The highlight of the round was Steve Matusek’s dance across the middle of the track. We will cover the details later, but the entire crowd clapped when he got the car straight. The sequence is in the above link



Butch Kemp is letting everyone know in Pro Stock that he isn’t going to be let down by the additional weight. Butch showed this by being the fastest in the round with a 8.655 @156.08



Pete Richart shows up this morning, techs his car and takes it to run eliminations. No practice runs, no qualifying. Pete some how managed to score a 7.50 his first pass down the track for the weekend. He will be a contender tomorrow if he can dial the combination in more.

[mark@streetlegaltv]

News from the pits after Elimination Round 1



Gary Duncan is in trouble. His good engine has a broken crank. His backup motor that was in the car is hurt. Hopefully Gary can get it figured out.





Another racer suffering from damaged engine woes is Tony Ortz. He hurt two motors today. One engine got a whole punched in it and the second motor had burnt pistons.



Jeremy Gillam had his primary transmission out for service. After eliminations round 1 he was seen putting the good one back in. Jeremy said to look for the car to be on the bumper tomorrow. We will definitely bring you an update if his word holds true



Butch Kemp was sitting pretty after round one. We spotted a suspension adjustment and new tires going on his Nova.

Steve Matusek had the wildest ride Saturday in his Ford Mustang. A weekend long with problems almost ended with a disaster. While the weather was giving them some problems this weekend, the big problem was caused by something much smaller.



“The motor seemed like it was down on power,” said Matusek. After changing almost everything from boot levels to shift points the problem still wasn't solved. They even swapped out the 88mm turbos for the 80mms. No the problem was found the day before, but the fix is where it stared out as..



It seems at some point this week the exhaust manifold was cracked right were a heat shield was mounted, which was causing them to loose boost. After a quick weld it was soon forgotten. That wasn't until almost putting the car into the wall, or the roof.













After some fancy driving and a few seconds for everyone to catch their breath, the team remembered that they had turned up the boost and never turned it back down. “You can overpower these cars, and that is exactly what we did,” said Matusek.





Mark Micke is sitting pretty right now in his eye. The weather has had no effect on them and they owe it to what Micke calls “not running the motor on kill.” So no mater which way they have to tune the car they have room to work with.





Steve King was found lying underneath his car with semi major repairs. On his last run he burned up 2nd gear and was replacing it for his next round. While he was under the car he also found time to tune up his 4 link, other chassis components and signing a few autographs.