After a summer of marginal weather conditions mother nature saved her best for last as a giant crowd enjoyed the 5th Annual Funny Car Nationals Presented by CarStar at U.S. 131 Motorsports Park. Pleasant temperatures and low humidity set an ideal stage as no less than eight categories of feature cars thrilled the overflow crowd during two complete rounds of professional racing.

    The high-winding, high-riding Great Lakes Gasser Association opened the Pro Show with exciting, side by side competition. Early-model Austins, Henry Js, and Willys reminded race fans of how drag racing used to be while straight axle-equipped mid-60s Falcons, Chevy IIs, and Comets rounded out the field. Next up were the touring racers of the Supercharged Thunder Series. No less than 10 cars answered the bell for the first round with Jamie Palmer, Jeff Steere, Tom Glick, Dave Covell, and Mike Pohl earning the first-round victories.

A strong field of eight Nostalgia Alcohol Funny Cars were up next. The widely varying cars ranged from the 1956 Thunderbird of Bill Hallet to the

1979 Dodge Omni of Pennsylania¹s Lance Good. The balance of the field was evenly split with three Chevrolet and three Ford entries. Four Nostalgia Top Fuelers were next to make noise with Ernest McClain from Smyrna, Delaware earning the unofficial long-distance tow award. A winning run by Ernest of 6.26-seconds at 226 miles-per-hour was low elapsed time of the round and showed why he had made the long tow. Amazingly, this was his only stop and he expressly had towed out from Delaware for this event only.

Shawn Bowen¹s 1977 Pontiac Trans Am, the Violator, made a single to open the round of Nostalgia Nitro Funny Cars when Eric Martin¹s 1972 Plymouth Satellite couldn¹t answer the first round call. Next, the Chi-Town Hustler faced the Motown Shaker as two great names from the past renewed their rivalry. This time it was Troy Martin, in the Hustler, that prevailed.

Denver, Colorado's Korry Hogan, the first man to go over 250 mph on a motorcycle, dropped everybody¹s jaw with a run on his 1,500 cc 1982 Suzuki.

After a strong start Korry trailed off to a still-respectable 6.42-second elapsed time. Dale Creasy, Jr. opened the Nitro Funny Car portion of the show with bye run. Dale, who has slowly been working his way back to competitiveness, recorded a shut-off 5.27 second elapsed time at 281.57 miles per hour. The other two nitro funny cars on the property, Jack Wyatt and Terry Haddock then matched up with Wyatt taking the win when Haddock¹s fuel pump failed and leaned out his engine. Kent Shockley, in the triple-engine Shockwave ended the first round of the feature vehicles with a run of 7.99-seconds at 207.99 mph in his 1986 Peterbuilt Jet Semi.

After a two hour break all of the feature cars were back for another round except for Terry Haddock¹s Funny Car. The damage to Terry¹s F/C had been too severe to return so, in place of his F/C, he rolled out the Top Fuel dragster that he drives on the NHRA tour. A rear wing failure in the lights spoiled a very good 4.79-second run at 312 miles-per-hour and made it a costly evening for Haddock as both of his race cars were now severely damaged. The appreciative U.S. 131 fans gave Terry a standing ovation for his night¹s work in putting on a great show.

In weekly action Coldwater¹s Dave Lanning used his dragster to defeat Dick Motycka¹s roadster from Kalamazoo in the Top Eliminator final. In Mod it was Mark Howard¹s Road Runner coming out on top over the Chevrolet S-10 of Adam Jarvis from Benton Harbor. Finally, Tony Whitehead, Jr., from Caledonia, defeated Belmont¹s Daniel Smith for the evening¹s Street crown.

However, Justin Wanamaker of Kalamazoo, MI proved to be the big winner of the evening as he not only claimed the Lane Automotive/Edelbrock season point’s championship in Extreme Solon Modified class but also won the estimated $20,000 Engine Pro race engine giveaway. Other racers securing their season titles were Jason Jensen from Vicksburg in VP Racing Fuels Top and Jake Carter from East Grand Rapids in Advanced Junior Dragster.

Kalamazoo¹s Brain Nap and Keenan Conner were the final winners as they clinched Street and Beginner Junior Dragster respectively.