For the final time, the Holley NMRA Ford Nationals and NMCA Muscle Car Nationals series join forces for a weekend at Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Georgia. Today the 13th Annual Scoggin Dickey Parts Center NMRA/NMCA All-Star Nationals Presented by MAHLE Motorsport gets underway with a full battery of time-trial runs across all the classes. The festivities come to a close with the Weldon High Performance Racer Appreciation Happy Hour. Stay tuned to this page for updates throughout the day as the action revs up at Georgia's House of Speed.
[gallery columns="2" size="large" ids="21065,21064"]Here's a rundown of today's activities on the first day of the 13th Annual Scoggin-Dickey Parts Center NMRA/NMCA All-Star Nationals Presented by MAHLE Motorsport.
As today's action winds down, racers, family, crew, sponsors, media, and vendors gather to enjoy a beverage or two and some snacks courtesy of Weldon High Performance.
Mike Naumann and his son Jake, came out swinging at the NMCA season opener last month, posting the ARP Nitrous Pro Street class ET record at 4.34 and MPH record at 162.67. Jake drove all the way to the final round where he unfortunately lost to defending champion Vince Khoury. The team has set its sights on a win this weekend, and certainly has the car to do it with.
Edelbrock Renegade racer Eric Bardekoff is trying out a number of new things this weekend, including a new supercharger spacer, and a few torque converters. The chassis fabricator and painter from New York is hoping for 4.50s this weekend from his Whipple-supercharged, S550 Mustang.
Tom Blincoe and David Monday are making plenty of horsepower with their David Monday Race Cars-built, and turbocharged big-block Chevy engines, and recently worked on the bump box adjustments for staging, as well as gear changed to get the cars to cover the front half a little quicker for this weekend's race.
Holley EFI Factory Super Cars driver Jason Dietsch (far left) and his crew chief Doug Thompson (far right) are reworking his Cobra Jet for that class, but in the meantime, he picked up this 2014 Super Cobra Jet and will compete in the NMCA's Coan Stock/Super Stock Combo class as well as MagnaFuel Open Comp this weekend. Dietsch originally delivered the 14 CJ from Watson Racing where it was built to a local Ford dealer back in 2014 before Dietsch was involved in racing Cobra Jets. The car sat in the showroom all of this time, even surviving a fire at the dealership, and Dietsch just bought it two weeks ago. Its supercharged Coyote powerplant remains as assembled from Ford Performance, and Dave Swanson (middle) was loading a new calibration in the factory ECM to allow them to tweak the tuneup. We really just changed the fluids, put a RacePak and new tires on it and brought it here, Diestch said. It's not often you find a brand new, 7-year-old car!
Every day at the racetrack is a good day according to Jimmy LaRocca, who long with his teammate Tommy Annunziata, are competing in Edlebrock Renegade with their 2014 Whipple-supercharged Cobra Jet Mustang, Jessica 2.0. Annunziata, who drove the PHL Racing Team's Cobra Jet to the 2017 ProCharger Coyote Modified championship, continues with the wheelman duties while LaRocca continues his part as chief tuner.
After coming together with fellow Dart NA 10.5 competitor John Langer in a top end incident, Cameron Bowles was able to make a few repairs to his grandfather's Coal Digger Mustang and get it back into action at that event. This weekend, he'll not only compete in the NMCA heads up NA class, but he'll also be driving his grandfather's Ford Maverick in the NMRA's ARP Open Comp category Bowles claimed the MagnaFuel Open Comp championship in 2019.
Chevrolet Performance Stock racer Glenn Pushis returned to his winning ways after claiming the class win at the NMCA season opener in Bradenton, Florida, in his brand new COPO Camaro. Pushis faces some of the stiffest competition in the class to date, with Ronnie Hackelton and Jeff Heintz, as well as the other class contestants, in hot pursuit.
Ted Wood walks a fine line in his Big Nuts Racing Gasser. Not only did he sneak the racy moniker on its flanks before his wife saw the logo, he says his ride isn't quite optimized for the Gasser classes or MagnaFuel Open Comp where he campaigns it. He fought chassis problems trying to tame the launch, but his Hillborn-injected, 632-cube engine loves to push the front end into the air. As such, he is running the car at about 85 percent so it doesn't launch too aggressively.
Mike Copeland of Arrington Performance brought his Challenger down to make some test hits in the Dodge // Mopar Hemi Shootout. Powered by a 6.4-liter Hemi engine fortified with Arrington Performance camshaft, piston, and rod upgrades, its CNC-ported 6.1 intake manifold receives boost from an air-to-water intercooled Vortech supercharger. It is the standard Challenger supercharger kit, and pumping out only 7.3 pounds of boost it delivered a whopping 738 horsepower and 640 lb-ft of torque to the wheels on a Mustang Dynamometer thanks to an Arrington Performance custom tune delivered via HP Tuners software and hardware.
Coming off a successful Quick Fuel Technology Nostalgia Super Stock race at the season opener, Brent Wheeler (left) is looking to build on the momentum he started in Bradenton, where his ride was running between indexes. He hopes to settle into running a 9.75 index this weekend, as that's where the car seems happiest. Part of Wheeler's good fortune is not running against Doug Duell (right), who had the misfortune of one car losing and the other breaking at the season opener. Duell is running his backup car, the Drag n Wag n, this weekend and lamented that he hasn't raced Wheeler in some time. This could be the weekend.