World Cup Coverage - Records, Wrecks & Rain
What a crazy event filled with records, wrecks, and rain in front of a sold out crowd of over 50,000 spectators! The World Cup Finals are held at Maryland International Raceway in November every year. Because of the low elevation and cold weather, the Density Altitude (air quality) is always at or below sea level which means the cars are FAST! On the bright side, that means that records are often broken at the World Cup Finals and this year was no exception. But that also means that some cars unintentionally exceed their normal tuning window so you see a lot of mechanical breakage as well.
This year, we saw Jimmy Taylor set the ProMod record with a 5.11@263, Cleetus McFarland set the Radial MPH record with a 5.72@261.88, Brett LaSala set the street driven Mustang record with a 5.97@241, Chuck Bartholme set the Godzilla 7.3 record with a 6.94@195, Carlos Sobrino set the NA Coyote record with an 8.25@163, Dan Ryntz set the Godzilla NA record with a 9.18@144, and there were many more! Unfortunately, there were also a lot of wrecks and oil downs.
I've been hanging out at the dragstrip for over 35 years, and this was the first time I was ever pelted by debris from a car smashing the wall on the big end. It was intense! But the wrecks and oil downs caused a lot of down time. It seemed like we were lucky to get in 30 minutes of racing before the next shut down for track prep or repair. Overall, it caused a massive delay in the racing program, and once the rain became a factor the event could not be finished. They split the purse among the remaining racers in each class, and awarded the trophy to the highest qualifying racers who remained in competition. So our friend Brett LaSala won X vs Hot Rod and Team UPR Racer Dan Ryntz won All Motor.
