With a win at the penultimate race of the season at GALOT Motorsports Park last month, Pro Nitrous young gun Marcus Butner put himself in a position to challenge three-time world champion Tommy Franklin for the 2025 season title. Throughout the PDRA Brian Olson Memorial World Finals weekend, Butner and tuner Jay Cox made the most of the opportunity, including beating Franklin in the second round. Butner had to go on to win the event, and he did just that.
He met up with past Elite Top Sportsman world champion Buddy Perkinson in the final round, where both drivers left the line with .009 reaction times. Butner’s Musi-powered “Heartbreaker” ’69 Camaro edged out Perkinson at the finish line with a 3.647 at 207.53 to a 3.660 at 205.91. It was Butner’s third win of the season and the fourth of his career.
“We trusted all to God this weekend. We’ve got the best team, the best tuner, and we’ve got the best people on board,” said Butner, who went on to thank Pat Musi Racing Engines, Liberty’s Gears, Ty-Drive, Indy Gear, and Kinetic Engineering. “It took every single person, every single minute of the year to get to where we are. Hats off to them. I feel like we ran pretty good all year. We had some bad luck. I messed up in Michigan, turned it red, and let Tommy go win the race. You can look back, and hindsight is 20/20. But when we rolled into GALOT, we had our A game on.”
Butner had the sixth-quickest car in qualifying, but he was the quickest driver in the first round of eliminations, as he fired off a 3.603 at 209.98 to beat Chris Rini and his 3.674. The pass also broke the late Lizzy Musi’s speed record set at the 2018 World Finals. It also gave Butner lane choice over Franklin in the second round. The two were separated by just .002 at the starting line, but Butner pulled ahead to win with a 3.671 at 208.10 over Franklin’s 3.681 at 206.57. In the semifinals against No. 13 qualifier Cam Clark, Butner rolled to a 3.688 at 206.86 to defeat Clark’s 3.723.
Perkinson, who was appearing in his first final round, qualified No. 7 in his Musi-powered LAT Racing Oil ’69 Camaro and got a first-round win over fellow Elite Top Sportsman world champion Tim Molnar in a 3.641-to-3.681 race. He got past No. 1 qualifier and 2024 world champion Fredy Scriba in the second round when he ran a 3.704 at 204.32 and Scriba lifted to a 6.573. Perkinson nearly lost on a holeshot to Billy Albert in the semifinals, as he ran a 3.679 at 205.82 to drive around Albert’s 3.719 at 206.83 by just .002.
This story was originally published on October 7, 2025. 
