While yesterday’s Super Tuesday Test & Tune session followed by the American Race Cars/Race Tech Dragster Shootout was the first day at the K&N Spring Fling presented by Optima Batteries at Galot Motorsports Park, today marked the “official” start of the event. FST Wednesday began with a single time trial for all competitors with eliminations beginning for a $15,000-to-win day.
Race promoters Peter Biondo and Kyle Seipel made the decision this year to limit the field of entrants to 385 by way of a pre-entry system for both of their east coast events at Galot and Bristol in the fall. “We felt this was the best way to ensure a quality experience for all of our customers,” said Seipel. “It allows us to complete a race at a reasonable hour and give everyone the chance to enjoy the race, the day and their friends.”
For the Galot event, pre-entries opened up online back on March 4th, and an impressive statement to the power of the brand is that in less than eight minutes, the entire 385-car field was filled.
With the field whittled down to exactly 16 cars, the survivors of round five were Michael Morton, Jose Diaz, Brent Alford, Jason Lynch, Brian Martel, Nick Womack, Bethany Crick, Gary Williams, Carl Drake Jr., Wes Siegel, Brian Reklaitis, Super Tuesday Dragster Shootout winner Nick Folk, Cody McDaniel, Chris Stine, John Tolisano and Jim McDaniel.
Round six brings each onto the ladder where Tolisano used a better reaction time to take out Jim McDaniel; Stine red-lighting to advance Lynch; Folk moving on with a win over Martel; Crick and Drake matching reaction times with Crick turning on the win light; Williams and Womack also matching reaction times with Womack running under his dial to advance Williams; Reklaitis defeating Diaz; Siegel over Morton; and finally Cody McDaniel defeating Alford.
Quarterfinals, round seven and the lone door car left of Lynch had the RT advantage but Williams took a .001 advantage at the finish line for the win light. Siegel and Reklaitis went at it with Reklaitis running dead on the dial with a “3” for the win. Tolisano took a .003 advantage at the finish line for the win over Crick. And Folk continued to charge on after last night’s win with another win light over McDaniel.
Semifinals and Williams took .009 at the finish line to end Reklaitis’ day, while we might have seen a chink in the armor when Folk might have given back the finish line by .005 to advance Tolisano.
Final round and it was Florida versus Florida, with both combatants hailing from the Sunshine State, each leaving the starting line with matching .006 reaction times but it was G-Dub, Gary Williams running closer to his dial, taking a .004 finish line victory.
