What is really Day 1 of the K&N Spring Fling presented by Optima Batteries opened up Wednesday morning, FST Carburetor Wednesday, with $15,000 on the line for a winner Wednesday night.
Yesterday’s Rob’s Automotive Test & Tune session was followed by Hunter Patton and Mike Nahill both taking home a new dragster in the Super Tuesday Dragster Shootout sponsored by American Race Cars and Race Tech. Yesterday was a whole new day with over 350 racers making the call for the first round.
Due to the COVID virus, a number of changes were implemented for this event. Tech cards were e-mailed to all competitors ahead of time in order to further eliminate person to person contact. Buybacks were also handled differently as it simply required a return to the lanes for the buyback round, with the tower round sheets handling the billing to each racer.
Ten hours from when the first round began, the field was paired down to nine cars; Joe Foley, Jason Hoff, Wade White, Lenny Bucher, Jamie Holston, Tommy Cable, Kyle Cultrera, TG Paschal and Mia Tedesco received the odd car bye run in the next round.
Survivors of round seven and those moving into the quarterfinals were Tedesco, Cable, Cultrera and Paschal with Holston earning the bye run in round eight. First up in the round of five was multi-time Fling winner Cable over Tedesco and her door car ending the reign of door cars for the day. Paschal over Cultrera and Holston on the bye.
With three cars left for the semifinal round, Cable will receive the bye to move into his eighth Spring Fling final round making him one of the best ‘Fling racers of all time. Holston and Paschal faced off to see who would face Cable and it would be Holston who is no stranger to footbrake racing but also a very good dragster driver as well.
In the final, it was Cable with the reaction time advantage but taking seven-thousandths finish line but breaking out in the process to hand the trophy and $15,000 to Holston, who has two World Footbrake Challenge Gambler’s Race wins to his credit along with a host of other wins as well. That wrapped up FST Carburetor Wednesday with an important schedule change for the balance of the event.
With a forecast for wet weather hanging around for the balance of the week, officials have decided to combine JEGS Thursday and Wiseco Saturday to make it a $50,000-to-win race. Strange Engineering Friday will still be the $100,000-to-win race. “We’re sorry to have to do this,” said co-promoter Kyle Seipel, “but we want to ensure we pay out the entire purse and give our customers the very best Spring Fling experience. We therefore will start the $50K race on Thursday morning.”
MotorManiaTV is continuing to live stream the entire event thanks to Hoosier Tires and JEGS. Continue to stay tuned to www.bracketraces.com for news and results.
This story was originally published on June 11, 2020. 
