Lizzy Musi and Musi Racing started 2020 with a victory at Bradenton Motorsports Park, and now the team will have a chance to finish the year with a win at the facility.
Musi will pilot the Frank Brandao-owned Edelbrock/Lucas Oil “King Kong 7” 2018 Dodge Dart at this weekend’s 49th annual Snowbird Outlaw Nationals, as the team aims to end the season on a strong note.
“We won here in January and we always seem to run well here,” Pat Musi said. “We need to test some things on the car, too, because we didn’t get a chance to run it enough this year. We had such a busy schedule with the Street Outlaws filming, we weren’t able to run this car as much and there’s some stuff we want to try.”
While Musi will be testing a number of things on the nitrous-powered Dart, the team is also racing to win, hoping to replicate their win in Pro Mod at the U.S. Street Nationals back in January. Lizzy Musi impressed that weekend to earn the victory, but appearances in the Pro Nitrous car have been few and far between this year.
A rigorous summer schedule filming the new season of the Street Outlaws television series on Discovery coupled with the unprecedented nature of the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic have led to only a handful of appearances in “King Kong 7.”
But Musi and the team have a chance to run well with the car to close out the year and that has everyone excited.
“Lizzy loves the car and she loves driving it, so she’s looking forward to it,” Pat Musi said. “She does a good job behind the wheel and she’s excited. It’s getting colder, so it will be nice to get down there and make some runs.
“We have a lot of data at the track and we usually have good conditions there. It would be nice to have a good result and we’re really looking forward to it.”
In ideal conditions, Musi has proven to have one of the quickest and fastest nitrous cars in the world, and the team proved their mettle in Pro Mod earlier this year in Bradenton as well.
But Musi is all about innovation and improvement and he plans to try something totally new with the tuneup in Bradenton. If all goes well, it could lead to an impressive weekend and plenty of momentum heading into the off-season.
“We’re always looking for something. I feel like we lost a little ground with this car because we didn’t get to run it much this year, so we’re excited to get down there and see what we can do,” Musi said. “When we want to test a concept, we want to do it in a real-world setting on the track, so we’ll see what happens.”
After testing on Wednesday and Thursday in Bradenton, the first round of qualifying for the Snowbird Outlaw Nationals takes place on Friday. Qualifying continues with three more rounds on Saturday before eliminations begin at 9 a.m. on Sunday.
This story was originally published on December 2, 2020. 
