With 48 of the country’s best drivers on property, an exciting day was in store at the JEGS Performance Summer Fling presented by Optima Batteries at National Trail Raceway. The $100,000 All-Star Shootout presented by Fuel Factory was nearly a year in the making, and the time had finally arrived.
The Fling Team nominated 12 racers while another set of 12 racers was decided by public poll. Once the 24 drivers were set, each nominated a teammate of the opposite vehicle type to create a field of 24 door cars and 24 dragsters.
The All-Stars qualified during the second time run based on reaction time, and the top 12 in door cars and top 12 in dragsters participated in a callout streamed live. Some racers were headhunting, while most claimed they would rather avoid racing any of the drivers.
After third round Mark Kidd, Scotty Richardson, Larry Piper, Scott Taylor, Gage Burch, and Kevin Pollard remained on the door car side while Johnny Ezell, Nick Folk, Tommy Cable, Ray Miller III, Donovan Williams, and Cory Gulitti were the last of the dragsters.
A new ladder was set at six cars including Richardson, Burch, Williams, Taylor, Miller, and Ezell. Richardson was four-thousandths ahead at the hit and ended up .004 ahead at the stripe to run dead-on 6 to move past Burch, while Taylor used a .020 starting line advantage with a .004 bulb over Williams that would earn him the bye to the final. Ezell backed into Miller to put it dead-on two.
In the semifinals, Ezell held a .012 advantage on the tree but broke out six thousandths to bow out against Richardson who dropped it dead-on three. Taylor opted to make a full pass on the bye in an attempt to score lane choice in the final but turned it .002 red.
Richardson captured the $100,000 All-Star big check by taking .005 in the RBZ Billet ‘69 Camaro for the win over Taylor and collected the $7,500 Fuel Factory Team Bonus with his brother Edmond. The victory is Richardson’s second Fling winners’ circle in addition to his 2020 Spring Fling Million Bristol win.
Thursday will start off with a time run for all racers on the property as we work towards crowning a $15,000 Champion on Advanced Product Design Thursday.
Everything will be streamed live as it happens on the MotorManiaTV YouTube channel free to the viewer courtesy of Strange Engineering with new exclusive content produced by the Fling Team.
For more information, visit www.BracketRaces.com, the Spring Fling Bracket Races Facebook page, or text the word “Columbus” to 41372 for race updates.
This story was originally published on September 7, 2023. 
