Chevys at Orlando
The 15th annual Real World Street Nationals were held Oct. 26-28, at Orlando Speedworld Dragway and Chevy teams wound up with most of the top honors.
The accolades weren’t earned with final-round victories, however, as Mother Nature was the only real winner this year as rain put an early end to eliminations on Sunday, then washed away any chance of completing the race on Monday. Track operator and race promoter Carl Weisinger then decided to name the winners based on who ran the best E.T.s for each class in the last completed round of eliminations.
According to that criteria, Annette Summer and here twin-turbocharged ’63 Corvette prevailed in the Super Pro Street class with a 6.450-seconds blast at 225.41 mph in a second-round bye over the Orlando quarter mile. Vinny Budano and his ’68 Camaro, Summer's scheduled opponent for the quarter-finals, were named runner-up based on a 6.517 win in round two over Halvor Hansen Jr.
In Outlaw 10.5, teammates Richard Sexton with a Chevy-powered ’06 GTO and 2002 Camaro driver Chuck Ulsch shared the winner's accolades after Sexton won his round-two match over Jim Robbins and his ’68 Camaro with a 6.981/208.52 pass while Ulsch, the defending event champion, was just five-thousandths back after going 6.986 seconds to beat the ’69 Camaro of Lawrence Berry.
Only the first rounds of Heavy Street and Drag Radial were completed before the rains came and Heavy Street honors went to Sam Gottier and his 1971 Chevelle, courtesy of a 7.513/186.07 win over Dale Hammond’s ’81 Camaro. Polesitter and former event winner John Schroeder was named runner-up in Heavy with his 2002 Camaro after he mounted a come-from-behind win over the ’75 Nova of Randy Goodman.
Only David Wolfe kept the winners’ list from featuring an all-Chevy sweep up top as he took the Drag Radial title home to Ft. Worth, TX, after going 7.700 at 194.72 in his ’89 Mustang to beat Scott Bitzer’s 1981 Malibu, while Alabama's Shane Stack and his turboed ’86 Monte Carlo were given the runner-up position after an opening-round win over Lewis Jones in a ’67 Mustang.
SUPER PRO STREET
Legendary outlaw street racer Annette Summer qualified her 530 c.i., twin-turboed Vette way down at 25th of the 32-car raceday field, but actually ran low E.T. of the meet with a 6.38/218.58 effort in her opening-round win over the 2005 Cavalier of Florida’s Scotty Cugdagno. Summer, from Aiken, SC, then made what turned out to be an event-winning a solo pass at 6.45/225.41 when Randy Jewell couldn’t answer the call to stage with his turbocharged ’68 Camaro.
