The latest update as of April 20, 2024

3rd annual Chaos Cajun Nationals

It's race day down at State Capitol Raceway, near Baton Rouge, LA, as the FUNNY CAR CHAOS tour makes its second stop of the 2024 season. It's much more low-key than the Texas Motorplex extravaganza of two weeks ago, but there's still some serious racing happening, with four AA/Funny Cars, a turbo-alky car, and at least 15 blown alcohol cars. Sitting at the top of the ladder going into the final qualifying session is the 2022 series champion Kirk Williams, in the Williams Brothers "200 Proof" entry, with an excellent 3.742 - 207.18. The speed is the only 200+ mph recorded so far, and his 3.70 pass is nearly a tenth in front of the #2 qualifier.

We don't have a correspondent on hand, due to the driving distance (nearly 1500 miles) from Arizona. And, in a very surprising development, FLORacing is no longer streaming the Funny Car Chaos series. Thankfully, Competition Plus streamed the Classic from the Motorplex, but from here on out, we're out of luck as far as video coverage goes. We'll have the results, but no photos oviously, from State Capitol tomorrow.

8:00 PM (PDT) UPDATE

The race is over and the winner of the "A" field at the Chaos Cajun Nationals was the low qualifier Kirk Williams, over a very worthy opponent, the #2 qualifier Shayne Lawson, in his "Man O' War" Mustang. Neither car ran to perfection in the final, with Williams having to pedal early, and Lawson fighting to keep his car off the centerline, but the scoreboards read 3.89 - 3.97 in the Williams Brothers favour.

In the "B" field final, it was Chris Schneider in the Mach I Mustang-bodied "Brutus", facing the east coaster Wayne Hofmann. This season Hofmann is sporting a tribute to his late father Al, with "Western Auto" livery on the former "China Syndrome" car. We only heard (from the p.a. announcer) that Schneider ran a 4.10 in the final, and no numbers were provided for Hofmann, but the race looked close on the video. The finalists came from the #2 and #3 spots in the "B" field, 11th and 12th qualifiers overall.

Backing up a little bit to the final qualifying session, held earlier in the day, we can see that the 16-car bump spot improved from a 4.887 to a 4.741, leaving four of the FCC regulars on the outside. One or more of them could have possibly come into eliminations as alternates, but we'll have to wait for the full results to be posted. One racer that made a huge jump up the ladder in the final session was Ronny Young in the famed "Blue Max" Plymouth Arrow, who came from the bottom of the 20-car field to the #5 spot with a very good 3.948 at "only" 158.67, to indicate that there was more performance lurking between the frame rails. It didn't happen though, as Young lost in the first round to Williams.

That's all we've got from the Chaos Cajun Nationals for now, but we will update our report and fill in more details when they become available.

BONUS: We've found a nearly one hour video from the Chaos Cajun Nationals. Check it out here.