The latest update as of May 21, 2024

2nd annual Chaos in The Cornfield

It's almost time for the fourth (of nine) on the action-packed FUNNY CAR CHAOS calendar for the 2024 season. And it's another double Chaos, with the NITRO CHAOS crowd joining in at Eddyville Raceway Park. It' so big that it's going to take three full days to get every eliminator completed. In a departure from the normal schedule, there will be just one qualifying session for the chaos cars on Friday evening, then two sessions on Saturday, followed by a full day of eliminations on Sunday.

There will be three full fields of Funny Car Chaos contestants, with 28 cars pre-entered, and two fields of Nitro Chaos racers, with 17 cars on the roster. Add in a host of sportsman eliminators, jet cars and other attractions on Memorial Day Weekend and it will be one of the highlights of the drag racing season. Best of all: we've got our Road Warrior "par excellence" "BIG" Bob Snyder heading east as this is being written, ready to capture all of the action with his trusty brace of Nikon cameras.

The only downside is that there is no video - that we know of - being shot for public use since FLOracing pulled the plug on broadcasting Funny Car Chaos events. However, the qualifying sheets and eliminations are posted on the FCC website and we can fill in most of the blanks to put together the story that goes with all the photos we will be receiving over the weekend and into next week. Stay tuned for all of that... and more!

53rd annual Ignitor Nitro Opener

This past weekend saw one of the most iconic drag racing events in the Pacific Northwest take place at Boise (Eagle) ID's Firebird Raceway. It was a combination NHRA Division 6 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series race, plus a Hot Rod Heritage Racing Series event with Nitro Nostalgia Funny Cars on hand. Stealing the show, as always, were the blown fuel floppers, as 14 of the nitro nasties took part. Qualifying was absolutely cut-throat with an ultra-tough 5.75 bump spot, and two alternates in the 5.70's, followed by two more in the 5.80's.

Among the notable non-qualifiers were Drew Austin, Tim Boychuk, Kamaka Pocock, and Jerry Espeseth, among others. Top qualifier James Day led the field with an awesome 5.56- 259.81, followed closely by Edmonton, AB's Nathan Sitko with a very strong 5.63 - 252.95 in the Ron Hodgson-owned "Pacemaker" entry. Defending multi-time series champion Bobby Cottrell in Bucky Austin's Camaro was all the way down in the #5 spot with a very good 5.70 - 252.61 clocking.

The awesome-ness didn't stop with qualifying as Stiko laid down a virtual bomb on the rest of the field in the first round of eliminations, breaking both ends of the track record with an incredible 5.510 - 262.69 effort. He went on to defeat Cottrell in the final round with another great 5.554 - 256.94 to hold off Cottrell's good, but not good enough 5.685 - 253.33. What a great weekend of racing for the Canadian team. We've seen a few shots posted on Facebook but we don't have permission (yet!) to post them here. Stay tuned though....

We've got some photos from the "Pacemaker - Bubble Up" team's wild weekend at Firebird Raceway. Third generation fuel racer, Nathan Sitko beat the best nitro nostalgia racers and dominated the event from the first round to the winners circle. Congratulations to the Ron & Ryan Hodgson team, crew chief Jim Basko, and ace driver Nathan Sitko. We'll fill in some details on the photos later.

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