July 23 - Temperatures scorched the ESTA quarter-mile and the racers scorched it to the eighth-mile in their quest for the big 10K paycheck in the F.X. Caprara Bad Hombre 10K shootout. With a mix of 100 door cars and dragsters all competing it came down to Carl Drake Jr. (CJ) in his ’11 Diamond dragster taking on Chris Scarlata in his ’97 Mullis dragster for the big buck payday. CJ lost round 1, bought back in, lost that round then wheeled and dealed for the "Mulligan" Ticket which exchanged hands a few times. A deal was made with Vince Musolino and that deal put CJ into round 5!
ESTA's version of "Let's Make A Deal" paid off for CJ as he bettered NYIRP regular Scarlata in an all dragster final round for the big payout. This one was over early as Chris had some sort of transmission problem causing him to have a subpar .886 reaction time, which you can’t have against a driver of Carl’s caliber. Carl had a .525 light and cruised to a 5.021 at 113.13 mph run on his 4.78 dial ,while Chris ran a 5.33 at 108.19 mph on his 5.03 dial for the $2,500 runner up payoff. Ross Adams was the semifinalist in his dragster.
A huge thank you to the FX Caprara folks. This event simply would not have happened without them, and a thank you goes out to Vince Musolino who was the event director for the day. Thanks again to all the competitors and fans for making this event a great success.
