The next three sets down the track featured the trio of Shelby Club front scratchers, all finishing Drag Week in style, although Patrick Culkin's 90 Shadow was puffing a great deal of white smoke after his last official pass.

Friday had been overcast all day, and they were worried bout rain hitting us later in the evening pretty much from the get go, but about twenty minutes into the Street Machine Eliminator session it became clear that they were worried about something else even more. Gateway had scheduled a piggy back event onto ours, sort of a street drags, and drift style event, that was set to kick off as soon as we were done. It seemed that the Gateway staff, and the Drag Week staff suddenly realized they weren't going to be finished with Drag Week 2015 by the time the locals expected to have the run of the place.

At 5:07pm, just twenty-two minutes after the Street Machine Eliminator class got their first shot at the track, Brian Lohnes suddenly announced over the PA system, "I've been informed by Race Director Lonnie Grimm that we are shutting off the back of the SME lanes at 5:15!"
A scant 7 minutes later, he announced: "We are opening up the lanes for the all-run, final session."
Two minutes later he called out once again, "The lanes are filling up fast with class cars, so all you spectators better get back to your seats!"
You can imagine the frustration if you were an SME racer who wasn't fortunate enough to have made your first pass in the first 31 minutes. They had waited two and half hours through the class car first session for their opportunity, and now thirty minutes into the SME session, the back of the lanes were cutoff and the class cars were given a head start to back fill all the other lanes, The chance of getting another run to turn in before the bracket race was pretty much null and void at that point.

In the interest of fair reporting, I must weigh in with the fact that Friday didn't go our way, and I wonder how much that tainted my feelings about how the event was handled at Gateway.

John nosed the 67 Valiant into the water at 5:25 PM, pretty much aware that this might be his only pass before the Quick 32 bracket race. He had the 440 tuned up perfectly for the weather conditions, but the well worn drag radials slipped just enough to card an 11.004-120.92. He drove straight back to the lanes intent upon getting a ten second pass all five days, but pulled up behind pretty much every car still running at Drag Week...it was going to be a long wait!

Three minutes later Rachael pulled the Belvedere into the water, next to Hemi_Joel and his GTX for a battle of 67 b-bodies. Joel asked her to allow him the opportunity to deep stage before she turned on the final stage bulb. She complied, but she was so focused on her staging that she never dropped the shifter back into low after her burn-out. The strain of applying the nitrous 10 feet out while in second gear was more than the 7260 front u-joint could stand!