During the eight minutes between the end of round two of the Street Machine Eliminator bracket race and the beginning of round three, Boone and I entered the tower suite to hand in our time slips. Tara Fling and Tonya Turk are absolute sweethearts, but they genuinely looked worn down by the long day, and long week. I was reminded immediately of the "get some rest Pam, you look tired" line from the Bourne movies, and I chuckled to myself thinking it was a line they probably felt like using more than once looking at a never ending line of dirty, sweaty, beat up Drag Weekers filing in front of them for the last five hours.
"Are you guys attending the Shootout tomorrow?" Tonya asked as she filled out my Official Drag Week Time Slip.
"Yeah, we plan on it...how many signed up?" We were near the end of the line, so I figured they would have a good count by then.
"Not many", Tara shook her head, "You guys make like 38 or so?" She lifted an eyebrow towards Tonya, and she nodded in affirmation.
Boone and I exchanged surprised looks, but said nothing. Last year over a hundred cars took part, but we needed Saturday just to finish the event, and the Awards ceremony was after it, so maybe that helped inflate the numbers.

The four races of the third round took place while we were getting our final slips and conversing with those left in the suite. The two quickest cars left in competition, #1 qualifier Adalie Ross in her nitrous assisted SBF powered 63 Falcon Wagon, and #2 qualifier Michael Peevey in his nitrous assisted BBF powered 73 Ranchero both lost on hole shots, despite making nice 10.0 runs.

The Gold(brown?) 79 LeMans of David Burke also advanced. He had qualified 27th with an 11.34 dial in, and had pretty much disappeared into the background most of Drag Week, but he was showing off his bracket racing chops when given the opportunity. Of the nine or so body styles produced on the GM A/G-body platform from 1978-87, I always felt these were the homeliest...but I drive a 62 Valiant, so my opinion on body styling is probably null and void!