We were walking along the fence around the 330 mark, when Jeff Lutz idled his Mad Max Pro Mod Camaro into the water box of the left lane.
"Perhaps we should take a seat for this one", Dale suggested.
We made our way into the stands, and filed onto a bleacher about six rows up.
"Conservative, or swing for the fences?" Boone asked loudly enough for all of us to hear.
"He'll try to kill it. He had the pan off, and was rolling in new main bearings earlier, he didn't go to all that trouble after the night he had on the road just to roll up here and go 7.50", Dale extolled.
"I agree, he's on a mission this year...it's about more than just winning," I added.
"A mission from God!" Boone quipped.
"Definitely not a Cop motor though", Darren laughed
"It's the last of the V-8 interceptors?" Rachael added.
Dad groaned and rubbed his forehead, "Tell me again why you keep bringing her!"


Jeff wasn't under as much pressure to run a killer pass as Prospero was earlier. Anything quicker than an 8.18 would keep him in the overall lead, and anything quicker than a 10.79 would allow him to leave US131 with a better average than the rest of the Unlimited field. The truth was evident though, Lutz didn't come to Hot Rod Drag Week 2016 to win it, He came to smash all records set in the previous eleven events. He had watched with a broken car, out after day two in 2009, as Larry Larson ran the first Drag Week 200 mph pass in Muncie Indiana. When Jeff returned in 2010, he ran over 200 mph on 3 of the 5 days, and his 7.18 average crushed the numbers Larry had won with in 09, But Larry stepped up the Chevy II, and Jeff could only watch as Larry ran the first Drag Week 6 second pass to beat him with a 7.07 average. They had a repeat of that battle in 2012, which Larry won by the narrow margin of .009 in average, but the performance numbers were only marginally inching down year after year. The winning average had dropped from 7.07 in 2010 to 6.83 in 2013, so barely two tenths over four events after plunging a full second in the previous two.

Then came 2014. Larry had a new, much hyped S-10, defending Champ Tom Bailey was back, Jeff brought two flat black 57 Chevies, Doug Cline was back, Bryant Goldstone was debuting the Javelin, and Joe Barry was making huge strides with his 56 Chevy. Jeff's initial 6.69-225.2 from his lightweight, all fiberglass clone was the fastest official Drag Week speed if he finished, but Bailey's 2013 winning Camaro had went 218 before and ran a 6.54 to open up 2014, so Jeff received little fanfare. New car bugs bit Goldstone and Larson. Bailey leaned on his too hard and dropped out with the lead after day two, and finally Jeff was victorious at Drag Week, averaging 6.84-212 to beat Doug Cline's 6.87-210. His son had also finished in his old car, and pictures were all over the internet of the matching flat black 57s cruising around with trailers on the back. This should have been Jeff's greatest Drag Week moments and memories, but still he was a hundredth slower than Bailey's 6.83 average the year before. Then on Saturday, during a special all-run shootout for finishers, Larry rolled up and went 6.16-219 with the chutes out early. The truck had finished with an off-pace 9.46-150 average for 32nd place overall, and had a best official Drag Week time of 6.70-218. In one pass though, after spending the night thrashing on the S-10 in the trailer with all of their resources available since Drag Week had been completed, Larry re-claimed the quickest street car in the world moniker and effectively stole Jeff's thunder in one fell swoop.

That kind of stuff affects people in different ways. Jeff's answer was to show up with his championship winning pro mod in 2015 and lay down an incredible 6.05-251 on day 1. He was unable to complete the first drive, so everyone shrugged and wrote it off as a decent pass for a pro mod, but he had yet to prove it was street worthy. Tom Bailey had added a second win in 2015 to his accomplishments with his new pro mod Camaro, but had only lowered the five day average to 6.78-219 with a 6.35-224 best, so the opportunity was still there for Jeff to substantially lower the numbers in 2016.
Dave Ahokas and Tom Bailey had built pro mod style cars, specifically for Drag Week, but Jeff had taken a proven race car and tried to convert it to street use. Following his debacle with the strut at the side of the road the night before, many in the pits (and on the internet) still doubted if it could be done. This was the backdrop against which Jeff staged Mad Max on Wednesday afternoon at US131.

The flat black, brick shaped pro mod left hard, then rattled the tires at 80 feet in a move that set the front out of the groove towards the wall. Jeff used all of his considerable racing experience to gingerly nudge the front back in the groove, he never lifted through the tire shake and by the time he passed where we were sitting it was clear this was a stout run. I have no specific recollection of rising from the bench, but we were all on our feet, gazing at the scoreboard, when Brian Lohnes started screaming "193 at the eighth! 6.10 at 243! Let him hear it folks, the quickest pass in the history of Hot Rod Drag Week!"

Even though we aren't particularly Jeff Lutz fans, we were almost giddy to see him lay down a big number after his monumental struggle just to make it to the line. We were talking about the pass as we prepared to exit the stands, when we heard Lohnes announce that the last car down the track would be Jake Brantner's Malibu, in a memorial pass with his ashes packed in the parachute. We froze in our tracks and returned to our previous seat.

Jake's 80 Malibu had blown the collective minds of the Drag Week staff in 2011, when driver Scott Smith dominated Street Race Big Block Power Adder with a 7.82-189 quickest pass. This car along with Tim Reed's seven second Pinto, prompted Hot Rod to make "Street Race" an 8.50 cert class, and they created the Super Street class to accommodate the type of machines Jake was fabricating in his Missouri based shop. He lost his life in a senseless robbery/murder earlier in the year, and the racing family and friends he had fostered at Drag Week and street car events, though devastated, had tried to provide comfort to his wife and daughter. The fact that they chose this event for such a memorial, showed how strong that bond had become.

I didn't know Jake personally, but I couldn't help but equate it to the loss the Ogles were trying to overcome as they toiled to keep their big block E bodies in the event to honor the memory of Jason, or the pink and grey wristbands we wore in memory of Steve Bowyer. It was difficult to correlate the emotions I felt watching the cloud of dust when the Malibu hit the finish line to the one I had just experienced watching Lutz run.

From the time Lutz staged, until Jake's final pass was over, eight minutes had elapsed. Quite a bit of emotions and intensity in eight minutes, and I had shared it with my three brothers, my dad, my daughter, and my nephew. I looked among the group as we walked towards the tower to turn in our slips in quiet unison, and thought, "I'm a very lucky human being, and there is no place I'd rather be than right here in this moment!"