When Dale and I left National Trail on Monday, we were 14th and 16th respectively, out of 19 cars in Modified Power Adder. Rick Prospero had jumped to the early lead in his green RX7, but as I documented before, a bad day at Martin had allowed Dan Saitz and his Orange 88 Mustang to lead by two tenths coming into the final day. Rick and his son must've tested at National Trail, because out of 292 finishers, they were the only ones to run markedly better at that track than the other three. Rick and the RX7 went 7.59-185.3 on his first attempt, while Dan Saitz blew the tires off on the Mustang, so the pressure was back on the orange fox with the 400 inch turbocharged SBF.

Saitz's second pass was a 7.74-180 that was just enough to give him the win in the class. The Mustang smoked noticeably for the last two hundred feet, and I figured he was done for the week, but Dan is a multiple winner in X275 and 8.5 racing, and he's just not wired to leave anything on the table. He couldn't catch Glenn Hunter for third overall, but he was in a tight battle with Mike Roy for fourth overall and he wasn't going to give that up with two hours left on the clock. He would end the day with 7.57-184, and his 7.66 average would indeed be good enough for fourth overall, meaning the top four cars were all from different classes!

Meanwhile, near the bottom of the class, the Valiant and I were battling it out with a pair of wagons. Garry Ross' 63 Falcon had lost narrowly to us in Modified NA competition at DW14, but they had more experience with the nitrous, and made consistent runs all week to cover the Valiant by seventeen hundredths in average even though our best runs were only four thousandths apart. Danny Allen's twin turbo LS powered 65 Nova wagon, ran high 140s all week, which should have put him far ahead of Ross and I, but trans and converter issues kept him in the high nines. He made 4 or 5 ten second runs of Friday, before coming up with a 9.53-151 to take 12th place away from me!