Roughly twelve minutes after Boone put the Ruster Duster in the nines, Dale idled the Gremlin into the water box at National Trail, and proceeded to do a high gear only, high rpm burnout past the sixty foot clocks! Really not a smart move for a wounded engine that was pushing out oil. As soon as he backed up across the start line, the Starter walked over and shut him off. The guy working the box grabbed a mop and started dabbing at spots behind the car, while the Starter and another member of the crew walked out to sixty foot and started dabbing spots with towels as they walked back towards the Gremlin.
"What's the deal, are they going to let him run? Rachael leaned over to ask me.
"Not sure", I shook my head, "It was pushing oil out of the valve covers at highway speeds, so I have no clue why he decided to do that wild of a burnout!"
"Guess he didn't want you badmouthing him like you did Boone", Darren interjected.
The Starter bent over and looked under the car. Dale had been holding the driver's door open since he'd been shut off, and the Starter walked over to the door for a conversation. Darren and I took a couple steps forward out of the crowd, figuring we would have to push him back, but he was given the go signal and fired the 572 back up. He purged both systems into the engine, and slowly staged while Freiburger and Lohnes relayed the story of his accident at Indy on the PA. Beside him was Randy Belehar's tank weight, 9 second, 70 Pontiac Grand Prix with it's nitroused big inch Pontiac engine. Dale actually outran Randy in the third round of the special shootout in 2014.

The Gremlin left decent, and sounded good under the heavy dose of nitrous, but at 800ft. it seemed as though it was maxed out on rpm, and just emitted more and more smoke until it mercifully made it to the finish line, the scoreboard lit up 8.913-152.19 to the Poncho's 9.976-133.13.

Rachael headed back to cook as Darren and I relocated to the bleachers. We had just sat down when I decided to go get Boone and Dale so we could turn in our slips.
"Bring them back with you so we can watch some racing!" Darren yelled at my back as I made my way to the pits.