Actually getting a little ahead of ourselves chronologically, but that's alright. Sick Seconds 2.0 was in the 7th or 8th pair of the all-run session and the final two hours of track time at Gateway was already building into one for the ages by the time Bailey followed Josh Lester's Olds powered Cutlass into the right lane water. Joe Barry and his "Creamsickle" 56 Chevy opened the festivities with a stout 7.06-201 that let everyone know the track was ready to take some horsepower. Following that pass, Janne Uskali assaulted the left lane in the Flying Finns' 67 Plymouth VIP with a beautiful 8.07-170 MPH pass out of the Brewer wedge powered C Body. Directly behind him in the water was Matt Blasko in the Dirty Drag Week Dart, and while the Canadian A body still had a significant wiggle at the 330' mark, Matt drove through it to a solid 7.71-186. Tom McGilton's ZL-1 answered Matt's run with an unreal 7.53-197 in the same Pro Street Power Adder class. To put that pass in proper context you need to understand that Pro Street at Drag Week is a fairly restrictive set of rules: back halved, stock floor pans, almost a nostalgia type build. Tom had became the first to run over 190 miles per hour just a day earlier at 190.5, so to see him lay down that 197 had all of us in attendance just shaking our heads in awe!

That was the back drop which anticipated Bailey's second attempt at maintaining the overall lead in Drag Week 2017 at St. Louis. The Pro Mod 69 Camaro left hard (1.06 to 60'), and while it avoided the sudden move to the center that had forced him to pedal the previous run, it was still headed towards the cones by four hundred feet out. He wrestled it to within inches of the line, with the big slicks black tracking hard, until he finally had to lift (or the engine expired from the increased rpms) at a thousand feet. The chute was fully blossomed when the scoreboard lit up with 6.39-187 numbers, but Tom must've already knew it was hurt bad because he brought the machine to a full stop well short of the turn off at the end of the track.
That is the cruelty of Drag Week in a nutshell, one second you are laying down the quickest pass of the event, and in the next second you are searching for a ride back to Cordova so you can fetch the truck and trailer!