After torrential rains washed out the first day of racing and threatened to cancel the second and final day of the CMDRA Eastern Nationals presented by Parts Canada and Drag Specialties at Toronto Motorsports Park, the diehard racers and fans that stuck it out were rewarded with close competition and one of the few Nitro Harley appearances in Ontario this year.
The rains on Friday wreaked havoc with the second half of the dragstrip at TMP, forcing all classes to run to 1/8 mile due to seepage in the pavement past half track. The starting line was strong however, and another close day of racing in the Screamin’ Eagle V-Rod Destroyer class was won by Pete Thomson. Thompson was the quickest in each round of eliminations, and the Rocky’s Harley-Davidson/Dyno Tunes/Brittania Homes-backed racer ran Low ET and Top Speed of the Meet at 5.86/118+ MPH.
Thomson, who is also a CMDRA director, noted that “we were only about 20 minutes away from cancelling this whole thing, so I am so glad that we had this window of clear weather to get this race in the book.”
In Screamin’ Eagle Top Fuel competition, history repeated itself as Kevin Boyer (Edmonton, AB) and Damian Cownden (Victoria, BC) met in the final round for the second weekend in a row. Boyer, who had smoked the tire after launch in the only qualifying session, repeated again and couldn’t get hooked up to the TMP racing surface. Cownden meanwhile was full throttle and trying to wrestle his Gasoline Alley H-D-sponsered Nitro Harley into the groove. He chopped the throttle just before the finish line and recorded a 4.61-second elapsed time in the 1/8 mile.
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