photos by Bill Ross
and Mark Schappell
Cecil County Mid Atlantic Car Show/Nostalgia Drags
John Presley has loved drag racing since the early 60’s. Then he was a regular racer at Cecil County Dragway. Like many of us he has been addicted to the drags ever since. Three years ago he decided to do something about it. John approached Cathy Crouse and Jim Halsey about leasing the track for him to run his own Nostalgia race. The idea was to honor the racers that made Cecil “the place to be on Saturday night”.
Now in it’s third year the Mid Atlantic Car Show/Nostalgia Drags and 60’s reunion has grown to become far more than that. Mostly by word of mouth and Jonn’s relentless hours as a one man promoter the 2011 event was another big success. Bad weather all around the track kept some cars and even more spectators away but a good show was put on by The Mid Atlantic Nostalgia Drag Racing Association–MANDRA headed by President Bob Crouse had 14 cars make the first round. Brian Freels of Baltimore in his tribute Jungle Jim Chevy II was the popular MANDRA Winner.
Easily one of the nicest and most classy guys in drag racing is Bruce Larsen. Bruce brought his popular USA One 1968 Camaro Funny Car and even fired it up and made an easy pass down the track.
The Back Seats Drivers group brought a nice contingent of front engine dragsters and there was a AA/G match race that was captured by Pennsylvanian Ken Kuhl.
Richard Bruno of New Jersey is new on the nostalgia funny car scene but he made 1/8th mile smoky burnouts and easily captured the match race with the Rocky’s Rod Shop Nostalgia Vega funny car.
The winner of the bracket show was Lenny Hall of Fallston, Maryland with his 406 cubic inch Classic 1963 Chevy Corvette running a 9.25 on his 9.19 dial.
The best category of the day was the Nostalgia Super Stock eliminator.
23 cars qualified with some regular “names” like Wayne Shipley, Jim MacKenzie, Dave Collett, Dave Reitz all among the losers. In the final local racer Steve Dendom ran a 10’17 on his 10.12 dial to put his 1969 Chevy Nova in the winners circle. Kevin Greason in the Bob Banning 1964 Dodge was oh so close with a 10.17 on his 10.13 dial with Steve’s better .058 taking the victory
– – Dave Bishop
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I’d like to congratulate John Presley (the man that made it all happen) on a great show! This event is quickly becoming a “must attend” event for anyone in the tri-state area. The show car area was packed with a lot of beautiful hot rods. The exhibition cars did real well, with some AWB cars match racing along with a bunch of cool front engine dragsters. The “King of Kings, tribute to K.S. Pittman” match race went to Mike Hall driving the K.S. Pittman 33 Willys. Mike did a real nice job of driving the 33 to a 9.11 ET on a greasy track. We had the Boss Hydro making some test passes and were happy to get in a 9.10 pass. I’d like to thank all the HAMBERS who came over and said hi..! Look for this event to grow even bigger next year!
Rocky