LAS VEGAS 2 - Fred Hahn Wins 2003 DRO/NMM Pro Mod Cup

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Sun, 26 Oct 2003, 09:55 PM

Fred Hahn Wins 2003 DRO/NMM Pro Mod Cup

By Jim Samuel
Photo by: LVMS

LAS VEGAS --

Fred Hahn and Jim Oddy

Fred Hahn won the 2003 DRO/NMM Pro Mod Cup, after a hectic weekend in which he failed to qualify for the NHRA AMS Pro Modified Challenge series finale here, but then watched as everything fell into place and ensured him the championship win. Hahn drives the Summit Racing 2001 Chevy Corvette Pro Modified car owned by Jim Oddy.

“It’s been a day of going through different scenarios and every one of them went the way we wanted, right down to what happened in the finals,” an elated Hahn said after the win.

After Hahn failed to qualify, three other drivers were in position to take the title away from him. Mitch Stott could have won the title if he had qualified for the race, but Tim McAmis, the last car to make a qualifying attempt during the last qualifying session, bumped him from the field and eliminated Stott from contention. If McAmis had won his first round match against Thomas Patterson, he’d have won the championship. But Patterson won that race, putting himself in position to win the championship if he were able to win the event.

“If Mitch hadn’t been bumped, he’d be the world champion,” Hahn said. “If McAmis had won in the first round, he’d be the champion.” Finally, had Patterson not lost to Von Smith in the final, he’d have won the series title.

“It was nerve racking to sit and watch all day, but like the old saying, I’d rather be lucky than good,” Hahn said.

In the first half of the season, Hahn took the team’s Summit Racing 2001 Chevy Corvette to Pro Modified wins at the NHRA Mac Tools Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, Tenn., where he beat Mitch Stott in the final round to take the win. His second win of the season came at the NHRA Route 66 Nationals in Joliet, Ill., in which he beat Troy Critchley in the final round of the event. He was the number one qualifier in the series season opener at Gainesville, Fla., the O’ Reilly Spring Nationals in Houston, Texas and at the two events that he won.

That meant that Hahn, the 2000 IHRA champion, came the race at Las Vegas with 1642 points, 15 points ahead of Mitch Stott, who had 1627 points. McAmis was in third place with 1450 points and Patterson was in fourth place with 1331 points.

Hahn said that the season championship was an example of why teams should compete as hard as they can at every race in the season. “We only won this thing by five points,” he said. “We did real well at the beginning if the season and that was the difference.”

Hahn and Oddy unveiled their Summit Racing 2001 Chevy Corvette three years ago but switched to a hemi engine before the start of this season. In addition to the NHRA AMS Pro Modified Challenge, the pair also raced in eight IHRA events this year, making it to the final rounds of eliminations twice and qualifying first at the IHRA season finale with a 6.111 second elapsed time, the quickest ever in IHRA competition.

“Things are just great,” Hahn said from the Winner’s Circle in Las Vegas. “This is really good for Summit, for Isky, for EDS, and for everyone involved.”