Sun, 23 Sep 2001, 10:28 PM IMPORT -3 - Hot Rod Final, Round 4 Eliminations

By Jim Samuel

ENGLISHTOWN, N.J. - Results of final, round 4 eliminations in Hot Rod at the Nitto Extreme Performance Import Nationals:

 Qua-Driver(Opp'nt)-RT-----ET---Speed-Rd-Qua-Driver(Opp'nt)-RT-----ET---Speed
  99 JoJo Callos        No Data        Q   99 Mike Crawford      No Data
   (R Estevez   ) 0.493  9.244 149.81  E1                  0.648  9.902 116.89
   (L Kubo      ) 0.578  9.277 149.55  E2   (G Gardella  ) 0.554  9.222 157.58
                  1.690 18.869  50.24  E3   (M Bautista  ) 0.554  9.072 155.51
 *****WINNER***** 0.538  9.796 134.91  E4                  0.000 No Time

This was a major-league psych job as Callos won this race at the lights. As the cars came out of the staging lanes, Crawford did his burnout. Callos drove through the water box without doing a burnout and pulled near the line. As Crawford backed up to the line, Callos's crew attended to his car as if he had done a burnout. Crawford and Callos waited for each other to pre-stage and Callos finally moved ahead. Crawford pre-staged and the waiting began again. Finally, with time running out, Callos made the move and pre-staged. Crawford tried to quickly pre-stage but pulled too far forward and rolled through the lights for the red. To add insult to injury, despite having already won the race, Callos ran more quickly than his qualifying time.

Timing data courtesy of CompuLink