Lights Out XIII: Organized Chaos Race Recap

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Another Lights Out at South Georgia Motorsports Park is in the book, so let’s take a look back at the week. 

Every year in February I head down to SGMP for the organized chaos that is Lights Out. This was the 13thannual running on the event, and it certainly did not disappoint. As usual, there was weather that played a part, along with huge crowds, records set, too many spectators golf carts, late nights, early mornings, and complete exhaustion by the end of Sunday. 

I rolled in early Tuesday morning with bright sunny weather and more cars than I ever remember seeing on property that early in the week. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given the fact that we start qualifying on Wednesday evening, with testing in between rounds of qualifying. For me, Tuesday is more of a hang out and talk to people that I either hadn’t seen at U.S. Street Nationals or that I hadn’t seen over the winter. Wednesday is when the fun begins for me. 

If you have never been to this event, you have no idea what organized chaos truly looks like. Early in the week usually isn’t that bad but come Friday you’d better be ready to have your brain scrambled. Friday is the day that the weekend spectators roll onto the property with their oversized side-by-sides, big rolling coolers, and enough booze to kill a small army. For those that have been there before, I am sure you noticed some changes though. The first section of the concrete grandstands was roped off, there were no spectators allowed on the stands between the water box, the left side concession was not open, the grandstands were painted, etc. A lot of this appears to have been the doing on the Fire Marshall. 

What about the racing though? Well, as most of you know by now, Jason Lee, who is always a front runner, whether in Pro Mod trim or RvW trim dropped the hammer and ran a 3.499. That is only the second sub 3.50 pass in RvW during competition. This wasn’t the only stellar pass though. Wes Ervin reset the Ultra Street World Record, Rob Goss reset the X275 World Record, and DJ McCain reset the LDR (Limited Drag Radial) World Record. So yes, there were some great passes during the week. 

With all the good that happened, there was certainly some drama. That drama occurred on Saturday when the decision was made to contest the first round of eliminations in the heat and direct sunlight on the track. I know that may not be a big deal to most, but when all your qualifiers are usually in the evening and cars are getting down the track, this decision became a huge deal. Radial vs. The World certainly wasn’t the only class having issues getting down a tricky track that just wasn’t there. Pro 275, which is a class that is littered with three second passes by almost all the competitors (27 out of 32 cars qualified in the 3 second zone), only three of those qualified cars ran in the three second zone during E1. None of the other classes faired much better during that round of eliminations. 

You can imagine there were a lot of unhappy drag racers after E1 concluded. That was abundantly obvious when I got on social media and saw people discussing their displeasure with how things had transpired. I don’t make those decisions and I don’t track prep, but it certainly didn’t seem to be a fruitful round of eliminations. So much so that I went back to a friend’s trailer after the first three or four pair of RvW and sat out almost all of E1. E2 was a much better round of eliminations, even though we were going to run late into the night again. 

As expected, the Sunday schedule was changed to start an hour earlier than we had previously planned on, so by the time I arrived at the track at 10am they had already run three classes in eliminations. Sunday rolled right along, which is par for the course at Lights Out. With that said, by the time we arrived at the finals you would think that all these stellar performances would translate into seeing those drivers in the finals. In fact, all but one of the previously stated drivers had been eliminated before the finals arrived. DJ McCain was the only record setter that found himself in the final round of eliminations. Wes, Rob, and Jason were all out earlier. 

Final Round Match-Ups were going to be worth the wait. Some of the biggest names in drag racing were facing off against each other. 

 

Radial vs. The World

Ken Quartuccio vs. Bryan Markiewicz

Winner: Ken Quartuccio

 

Pro275

Eric Dillard vs. Mo Hall

Winner: Mo Hall

 

Limited Drag Radial:

DJ McCain vs. Dallas Buchanan

Winner: Dallas Buchanan

 

X275

Frank Mewshaw vs. Eric Moore

Winner: Frank Mewshaw

 

Ultra Street:

Mike Freeman vs. Dave Fiscus

Winner: Dave Fiscus

 

DXP Street:

Michael Strickland vs. Eddie Ramirez

Winner: Michael Strickland

 

Limited 235:

Jason Riley vs. Bill Kubiac

Winner: Jason Riley

N/T Classes:

SB Nitrous N/T: JR Gray (Jason X)

Carolina NT 275: Triggerman (Backstabber)

Pro NT Truck: Lyle Barnett (Warpath)

ASAG NT: Mike Adams