Words and Photos by David Hiler

Waking up on a cold snowy day in Western NY in April the last thing I thought I would be doing was going to cover a drag race, but here I am. A couple of days before, during a live feed on their page, Marc and Camrie Caruso of Caruso Family Racing came up with an idea of having a Pro vs Joe daily driver race for fun and charity, I messaged Marc about coming aboard to supply the coverage for E3xtreme and he loved the idea. Fast forward to Saturday morning, all drivers started showing up, and even though it was not your conventional race, the smile on all their faces was priceless.

The Pro racers consisted of Mike Janis, multiple NHRA Promod champion, Melanie Salemi driver of the PDRA Pro Boost car and also driver of their new car for Radial vs the World known as “Side Piece”, Matt Guenther driver of PDRA Pro Nitrous and Marc Caruso driver of the NHRA Promod car for Caruso Family Racing.

The joe’s we had were Camrie Caruso, daughter of Marc Caruso and driver of Top Dragster for Caruso Family Racing, Lucas Salemi driver and multiyear sled champion at NY International, Bob Bauer Jr driver of the K100 race team and Billy Leber, driver of multiple cars over the years with multiple national wins over the years. 

James Craft of Monday Morning Racer was the host for this event supplying all the video and also doing all the introductions for the racers and their daily driver cars they brought with them to race. Around 10:30am we were set and ready to go, James pulls all the racers together for the driver meeting setting the rules for the event and taking call outs to start before drawing to see who would race who, right off the bat, Camrie Caruso calls her father Marc Caruso out for the first race of the day, once the other racers picked their numbers we were off racing. Joe Caruso or better known as Papa Joe, father to Marc and Grandfather to Camrie, would be our starter bringing everyone up to the line and also supplying the arm drop for all the races. Several members of the NY International crew were on hand to help at the finish line and also supply video from top end view. 

First round we had Camrie racing her father Marc and in a tight race, Marc was able to pull off the win, for the 2nd race we had Matt Guenther facing off with Lucas Salemi and with a photo finish, they decided to have a re-run as they could not tell how won, our 3rd race found Bob Bauer Jr facing off against Melanie Salemi with the win going to Bob Bauer Jr and to finish off the first round Billy Leber was able to get around Mike Janis and take the win. With the re-run of Matt Guenther and Lucas Salemi, Lucas takes the win and going into the 2nd round, Marc Caruso is the last remaining pro left in the ladder.

Second round found Billy Leber going against Bob Bauer Jr with Billy Leber taking the win and the last remaining pro in the field would race Lucas Salemi with Lucas taking the win, going into the final round, we have no remaining Pro’s left, with Lucas Salemi facing off vs Billy Leber.

After some fun and crap talking between the final 2 racers, Papa Joe would line up the final 2 cars left and drop his arms to get it started, much to everyone’s surprise, both vehicles take off and both immediately stop just past the 60ft mark, the racers talked between themselves before starting the final round and decided to do a Chinese fire drill and see who could win in the other persons car, to this day and the thousands of races I have been to, this will be the first and final time I will ever get to experience this for a finals race, after everything was all done and said, Billy Leber was able to pull out the win in Lucas’s truck and was crowned the 1st ever Pro’s vs Joe’s champion.

I would like to give some special thanks for the Caruso family to allow me to come out and cover this event for them, with the times we have right now and the world at a standstill, something small like this put a smile on my face and I am sure made a lot of people smile after viewing it. James Craft did an amazing job hosting the event, introducing all the drivers for the camera and also giving run downs per round with each driver, Papa Joe for lining up all the cars and being the official starter for the races, all the staff that came out today to help, Wes Buck of Drag Illustrated was a sponsor and came on board with the Caruso family to help make all this happen and editing the footage from the race and making the great video and the biggest thank you to Vito Antonicelli and Mike Swinarski, the owners of NY International Raceway, without Vito and Mike stepping up and allowing this to happen at their track, this race might not have been able to happen.

As everyone stepped back for a minute and just laughed and told stories about today, this is what drag racing is all about, we had 8 racers come together in Western NY to throw a crazy idea together, have some fun and laughs, break up the normal we are seeing now in these tough times and just have fun, as a racing family from owners to spectators, we are all one, we all need to realize that sometimes and just step back and enjoy the times we have together as we never know what might happen in the future, with the times we have now and the lockdowns we are seeing with states, sometimes the small things in life are the ones you will remember the most.