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eDRAG RACE NHRA Winston Dra Race Series: Round 5 e John Myers (near lane) posted his slowest run in the final at National Trail Raceway, but still bested Paul Gast (far lane), whose clutch was hesitant to disengage. Myers, again, in-Ohio lJy Todd Veney COLUMBUS, OH, JUNE 11-13 efending NHRA Springnationals Champion John Myers, racing until recently in shadows cast by arch rival David Schultz and previouslywinless riders Ron Ayers and John Smith, backed up his 1992 Springnationals victory to become the first racer this year to win two NHRA events. "Now, I'm back to exactly where 1 want to be," said Myers, whose win, combined with Winston points earned three weeks earlier in his Mopar Parts Nationals rout, has afforded him a comfortable 962-point lead in the championship battle that seemed so wide open just three weeks ago, when four riders were within a few hundred points. Apparently victimized by freak breakage, inexplicable foul starts, and late reaction times at National Trail Raceway, in the farmland east of Columbus, Ohio, eight of the other nine NHRA top 10 riders were headed home after just two rounds. "Thsy kept telling me 1 couldn't win here - that no one was going to win more than one race this year - but everything's looking real good right now. We have the points lead, we've got some momentum after winning two races in a row, and the bike is running right," Myers said of the Star Racing Suzuki GSXR, tuned to perfection by owner /mechanic/part-time rider George Bryce. D 18 Myers made not merely the quickest run of tpe event, but the quickest of all four qualifying sessions and all four rounds of eliminations. His slowest run, a still-quick 7.83 in the final, was more than enough to handle a crippled Paul Gast, whose clutch refused to disengage after his pre-race "dry hop" burnout, making it appear for a few seconds that Myers would make a solo run for the title. "1 looked back over my shoulder and saw that he had a problem, and 1 was ready to shut off," Myers said. "I had my hand on the kill switch because 1 don't want to win on a single. 1 don't like hurrying to stage before the other guy can get refired." "I lost the clutch in the burnout," explained Gast, whose greatest moment in drag racing had come at Columbus in 1990 when he became one of few riders ever to have won even one NHRA National event. Just seven of 31 racers at the Springnationals had won once; only three had two or more titles. "1 had to readjust the clutch right there on the spot," Gast said, "and if 1 hadn't had an adjustable clutch stop on it, 1 wouldn't have been able to do even that. 1 knew it was going to kill my reaction time, but 1 had to try." Sure enough, Gast launched last with a tardy 0.129 reaction time, exactly a tenth of a second behind Myers' 0.029. "I saw yellow and let the clutch out like normal, but the bike just didn't move," Gast said. "It was a weird feeling." By that time Myers was long gone. Even when his bike refused to hit fifth gear on time, he still managed a 7.83 at just 163 mph. "Myers made a great run and deserved to win it," said Gast, who, to drive around Myers' holeshot, would have needed to tie the 7.73 track record. Myers established that mark in qualifying, breaking the 7.76 record Schultz established in 1991, when he won the race and, eventually, his third NHRA championship. . Schultz, whose Sunoco Suzuki was the only other machine in the 7.7s, qualified second behind Myers with a 7.74, but in Sunday's first round, he left the starting line one five-hundredth of a second too soon for an automatic disqualification, advancing Slick 50 rider Steve Johnson. Particularly infuriating for Schultz is that he was about a minute quicker on the run, 7.86/174 to 8.04/164. Translation: Almost any reaction time, no matter how slow, would have been quick enough to win. All he had to do to advance was not foul. "I haven't done that since 1 don't know when," Schultz said. "Looking at our videotape of the run, it appears that 1 rolled in (to the staging beams) threequarters of an inch too deep, and that's what made my reaction time too quick." "Gee, 1 really hated to see Schultz go out like that - and in the first' round," Myers joked. "Seriously, that's going to hurt him down the line. When you go out that early and the guy ahead of you goes all the way to win, it really kills you in the points." Like Schultz, Smith, Pro Stock's third-ranked rider, also invalidated a quicker, potentially winning first-round run by erring at the start - only he was too slow, not too quick. Smith hit a 7.921/168 against Lance Boyer's 7.962/167, but arrived at the finish line last by a scant six-thousandths of a second because of Boyer's 0.028-0.075 holeshot headstart. Gast, way down the rankings list in ninth place before the Columbus race, rocketed to fourth by being the only top 10 rider other than Myers to survive the second round. He shoved aside Hector Arana, Johnson, and Norman DeVine with a series of progressively quicker runs: 7.92/163, 7.89/164, and 7.86/173. Gast's problem was that Myers was quicker on his slowest run than he was on his best. Myers, the reigning NHRA champion, sped to a 7.81/165 against number 16 qualifier Gary Tonglet, who shut down, a 7.82/170 against Byron Hines' 7.92/168 in th.e second round, and a consistent 7.79/173 in the semifinals against upstart Wilbert Johnese. "We got all the way to the semifinals and it took the World Champion to beat us," said Johnese, obviously overjoyed at the best finish of his Pro Stock career. "Everything looks really good right now, " Myers said after collecting his 17th NHRA trophy, all since September 1989. Myers now is third on the careerwiillist, trailing only Schultz and alltimer Terry Vance, who went out on top at the 1988 Winston Finals; 10 months before Myers' p.o Stock career began. "Terry Vance is the one I'm shooting for now," Myers said. At his current pace, he'll be drag racing's all-time winningest racer in early 1994, less than five years after his first Pro Stock launch. Q Results NHRA WINSTON SERIES PRO STOCK POINTS STANDINGS (aft.. five of 11 ..ents): 1. John Myers (4600); 2. David Schultz (3638); 3. John Smith (3350); 4. Paul Cast (2798); 5. Ron Ayers (2782); 6. 8yron Hines (2590); 7. l.anc< Boyer (2568): 8. Keny Larkin (2402); 9. RU8ll Nyberg (2284); 10. Michael Phillips (2172).