This past weekend, Titan Motorsports raced at National Trail Raceway in Columbus Ohio, for the ADRL Ohio Drags III.

We had spent the last week and a half prior to the event at Rick Jones Racecars, making sure the car was ready to go for this race after the wreck we had in St. Louis two weeks prior. The car left Rick Jones’ on Wednesday, August 19, and we were unable to test the car before Ohio. We had to make some adjustments to the car after being repaired so we were unsure how the car would react.

ADRL has recently eliminated the normal Friday test session so the first run since the repairs would be the 1st qualifying round of the Columbus race. The car left the starting line fine but started to drift towards the left around 60 ft out. In the second round of qualifying, we had better results. Despite the car snaking around between the center line and the wall, the car still made a solid 4.09 run at 179.5 mph. This put us in the #1 qualifier position for a while until Chuck Ulsch took it away in round 3. We did however manage to maintain the #2 qualifier position. We once again had another solid qualifying effort. That makes 4 races in a row we have qualified in the #2 spot.

In the first round of eliminations we were able to overtake our opponent, even though we had a less than stellar run. The car had begun to slide around in the middle of the racetrack and driver Gary White had to lift off of the throttle a few times to keep the car under control. The car slowed to a 4.5 second run, but the car in the other lane had problems as well, and we were able to advance.

In the second round we were matched against the #4 points position holder Todd Moyer. “This was one of the wildest runs this year” claimed Titan owner Nero Deliwala. Once again, at about 60 feet out, the car moved out to the left. We had a .990 second 60 ft, but the car had drifted so far left that Gary had to lift off of the throttle to save the car from going over the center line. Moyer also had problems and lifted the front tires 4 feet off the ground halfway down the track. The Scion ran a 4.54 second pass, but was edged out by Moyer’s quick recovery and 4.52 second pass. In the shuffle, Moyer damaged the engine when the rear tires unloaded from the wheelie. In a show of great sportsmanship, despite being handed a defeat, team Titan, along with Grahm from team Pappas chipped in to help Moyer get ready for the next round.

We will be testing before Rockingham to make sure the car is 100%. As the past races have shown, the ADRL XTF class is immensely competitive and anything less than 100% just won’t do. Chuck Ulsch proved this by once again breaking another record into the 3’s, running a 3.982! What may be even more impressive is the fact that he backed up his run with a 3.99 at 201.28 mph! Not only was Ulsch the first in the 3’s on a 10.5” tire, but now the first to break the 200 mph barrier. Many of the Pro Extreme guys are not even hitting that mph in the 1/8th. We love the level that the XTF class has risen to and hope to continue our success in the class as well. We’ll see you at the races!