Last weekend Titan Motorsports competed in Ennis Texas for the ADRL Battle of the Belts. We were in the #2 spot in points, and we matched up against the winner of the #7 and #8 points holder. Spiro Pappas (#8) won his first battle and was now our opponent Friday night in our first run. Spiro is one of only two cars in the “3 second club” in XTF, and we knew his team would be a handful. Both cars made great runs, but Pappas’4.01 @ 190 mph edged out our 4.02 @ 182 mph. It put an early end to our night which was disappointing for the whole team after working so hard to stay in the #2 points position all season. Spiro went on to win the Battle of the Belts form the #8 spot. Congrats.

The ADRL Battle for the Belts is counted toward the first race of the season, which directly follows. Our 4.02 run from Friday night now counted toward our qualifying for the first race of the season Saturday, so that left us in the #3 qualifying position going into the first round. Here we raced Tony Wilson and ran a solid 4.05 which was enough for the win and lane choice in the next round. In round 2 we faced Dan Millen. We knew we had to put together a strong run, and banged out a 4.01 @ 183.7 mph. It was good enough to advance to the next round, but we did not get the lane choice going in to the semi finals. We would be matched up against Spiro Pappas again in the semi finals and they were making great runs on Saturday as well. Spiro had some mechanical problems in the second round and no one knew if he would make it to the staging lanes. We waited as the Pappas team worked to fix their issues. At the last minute they pulled their car to the lanes and lined up for the race. Whatever they did, they did it right, because Pappas made a career best run of 3.92 @ 193 mph which was unmatched by us or anyone in XTF over the weekend. Chuck Ulsch did manage to beat Spiro Pappas on a hole-shot it the finals though. The elusive 3 second pass that we had hoped for slipped away from us again so we will have to wait to get that early in the 2010 season. The next ADRL race will take place March 12-13th 2010, at Houston Raceway Park, in Baytown Texas. Look for the Titan Team to be out in full force. We’ll see you at the races!