Drag Illustrated Issue 129, January / February 2018 | Page 98

THE
CHAMPIONS
ISSUE
NMRA
R
emarkable racing and re-
cords were all the rage for this
year’s NMRA series, which began
in March and boiled over at the
19th Annual Nitto NMRA All-
Ford World Finals, Sept. 28-Oct.
1 at Beech Bend Raceway in Kentucky.
That’s where the chase to the championship in
each of the very competitive categories concluded,
and among those claiming the crowns was VP
Racing Fuels Street Outlaw driver Manny Bug-
inga. He set the pace in qualifying with a 4.34 in
his turbocharged Mustang, and went on to line
up against Rich Bruder — who was driving Bug-
inga’s other Mustang with a ProCharger-packing
power plant — in the final. Bruder won with a
4.38 over Buginga, who was forced to lift to a
4.89, but by that point, Buginga had earned the
class championship with 230 points more than
Charlie Cooper. The multi-time champion and
“It’s an awesome
accomplishment
and well-deserved
for our team. We are
just so excited to be
sitting in the number
one seat again, even
though we have
such a big target
on our back now.”
Massachusetts-based driver, who was runner-up
at the event in Florida and won the events in
Ohio and Illinois, holds the current VP Racing
Fuels Street Outlaw elapsed time and top speed
records with a 4.33 and 177 mph.
“It was great, but it was a lot of hard work,”
Buginga says. “When we went to fire the car be-
fore the first round of qualifying on Friday night,
it didn’t sound right, so we did a leak-down and
found four dead cylinders, which was the result
of a fuel pump failure. So we hurried to put the
spare engine in, and got back to doing what we
do. The championship is very important to me,
my family and my team, but also important to us
is how, with my driving my car with a turbo and
Rich Bruder driving my other car with a blower,
we proved that the blower car could run as fast
as the turbo car.”
Alton Clements went into the event focused
on replacing the number 2 on his windshield
NHRA NOSTALGIA A/FUEL KIN BATES
98 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
Issue 129
MANNY BUGINGA