Drag Illustrated Issue 139, December 2018 | Page 26

Dirt
have a break somewhere along the way and that
was mine,” Merick acknowledged.
In the semifinals, Merick faced off against the
roots-blown, 2015 Corvette of Baker and after
both drivers posted low .020 lights, Merick won
with a 3.68 to Baker’s 3.72 in the opposite lane.
That pass also maintained lane choice for Merick,
which he’d enjoyed all day and put him back in the
left lane against Dillard, who beat Aaron Wells,
Aleshire and Todd Martin with a 3.69 in the semis.
The final round saw Merick leave with a slight
advantage and never look back, running 3.67 sec-
onds at just over 206 mph to beat a fading 3.73 at
197 mph by Dillard in his Georgia-based Camaro.
“We had a boost leak and were down a couple of
pounds of boost. That’s why our mile an hour was
down a little for the final,” Dillard explained. “But
we had fun. Really tight qualifying and everybody
had to get up on the wheel when we were racing
each other. It was a very, very competitive race.”
Merick said he knew he’d left with a good light
and once his car carried its front wheels to half-
track, he felt very confident the rest of the ride.
“I know when it sets the wheels down if they
ain’t in front of me by then it’s pretty much over.
I did look over a couple times and didn’t see any-
thing, so I just watched and waited for my win
light to come on,” he said. “And it did.”
After coasting through the long Motorplex
shutdown area to a stop beside the track, Merick
sat in the darkness for several minutes, waiting on
his crew to arrive and contemplating the moment.
He admitted to initially thinking of the sizable
purse he’d just earned.
“After I hit the chutes and shut down I did think
to myself, ‘You just won 50-thousand dollars!’
There was a little talk beforehand about splitting
money, but I’ve never split a purse in my life. If
you’re going to split the money, you might as well
just load up and go back to the house,” he stated.
“I wouldn’t split the money if I had the rods hang-
ing out of it. Really what I would have liked to do
was put all the money, winner and runner-up, in
one purse and race for it all.
“But more important than the 50 thousand dol-
lars was to win the race,” Merick quickly added.
“I think they’ll have plenty more of these Elite
races. Keith (Haney) is a hell of a promoter and
he’ll keep it going and tweak on it, make it better,
but this was the first one ever and there’s only
one first winner.”
Merick said his thoughts also turned to Tom
Tutterow, ailing father of his engine builder
and fellow racer Todd Tutterow, who left the
track early Saturday morning and flew home to
North Carolina.
“You know, right before the quarterfinals we
found out that Tom was not doing good, so I went
and borrowed a marker and wrote his name on
the back glass of my car. Right when I wrote that
on there, I knew I was gonna’ win the race,” he
said. “We did find out that Todd did get home in
time. He texted me the next morning and said
that his dad had passed. But he did get to have
one last talk and one last laugh with him. That
was very important to all of us and to Todd. Kind
of a bittersweet deal.”
Also winning on Saturday night at the Motor-
plex was MWPMS regular Ron Muenks, who
steered his nitrous-fed ‘68 Camaro to a final-
round win over Jerry Hunt and his blown ‘67
Camaro in the $15,000 Second-Chance Pro Mod
race presented by Jerry Bickel Race Cars. Addi-
tionally, in the final for Summit Racing Equip-
ment Top Sportsman, Oklahoma’s Kirk Piepke
and his nitrous-breathing, late-model GTO de-
feated the blown 2018 Camaro of Darian Boesch.
“I think the Elite 16 was a success and we
achieved everything we were hoping for, es-
pecially for a first-time deal,” Texas Motorplex
General Manager Andy Carter concluded. “Of
course, there’s always improvements to be made
and hopefully we can get a little more help, spon-
sor wise, to make things bigger and better for
everyone next year.”
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Issue 139
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