The second annual Battle of the States race went down this weekend in Memphis Tennessee at Memphis International Raceway. Tyler Crossnoe and Mark Samples worked tirelessly the past few months securing sponsors for this race. Tyler Crossnoe is young man of 23 who is already known for some of the best track prep currently out! Tyler and his main man Jason Pooch Rueckert work tirelessly whenever they prep a track for radials and Memphis was nothing different. The weather seemed to be an uphill fight all weekend with rain early on in the weekend the on Saturday turning into snow! Even with those stacked against the Outlaw Street Car Reunion Tyler Crossnoe continued drying the track and making sure all the heavy hitters in classes like Pro Drag Radial, X275, Outlaw 275, Ultra Street, MX 235 and even the index classes had a safe surface to race on.

This year Tyler and the gang at Southern Speed Promotions asked that Street Outlaws Big Chief Just Shearer and Murder Nova Shawn Ellington come out and race at the Outlaw Street Car Reunion II. If you thought maybe they would be running some exhibition passes you would be wrong! Both racers entered Outlaw 275! The show has definitely not got to there heads as they are some of the nicest guys and were signing autographs for fans and posing individually with everyone that asked for a picture! Both Murder Nova and Big Chief are new to radials as they have been running big tires for a while but in the short amount of time they have come a long ways in each of there respective cars. Murder Nova ran 4.40 in testing and Big Chief was able to get a handle on them as the weekend moved along. Coming from the street as both Murder Nova and Big Chief have been doing on Street Outlaw the tv show the track prep isn’t always as sticky as a Tyler Crossnoe prepped radial track! As you can see Justin Shearer’s wife Alicia Shearer literally losing her shoes and socks to the sticky LC7 traction!

Race Recap

Pro Drag Radial

Pro Drag Radial a class that can normally see very low 4 second passes on the Mickey Thompson 315 radials saw 34 cars on the property competing for the 3 second barrier! Notable racers that are right at that 4 second mark were Jason Michalak in the blown Corvette, Brad Edwards in his Team Z Motorsports stock suspension Mustang, Keith Berry in his small block twin turbo Corvette and Chris Daniel in his 02 Firebird who has been making quick progress running quicker every time he brings the car out. Among others vying for the coveted Battle of the States crown this year! Qualifying saw some awesome action as Jason Michalak ran a 3.979 at 194 mph to be the first car in the 3’s in 2015! Although not to be outdone Keith Berry who has been testing like crazy ran a 4.06. A big congratulations to Mark Woodruff who I believe ran his first 4.0 pass in competition with a 4.08! The rest of the field was in the teens and twenties and slower. Check out the qualifying list below.

Eliminations

In eliminations many of the top racers decide to put some soft tuneups to get down the track and move along. This was the case first round when Brad Edwards had Cameron Johnson in the nitrous assisted Mustang formerly owned by Puddin’! Brad’s soft 4.31 took out Cameron’s 4.70. #1 qualifier Jason Michalak had Barry Mitchell first round who is no slouch himself having previously run 4.20’s in his nitrous assisted Outlaw 275 Mustang. Barry ran a very stout 4.38 but when the guy in the other lane runs a 4.07 it is very hard to beat that!

Other notable action in the first round was both Chris Daniel fouling away the win against the #28 qualifier Chad Henderson and Keith Berry striking the tires at the hit to take the loss to Mel Collier. Check out the run sheets below to see the eliminations through the semi finals.

As finals were called to the lanes in all heads up categories it was decided to cancel the race and all pots would be split. It was a tough choice but the forecast for rain through the rest of night was to much. Missouri and Texas split the Battle of the States pot.

X275

X275 had 69 tech cards filled out for the Battle of the States: Outlaw Street Car Reunion II. John Sears the man who put together X275 a bunch of years back has seen this class continue to grow even as its progressed quicker and quicker each year.

Qualifying saw those 69 cars all trying to get into the 32 car field. Team North racers Rich Bruder and Ron Rhodes were on the top of the qualifying list with Rich Bruder running a 4.46 and Ron Rhodes running a 4.49 to become the first small block nitrous car in x275 to run in the 4.40’s!

Other notables on the qualifying list was Clint Downs in his Procharged F1X Nova run a 4.53, Darren Hilterbran run a 4.56 in his small block ford nitrous Mustang, Jeff Colletta in his BBC Nitrous Mustang run a 4.56, Jared Johnston and Shane Fisher ran 4.57’s out of the KBX camp, Dean Marinis ran a 4.57 in his BBC Nitrous Mustang and Sean Lyon ran a 4.59 to round out the top 10 in qualifying.

Eliminations saw defending Battle of the States: Outlaw Street Car Reunion II winner Rich Bruder take on everyone to get to the finals against Kit Luong who qualified #18! Kit is another racer out of the KBX camp. Kit had a tough field to wade through lining against Cameron Johnson first round, Ron Rhodes second round, Eric Stubbe third round and Jared Johnston in the semi finals. Rich Bruder went up against Jon Thomas first round, Shawn Ayers second round, Sean Lyon third round round and Darren Hilterbran in the semi finals. Both racers had a tough field to get to the finals. Although the finals didn’t happen it would have been a great race between the two turbo combos. New Jersey and Oklahoma split the Battle of the States pot.

Outlaw 275

Outlaw 275 has been growing by leaps and bounds as this class allows pretty much anything combo wise but it needs to be the Mickey Thompson 275 radial tire. The man they call the most feared man on 275’s is David Pearson or otherwise known as Lil Evil. Pearson has been as quick as 4.11 in testing but he ended up running a 4.12 in Memphis although he ran that in PDR but he was Outlaw 275 legal.

Qualifying in Outlaw 275 saw Tim Kinkaid take the top spot with a 4.19 and #2 Marty Stinnett #2 with a 4.30, Norman Chang ran a 4.31, Alex Shows 4.32 and Barry Mitchell a 4.34.

Eliminations saw Chris Tuten and Marty Stinnett mow through the field to eventually get to the final round.

Chris Tuten only qualified in the #17 spot as he was basically showing up to Memphis with zero data after making a few changes. As the round went on Chris definitely figured out what the track wanted as he ran a 4.29! Marty Stinnett qualified #2 and basically did what he needed to do each round a ran very consistent to make it to the final round.

Ultra Street

Ultra Street is another class formed by John Sears which was intended as a class for racers to get there feet wet to move up to some of the faster classes. Sometimes though it doesn’t work out that way and in this case it was a good thing as Ultra is rapidly becoming the class everyone has there eyes set on and many heavy hitters build up a car just for this class!

Qualifying only saw 18 cars show up after the early season rule change but don’t be surprised as the season moves along you start to see upwards of 20 at even the smaller races.

In the ever heated debate about power adders in Ultra Street we saw Mark Rogers take a mod motor turbo combo to hold the #1 spot with a 4.89, Butch Kemp in the N/A combo #2 with a 4.92, Joel Greathouse in another turbo combo out the KBX camp #3, Jason McGrane in the #4 spot with his BB combo ran a 5.00 and Kenny Rodrigues ran a 5.02 to round out the top 5. The diversity at the top in qualifying is pretty awesome to see!

In eliminations we saw Butch Kemp in the N/A Mustang run the most consistent to end against Shawn Pevlor who was was seeing double duty racing in Ultra and MX235 only qualified in the #12 spot on Ultra but ran each round and was able to get the chance to run Butch Kemp. This would have been a pretty sweet matchup as Pevlor was very dominant last year and Kemp so far this year has been dominant.

MX 235

MX 235 is a class that is very popular in the Midwest, it was the first time covered here at GDR and I will tell you the times some of these guys are running a 235 tire is insane and we love it! Qualifying saw Pevlor run a 5.00 to hold the number one spot from Danny Tellman’s 5.01, Bryan Dunlaps 5.03, Marcus Wooden 5.04 and Chris Fenn’s 5.07.

In eliminations the only racer to qualify in the top 5 to make it to the semi finals was Danny Tellman although Shawn Pevlor ended up running a 4.92 in the first round to hold the low ET for all of MX 235. The finals would have seen Brian Tuten in his SB Turbo combo and Donnie Branham in his SB Nitrous combo meeting for the chance to win MX 235.

Qualifying

Although none of the final rounds were able to finish out this past weekend at Memphis International Raceway at the Southern Speed Promotions Battle of the States: Outlaw Street Car Reunion II was a killer weekend where we were able to see some crazy weather, beautiful cars and record setting elapsed times! Hats off to Tyler Crossnoe and Mark Samples for all the hard work leading up to and during this event!

Gonedragracing.com would like to give a special shoutout to Barry Lutz in his beautiful Chevelle who won the Tim Crossnoe Memorial Best Appearing Award. Tim Crossnoe is Tyler’s father who battled cancer and passed away.

Be sure to make it out for the 2016 Battle of the States as if this year was any indication of what to expect then next year will be off the hook!
The entire gallery of pictures can be found on BRPhotogrpahy.com