Musclepalooza IX: The F.A.S.T. war heats up!

If you weren’t one of the hundreds of people who joined us for Musclepalooza IX over the weekend, you missed one heckuva show. Besides the show cars, besides the wheels-up racing (both of which we’ll give you a glimpse of in later posts), you also missed a battle royale in the F.A.S.T. ranks as the 10.53-second e.t. record fell not once, but twice, and two prominent F.A.S.T. racers vied for the $1,000 bounty we offered.

First up, Terry Pennington in his ‘69 L88 Corvette had thrown down a couple mid-10.40-second runs during practice on Saturday, so we eagerly anticipated his first run of the day…

…in which he ran 10.47 seconds at 132.01 MPH, qualifying him for that check. But the gang had plenty of racing ahead of them and some strong contenders for that record.

Pennington then faced Dave Dudek in his 1969 Hemi Road Runner, the strongest of those contenders…

…and narrowly edged out a 10.54-to-10.70-something win.

A later run in the day repeated Pennington’s dominance, at another 10.54 seconds, this time a bit slower at 130.89 MPH.

Dudek, meanwhile, retreated back into the 11s continued to clock off 10.70-something-second runs as he progressed through the rounds and wound up in the final round pitted against Pennington. Dudek told us later that he knew this would be his final shot at the record for the weekend, so he was going to give the race all he could get from his Hemi. Both were off to a good launch…

…but then Pennington at mid-track somehow lifted one of the front wheels entirely off the ground. He kept the Corvette straight and in the race, but Dudek, foot to the floor, took advantage of the hesitation and sneaked in under Pennington’s best time of the day, running a 10.46 at 131.51 MPH versus Pennington’s 10.67 at 130.25 MPH, still a respectable time.

Look for more coverage of Musclepalooza IX and the F.A.S.T. racing in the August 2009 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.

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