Today the Blue Oval action is firing on all cylinders at Beech Bend Raceway in Bowling Green, Kentucky. On the 1,320 the qualifying action gives way to eliminations in the heads-up and index categories. Meanwhile, the street machines complete a 30-mile cruise and three back-to-back laps to determine winners in a range of elapsed time categories in the Circle D Specialties True Street and TREMEC All-Female True Street classes.

On the oval track, the action is non-stop as the corner carvers in the Hurst/Grassroots Motorsports Autocross, MSD/Pro-Touring.com 3S Challenge, and Scoggin Dickey Parts Center/Mustang Hub Magazine Grand Champion share the stage with the tire slayers in the Ford Performance/RTR Drift Exhibition. The latter exhibition will see Professional Fun Havers Vaughn Gittin Jr. and Chelsea Denofa get slideways in their Mustang RTR demonstrators.

That’s not the only tire slaying to be had, however, as the TorqStorm SuperChargers/Motor Life Burnout Challenge will let the crowd decide who is the most devastating tire destroyer. And, if you can’t get enough of smoking rubber, there will be more burnouts as the Retro Meet closes out the festivities with a celebration of the ’80s and early ’90s.

Stay tuned to this page and our social media for updates throughout the weekend from the Whipple Superchargers NMRA World Finals Presented by Scott's Trailer Sales Featuring the Holley Intergalactic Ford Festival.


Congratulations are in order as the Queen of Coyote Stock, Becky Moldenhauer, got her first official round win this evening with her 1994 Ford Mustang “Sally” and will be moving on to race on Sunday! Although it wasn’t quite the way she wanted – she was reinstated when her opponent was DQed on a technicality – a win is a win, and this one is surely the first of many more to come for the persevering competitor. “In a heads-up class, it’s anyone’s race until the end. I experienced a lot of firsts this weekend but this moment was the most bittersweet, especially for it being only my seventh sanctioned NMRA event,” said Becky, who has been racing with the NMRA since 2021 and had struggled with a somewhat stressful weekend including rear end trouble, broken links, and more. But, always the good sportswoman, she stayed positive and even worked overtime helping other racers in need as well. Becky has a big cheering section showering her with love and support, including her husband and ARP Open Comp racer Adam Moldenhauer (who also got a win in the first eliminations round earlier today), her BHP Racing team, Hanlon Motorsports, and her family of friends in the NMRA.


Masses of Mercury Capris descended upon Beech Bend Raceway Park this weekend for the 27th annual North American meet of the Capri Club North America, the Capri Swarm 2023. The premiere event of the year enabled enthusiasts to enjoy letting their cars run all-out down the dragstrip as well as perusing the CCNA Capri Car Show and so much more in celebration of these eye-catching machines which were imported to the United States from Germany and England between 1970-1977.


Kevin Sanders has been having a tough weekend so far in ARP Open Comp. The Boogey Lights party man from Kentucky’s usual neon green Mustang blew its engine early on, so he switched to his Frank-N-Stang gray Fox body instead in hopes of continuing. That hasn’t gone according to plan, either, as he had issues in the burnout box during qualifying and had to head idle it back to the pits to make repairs. As a result, Sanders ranked thirty-fifth of the thirty-eight drivers and is hoping that Fate smiles upon him with an easier outing as eliminations begin this evening.


Sitting in the number one qualifier’s spot (and setting the top speed) in VP Racing Madditives Renegade is nothing new for Shawn Pevlor and the KBX Performance crew, as the group is known for leading the field in the small tire radial world. Pevlor put his 1990 Mustang into the number one position when he ran 4.538 at 159.59 mph to lead the field by five-tenths of a second and did the deed with 460 cubic inches of nitrous-assisted Bennett Racing Engines-built small block Ford power under the hood. He will go into this evening’s eliminations with a strong advantage that he hopes will translate into a win for the weekend.


Over in the Coyote Stock camp of craziness this morning, Randy Soper was busy slapping a new set of brakes on his 2004 Mustang Mach 1 as his previous set had been locking up and scrubbing speed during his qualifying runs. Also chasing some quicker 60’ and 330’ numbers, Soper stepped up with a transmission swap as well to be on the safe side. The Michigan-based racer ended up thirteenth in the field of seventeen entries with a best pass of 9.871 at 135.96 mph, but is hoping he’ll see an improvement when it counts most during this evening’s first elimination round.


Alan Felts, the local hometown hero and 2021 NMCA Street Outlaw season champion, is on the property this weekend making exhibition runs with his wicked X275 1988 Ford Mustang GT. Felts had been running in the 4.40-second zone at no prep events lately with his Jessie’s Garage-prepped and turbocharged Fox body but came out this weekend run on NMRA’s prepared surface and went 4.28 at 172 mph on his first pass yesterday, fresh off the trailer after not having been in the car for three months. The numbers speak to Felts's and multi-time champion Jessie Coulter’s hard work and expertise with the car.


The UPR Products car show brought out a bevy of beautiful Fords to Beech Bend Raceway this weekend at Whipple Superchargers NMRA World Finals Presented by Scott’s Trailer Sales, LLC Featuring the Holley Intergalactic Ford Festival. For the first time, the show extended into the Beech Bend theme park, which provided a great backdrop.

Last night ARP Open Comp racer David Woodside chose the starting line at Beech Bend Raceway as the stage to propose to Crystal Barnes — and she said yes! The pair met at a drag strip, so Woodside hatched a plan to fake an issue with his car during the second round of qualifying. Barnes was set to film the pass, but he surprised her by jumping out and popping the question, which came as a complete surprise. It all went smoothly and Woodside hopped in the car and clicked off a .001 reaction time to improve his qualifying position. There is no wedding date set yet, so he is focused on breaking into the Top 10 in the season points standings this weekend.

On Friday, Sgt. Jeff Bloch aka “Speedycop” brought out his Spirit of St.Louis-inspired “Spirit of LeMons” creation and caught the attention of practically everyone on the property at Beech Bend Raceway Park. A law enforcement officer since 1996, Bloch has built many unique machines over the years but started on this particular project more than a decade ago as an entry for the 24 Hours of LeMons road race. He started with a 1987 Toyota van chassis – intentionally chosen for its mid-engine, rear wheel drive, narrow track, short wheelbase, and the fact that it uses torsion bars in the front instead of strut towers – then lucked out by finding a jettisoned 1956 Cessna 310 fuselage at an airfield just five minutes from his home. The aluminum aircraft had been sitting for forty years, but Bloch gave it a new life and recently upgraded the plane-car to utilize a modern 2.3-liter Ford EcoBoost engine and 6R80 automatic transmission. Ford Performance supplied componentry to make the electronics cooperate, and Bloch will soon be upgrading to a larger turbo and bigger throttle body as well. Bloch ran two 13.1-second quarter mile passes during yesterday’s Circle D Specialties True Street test sessions and can regularly be found carving corners on the Tail of the Dragon in his home state of Tennessee.
 

Thanks to House of Kolor, Larsen Motorsports’ famed jet cars are on the property this weekend and are wowing fans with their jaw-dropping, flame-throwing spectacles as they rocket down Beech Bend Raceway Park’s track in a blaze of side-by-side action. In addition to making more exhibition runs throughout the day, Elaine Larsen and her team will be signing autographs and taking photos all day today in their pit area.
 

Running 8.60-second elapsed times in the quarter-mile with a street car is no joke, but SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race competitor Paul Sienkiewicz knows it’s just as important to be able to stop quickly, too. Working out of the Vector Motorsports camp, which his brother, Dan Sienkiewicz, co-owns with two-time NMRA Limited Street champion Samantha Moore, Sienkiewicz upgraded his 1998 Ford Mustang Cobra’s brakes to a new set of Aerospace Components stoppers and even saved 25 pounds in the process. A new BigStuff digital dash to compliment the Gen4 Pro Xtreme EFI was also recently added, and Sienkiewicz went 8.619 at 161.88 mph on his second qualifying run yesterday to sit provisionally in third as we head into the final session today with eliminations scheduled for this evening.

Chris Rusch is running the new 10.10 Street Bandit along with Super Stang in Bowling Green.


Greg Creamer aired out his Coyote Stock LX and still ran 9.98 at 135 mph. 
 

Don’t shoot the messenger, but Ford-powered machines can compete in the Scoggin Dickey Parts Center/Mustang Hub Magazine Grand Champion class, and Jared Pink of Gainesville, Georgia, is pushing the envelope with a Gen 2 Coyote-swapped 1970 Duster in the Vintage subcategory. That isn’t the whole story, however. He competed in the same category at Holley’s LS Fest with an LS swap and MoParty with a Gen III Hemi swap. Before this event, he also swapped out the leaf-spring suspension in favor of a four-link. You can check out the swaps on his You can follow the swaps on his Questionable Garage YouTube channel.

On the Nitto/RTR Off-Road Experience course, Broncos, Hoopties, and Raptors are kicking up sand and catching some air. This afternoon the TORR Raptor Timed Shoot tests man and machine to see who can traverse the course the quickest.

Tony Osman from Toledo, Ohio, put his 2016 Mustang drift machine to the test on the chassis dyno as part of the Indy Power Products/Ford Muscle Dyno Challenge. Running a Lund Racing ghost-cam tune, long-tube headers, a ported intake, and E85, it put down 432 horsepower to the tire at the Whipple Superchargers NMRA World Finals Presented by Scott's Trailer Sales Featuring the Holley Intergalactic Ford Festival. You can follow the swaps on his Questionable Garage YouTube channel.

A pack of Ford-powered drifters is putting on a tire-slaying show inside the oval track as part of the Ford Performance/RTR Drift Exhibition. Today, Vaughn Gittin Jr. and Chelsea Denofa are joining the party. 
 

Here’s how the action goes down today at the Whipple Superchargers NMRA World Finals Presented by Scott's Trailer Sales Featuring the Holley Intergalactic Ford Festival.