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The latest update as of March 22, 2022

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2nd annual FUNNY CAR CHAOS CLASSIC starts in TWO DAYS!

Tomorrow morning the racers will arrive at the Texas Motorplex for a three-day extravaganza of speed. Starting with a full day of testing on Thursday, followed by two qualifying sessions on Friday, before finishing with the final qualifying session at noon on Saturday, followed by three rounds of eliminations on Saturday night. The second qualifying session on Friday and the last two rounds of eliminations on Saturday will be run under the lights, giving the spectators a tremendous show.

We knew that it was going to be difficult to top last year's inaugural event which saw 68 Funny Cars, and more than a dozen Fuel Altereds in competition, but this year's entry list is almost as long. The latest numbers as of Tuesday March 22 at 11:00 AM PDT shows 57 confirmed FC entries, plus two "Mystery" cars, and 14 Fuel Altereds from the Outlaw Fuel Altered Association. This year's edition doesn't have quite the "star" power of last year's race, but the lineup is still mighty impressive with at least 17 blown fuel floppers and seven NHRA Top Alcohol cars running.

As was the case at last year's event, there will be four 8-car fields, with a total guaranteed payout of $60,000. Of that total, $10,000 goes to the winner of the "A" field and there's an additional bonus of $1500 for the winner of a "Fabulous Four Shootout" event-within-an-event.

Late UPDATE concerning the FUNNY CAR CHAOS CLASSIC

We just read the news about what might be one of the "mystery" cars on the pre-entry list for this week's Chaos Classic at the Texas Motorplex. And this one came absolutely out of nowhere. The team concerned has been working on their "project" flopper over the winter and today it was unveiled via a story on the Randy Meyer Racing website.

This could be quite a story, especially in light of the presumed absence of a return appearance by the Del & Chuck Worsham "Big Show" Funny Car team. They didn't win last year's event, but came in runner-up and absolutely obliterated the FCC records with a mind-bending 3.196 - 275.57 performance in the semi-final round of the "A" field. Aside from the two-car (Ray Martin drove a lower powered version) Worhsam team, NHRA regular Terry Haddock and occasional competitor Todd Simpson, among others competed. In all, there were nearly a dozen twin-mag blown fuel cars at the first Chaos Classic race.

It's been a long time since NHRA had an A/Funny Car class for injected nitro-burning entries, but the idea has been floating around in one form or another for quite a while since the class was discontinued when NHRA turned Pro Comp into sepearate Alcohol Dragster and Funny Car categories in 1980. The last racer to try fielding an A/FC was Scott Weis, who dabbled with the idea in IHRA competition before it was banned by that sanctioning body. He countered that setback by bolting on a blower and running in Top Fuel until that became too expensive for anyone but a heavily sponsored racer.

The Randy Meyer - Julie Nataas experiment will be very interesting to watch, to see if Randy can transfer his tuning talents from a long skinny car to a short wide one. Similarly, Julie will have to very quickly learn how to handle a short-wheelbase front-engined car. To my knowledge, she has never driven a car in this class, unless she made some super-secret test laps at the Frank Hawley school over the winter to earn her crossover license. Two factors in her favour for this weekend are that the event is at the Texas Motorplex, a very well-prepped track, and Funny Car Chaos only runs an 1/8-th mile racing distance. Checking on the results from the recently completed Gatornationals, the best run made by a Top Alcohol Funny Car to the 1/8-th mile was 3.56 - 215 mph. Not exactly a cruise down main street and something for Meyer & Nataas to aim for.

Our photographer, BIG Bob Snyder, will be catching a 5:05 a.m. flight from Phoenix to Dallas tomorrow morning and will be at the track in the early afternoon. Stay tuned for some pics from the "move-in" day (tomorrow) on Thursday morning. Then it's three more days of testing and racing until late Saturday night. We'll be posting pictures and results as they come in over the weekend. As always: STAY TUNED!

Julie Nataas with her A/FC --- A/FC engine

Pictures copyright 2022 by Randy Meyer Racing