Demke Wins Tulsa Debut, Moves on to Denver's 'Thunder on the Mountain'

Courtesy of NVW Motorsports Promotion

MORRISON, CO (June 15, 2016) – After a physically demanding weekend in the Tulsa heat, Chris Demke and the Peen Rite/Boost Performance Products Top Alcohol Dragster team were able to add the first event win to their 2016 scorecard last weekend. Demke seeks to pick up another NHRA regional event Wally this weekend as the Maddern Racing team competes at Denver’s Bandimere Speedway for the first time in a decade.

Driving the team’s experimental “X-car”, Demke qualified number two at the NHRA Central Region event at Tulsa Raceway Park with a 5.330 elapsed time at 267 mph.

“We had the X-car out for its second race of the year and after two qualifying sessions on Friday, I thought we weren’t pushing that car as hard as it’s capable of running. While consistent, it wasn’t showing what we are capable of. Saturday morning, [car chief] Kevin Watson, [team owner] Jerry Maddern and I sat down and talked about where we were with things and formulated a strategy for the day and what tactics we would use to implement that strategy.”

A strong 5.346 at 268 mph was enough to defeat former Top Fuel driver Spencer Massey’s tire-smoking run in the steamy first round. Demke and his team knew it would take quicker performances to compete with the nitro-injected A/Fuel cars as the temperatures dropped for the later rounds.

“Going into second round, I was nervous about implementing the tactics we had discussed earlier, as it was time to get more aggressive with the tune-up. Kevin Watson stuck by his guns and the car responded by stepping up a good half a tenth,” Demke said of his 5.281 defeat of Mike Manners. “That gave us what we needed to win the second round. We turned the knobs a little harder going into the final and just squeezed one out by seven thousandths of a second against Gord Gingles, a very tough competitor.”

The Maddern Racing team has raced in a wide range of conditions, but Tulsa’s summer heat tried its hardest to handicap the 2014 world champions.

“The race in Tulsa was extremely challenging,” Demke stressed. “Not just from the perspective that we’d never been there before, but the temperatures, the heat index, the humidity, and the water grains were all in the ‘red zone’ on the meter. It brought the team to its knees, but the entire team stepped up to the challenge and persevered to do what it took to win the Wally.”

The Tulsa win was the team’s first under the tuning guidance of longtime car chief Kevin Watson, who took over the main tuning duties earlier this season.

“I have to hand it to Kevin. I can’t even begin to describe how proud I am and what a great job the guy is doing. It’s giving me great confidence in driving the car, too,” Demke noted.

Moving forward to this weekend’s “Thunder on the Mountain” NHRA Central Region event at Bandimere Speedway, the Peen Rite/Boost Performance Products team will face even more challenging conditions. The density altitude is expected to approach 10,000 feet. Furthermore, the team’s Denver data log’s most recent entry is from 2006.

“The biggest challenge is we haven’t raced there in 10 years. A lot has changed since then. Even though I have great records from 10 years ago, I don’t know that that information is still applicable. We’re just going to have to make some educated guesses on where to start with some of those tuning variables. We’re very capable and I have faith that we can at least make a decent showing,”

Included in that data log, though, is the 1999 NHRA national event at Denver, when Maddern Racing qualified number one, won the race, and set low et and the track record with Darren Nicholson driving. Demke realizes a much lower et will be required to even qualify this weekend.

“I think that track record run was like a 5.69. Since then, I think a good et there is in the 5.4-second range. Supercharger and cylinder head technologies have advanced significantly and we’re excited to see what our current pieces are capable of doing up on the mountain."

Top Alcohol Dragster qualifying at the Bandimere Speedway “Thunder on the Mountain” race kicks off with one session at 4 PM on Friday, June 17. Two more sessions are scheduled for 3:30 PM and 6:30 PM on Saturday, June 18. Eliminations kick off at noon on Sunday.

Maddern Racing is a family-owned and operated NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster team based in Southern California. The team's Chris Demke-driven Peen Rite/Boost Performance Products blown alcohol dragster is owned by Jerry Maddern and crewed by Kevin Watson, Aimee Maddern, Mike Demke, Greg Rice, Robert Hadaller, and Ryan Miller. For more information on Chris Demke and Maddern Racing, please visit www.Facebook.com/MaddernRacing.

Maddern Racing receives support from the following companies: Peen Rite Inc., Boost Performance Products, B-G Detection, Afco, LA X-Ray, Hoosier Racing Tires, Motorsports Unlimited, VP Racing Fuels, and Morningwood Energy Drink.

Hunter Reaches First Final at Denver Regional

Courtesy of NVW Motorsports Promotion
 Photo courtesy of David Smith/PSA

MORRISON, Colo. (June 19, 2013) – Second-year Top Alcohol Dragster driver Greg Hunter reached his first final round in TAD competition last weekend at Bandimere Speedway’s Thunder on the Mountain regional event. He entered eliminations from a career-best No. 2 qualifying position before falling to reigning national champion Jim Whiteley in the finals.

“It felt great to qualify well and win a couple rounds. It’s been a dream of mine since I started racing to race Top Alcohol and make it to a final round. Obviously you want to win, but the first step is making it to the final. Qualifying No.2 was great too. We would’ve liked to have had a better performance, but we were happy with the consistency,” Greg said.

Hunter held onto the number two spot throughout qualifying, running 5.712, 5.706, and 5.714 respectively. Greg took out Geno Tumbarello first round before a close race with Edwin Schmeeckle in the semifinals. Just sixteen inches separated the two at the finish line stripe – 5.702 to Schmeeckle’s 5.711. That set up a final round pairing with 2012 TAD National champ Jim Whiteley, who ran just a tick quicker in the previous round, 5.691. Hunter and his Kenny Gilmour-owned ExactAir Compliance Systems teamed maintained optimism as they prepared to face Whiteley.

“The way I look at it, the final round is like Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals; anything can happen. Jim ran very well in qualifying but his run in the semifinals was right where we were. We wanted to be there, ready to strike in case he encountered problems in the finals,” claimed the former TAFC driver.

Greg’s almost-perfect 0.008 reaction time wasn’t enough to take him to his first win. Whiteley unloaded his quickest run of eliminations, 5.47 to Hunter’s 5.71.

Though he was unable to walk away with the win, Greg was pleased with his time at the mile-high raceway.

“We had a great time at Denver. We hung out with the YNot team after the race. They’re just a class act team. It’s a pleasure to race in the same class as those guys, and then to race them in the final round.”

ExactAir Compliance Systems is a company that supplies compliance, maintenance and control systems for the Natural Gas Compression industry. For more information on ExactAir’s state of the art technology, visit them on the web at: http://www.exactairsystems.com

Greg Hunter and Kenny Gilmour Motorsports partner with some of the finest companies in their industries, including ExactAir Compliance Systems, Omega 2000 Cribbing, Goodyear Tire, NGK Spark Plugs, Lucas Oil, Dark Side Racing, Oasis Emission Consultants, Mopac Auto Supply, Rock Bit Industries, GRP Connecting Rods, Winberg Crankshafts, National Transmission, Paron Paint & Body, Mechanix Wear, Berube Custom Tanks, Peter Vaughn Custom Glass, Koolsville Golf Carts & Accessories, VP Fuels USA, and Top Gun Coatings.

For more information on Greg Hunter and the Kenny Gilmour Motorsports team, please visit www.kennygilmourmotorsports.com

Whiteley Dominates Denver for 6th Straight Year

Courtesy of YNot Racing

With his sixth win in a row at the West Central divisional/regional at Denver's Bandimere Speedway, defending national champion Jim Whiteley reclaimed the Top Alcohol Dragster points lead. "What can I say?" he asked. "I love racing here."

Hands down, it's the J&A Service/YNot Racing team's most dominant performance to date at Bandimere: Whiteley had the entire field covered by the unheard of margin of a full quarter-second.

In qualifying, the Norm Grimes-tuned dragster ran between 5.44 and 5.46 in all three sessions while no one else in the field ran better than 5.70s. "I don't know if I've ever had that much of an advantage on the field before," Whiteley said. "It's almost more pressure than when a bunch of other people are running right with you."

After the opening round, it was more of the same in eliminations. Free to use his first-round run as another test run when opponent Kevin Wayman was unable to repair breakage suffered in qualifying, Whiteley smoked the tires and shut off. "It didn't go three inches," he said.

Against Dean Dubbin, who disqualified himself with a foul start in the semifinals, Whiteley advanced with an on-and-off-the-gas 5.69 that was still quicker than any other driver ran all weekend. "I had it at half-throttle at one point and it was still spinning the tires," he said. "We took some gear ratio out and some timing out for the final, and the car ran better than we expected it to."

A 5.47 in the money round knocked out No. 2 qualifier Greg Hunter, who was in a Lucas Oil Series final for the first time in his career, and put the J&A Service/YNot Racing driver back on top in the back-and-forth battle for the national championship. "We needed a weekend like this," Whiteley said. "Nobody is running away with it this year, and it might go right down to the finals at Pomona."

Hunter Looking to Rebound at Denver's Thunder on the Mountain

Courtesy of NVW Motorsports Promotion
Photo courtesy of David Smith/PSA

MORRISON, Colo. (June 14, 2013) – Following a two-month break since his last race, Greg Hunter and his ExactAir Compliance Systems Top Alcohol Dragster team is eager to return to the competition this weekend. The team has taken a hard look at their tune-up after early exits at the season-opening races at Pomona and Las Vegas. Now Hunter and his Kenny Gilmour Motorsports group want to put their adjustments to the test at the Grease Monkey Thunder on the Mountain Lucas Oil Series regional event and Bandimere Speedway, June 14-16.

“We had some time off after the last race in Vegas. We were a little disappointed with our performance at that race, so we went through everything on the car. I think we learned a few things that should improve our performance at Denver this weekend. We got some good data when we ran here for the first time last year. That should also help us run better than we have all year,” said Hunter, who is racing in his second year in TAD after switching from an alcohol-burning Funny Car.

Hunter, who last raced at the SummitRacing.com Nationals in Las Vegas in April, has been unable to proceed past first round of eliminations at all three of his races this season. Despite decent qualifying efforts, the Canadian team has suffered minor problems first round. Greg hopes all of the car’s gremlins are ironed out so he can race late into eliminations in front of the Denver fans and visiting ExactAir customers.

“We enjoyed racing at Denver last year. They draw one of the larger crowds for a regional event on the western half of the U.S. We’re also hosting ExactAir customers at this race as we did last year, so we want to have a good showing for them. ”

Greg and the ExactAir/Kenny Gilmour Motorsports Top Alcohol Dragster team will first take to the track for Friday’s lone qualifying session at 4 PM local time. Qualifying continues with sessions at 3:30 and 6:30 PM on Saturday. First round of eliminations is scheduled for Sunday at noon.

ExactAir Compliance Systems is a company that supplies compliance, maintenance and control systems for the Natural Gas Compression industry. For more information on ExactAir’s state of the art technology, visit them on the web at: http://www.exactairsystems.com

Greg Hunter and Kenny Gilmour Motorsports partner with some of the finest companies in their industries, including ExactAir Compliance Systems, Omega 2000 Cribbing, Goodyear Tire, NGK Spark Plugs, Lucas Oil, Dark Side Racing, Oasis Emission Consultants, Mopac Auto Supply, Rock Bit Industries, GRP Connecting Rods, Winberg Crankshafts, National Transmission, Paron Paint & Body, Mechanix Wear, Berube Custom Tanks, Peter Vaughn Custom Glass, Koolsville Golf Carts & Accessories, VP Fuels USA, and Top Gun Coatings.

For more information on Greg Hunter and the Kenny Gilmour Motorsports team, please visit www.kennygilmourmotorsports.com 

TAN Driver Blog - Greg Hunter - TAD

We had a great time in Denver at Bandimere Speedway! It was the first race of the year I was able to have my kids at the track and we also had a nice hospitality area for some Exactair Customers and friends. After the first session we were #1! We didn't have a great run, blowing the burst panels out, but everyone else had trouble too. It felt really cool to be #1 for a day! Saturday morning the weather looked like it turned for the worse but it cleared up and we made our second qualifier. It was better but same result, burst panels out of it just after I put it in high gear. The crew figured out what the problem was and had the car ready for the final qualifier when we had to shut the car off after the burnout because of a fuel leak. It is really tough to shut the car down right when you are getting ready to stage! I am very grateful for my awesome crew who spotted the fuel leak and kept the car safe! So we slipped from 1st to 4th going into Sunday Eliminations. I felt good because I knew that the Kenny Gilmour Motorsports/Exactair Crew had the car ready for 1st round! 

We a good solid run and we got by the DMP Awnings car with a 5.77. After all the wind in Denver, we are looking to buy one of those DMP awnings for our trailer! Going into second round we knew we had our hands full with Jim Whiteley. They are one of the fastest cars in the country and they have a lot of great people working on those cars. I have to admit that I was a little amped up and turned on the red light. I wanted to cut a really good light and get out on him! I was out on him and I started to think something happened to him when I didn't hear him until I saw the win light in his lane. That is when things got exciting! I pulled the chutes and they came out but did not blossom. I got the car slowed down before the sand but I still had to put the car on the beach! We didn't hurt anything but we had a lot of cleaning to do!

Overall the weekend was really good. We made some good clean runs and didn't hurt anything and the crew is really getting a handle on the tune-up! Just in time to go to the great Route 66 Raceway next weekend in Chicago! I can't wait! I am truly blessed to have such a great ride and a great crew! I am also so very grateful to have my wife Staci's support in driving the Exactair/Kenny Gilmour Motorsports Dragster. I couldn't do this without her!

Greg Hunter is the driver of the ExactAir/Kenny Gilmour Motorsports Top Alcohol Dragster.

First Round Wins Continue for Hunter

Courtesy of NVW Motorsports Promotion

MORRISON, Colo. – Top Alcohol Dragster beginner Greg Hunter’s rookie season in the ExactAir/Kenny Gilmour Motorsports car is going better than those of some of the seasoned veterans in the class. A first round win at his national event debut in Las Vegas, and now another at his second regional event. The Wyoming resident’s trip to Bandimere Speedway’s Thunder on the Mountain ended with a meeting with one of the top cars in the country.

“It was awesome to win first round. I couldn’t hear him (opponent Dean Dubbin) at the finish line, so I knew I won and I was pumped,” said Hunter.

Greg led the qualifying sheet after the first session on Friday, but slipped to fourth by the time qualifying was over on Saturday night. His first round match-up with Dubbin was decided at the starting line, with Hunter unleashing a .039 reaction time and crossing the finish line in 5.78 seconds at just under 250 mph. He met up with Jim Whiteley, one of the Top 5 drivers in the country, in round two. Greg pushed the Tree too hard and left early, giving the automatic win to Whiteley.

“Going up against Jim Whiteley, I made a rookie mistake and red lit. When one of the quickest blown cars in the country is in the other lane, you have to push it. Then once I crossed the finish line, my ‘chutes got a little tangled and the car went into the sand trap. Fortunately it just got a little gravel in the car, no serious damage. The car is ready for Chicago,” Greg said.

The next race for Greg Hunter and the ExactAir Top Alcohol Dragster team is the O’Reilly Auto Parts Route 66 NHRA Nationals in Joliet, Illinois. The challenge of competing with over 25 of the nation’s top cars is one that Hunter says he’s ready for. “I’m really excited to go up against so many solid cars. Route 66 Raceway is a great track and the conditions should be good, so that just adds to the excitement. We’re starting to get our tune-up figured out. We’ll be bringing all we got to run with the best of the best.”

ExactAir Compliance Systems is a company that supplies compliance, maintenance and control systems for the Natural Gas Compression industry. For more information on ExactAir’s state of the art technology, visit them on the web at: http://www.exactairsystems.com/

Greg Hunter and Kenny Gilmour Motorsports partner with some of the finest companies in their industries, including ExactAir Compliance Systems, Omega 2000 Cribbing, Goodyear Tire, NGK Spark Plugs, Lucas Oil, Dark Side Racing, Oasis Emission Consultants, Mopac Auto Supply, Rock Bit Industries, GRP Connecting Rods, Winberg Crankshafts, National Transmission, Paron Paint & Body, Mechanix Wear, Berube Custom Tanks, Peter Vaughn Custom Glass, Koolsville Golf Carts & Accessories, VP Fuels USA, and Top Gun Coatings.

For more information on Greg Hunter and the Kenny Gilmour Motorsports team, please visit http://www.kennygilmourmotorsports.com/

Whiteley Wins 5th in a Row, Williams Back on Top

Courtesy of the Pro Sportsman Association/Todd Veney

Jim Whiteley won Top Alcohol Dragster for the fifth year in a row at the Western Regional event at Bandimere Speedway, and former Division 5 champion Kirk Williams overcame quicker cars with unerring consistency to score in Top Alcohol Funny Car.

With his fourth win in his last five outings, Whiteley has tied early season points leader Chris Demke atop the national Top Alcohol Dragster standings – and he's done it in two fewer starts. The Grand Junction, Colo., driver dominated this one from start to finish, qualifying No. 1 with a 5.47 and running more than a tenth quicker on his slowest run all weekend than any other driver did on his best.

"I tried to make sure I saw a little more of the bulb than usual before I left," said Whiteley, whose only loss in the last five races came on a -.001 red-light in the Topeka semi's. "It's actually kind of hard to slow yourself down just a little bit on the Tree without slowing down a lot. We've had a decent advantage on the field a time or two over the years, especially here, but never this much."

Whiteley qualified No. 1 with a 5.47 – two-tenths ahead of eventual runner-up Edwin Schmeeckle's 5.67. He cruised through eliminations with a 5.52 on his first-round single, a 5.54 against Greg Hunter, who went off the end of the track in the semifinals, and a 5.56 in the final against Edwin Schmeeckle, who did his job with a .051 reaction time but fell back with a 5.77.

"I just tried to not let anything get to me and not do anything wrong," said Whiteley, who also beat Schmeeckle in the final round of this event in 2008 and 2009, the years he finished second in the national standings. "You're not going to have a tenth on the field like this very often, so when you do, you can't afford to let it get away from you."

Williams, who dominated Division 5 in 2010, winning five events for a perfect season, qualified No. 3 this time with a 5.89 – well behind Las Vegas regional winner Annie Whiteley's 5.74 and national points leader Tony Bartone's 5.76. "It really knocks the wind out of your sails when you see people running that much better than you are," Williams said, "but this just goes to show that consistency outweighs everything. You won't always win with consistency, but you can win a lot. The track just couldn't take those 5.70 runs, and eventually, it came to us."

Williams struggled with the conditions just like everyone else at the mile-high facility, where the corrected altitude was just short of 10,000 feet, but his team, led by brother Chris Williams and Justin Jacobsen, made three runs within a hundredth of a second of one another in eliminations, a 5.90, 5.91, and 5.91 – all at 242 mph. Williams took out veteran Lance Van Hauen in the opening round with a 5.90 and ran a 5.91 in the semifinals against Mike Bell, who was making his first start in 15-time Division 5 champion Vern Moats' car.

"It smoked the tires on that one, and I don't mean 'hazed' the tires; I mean smoke was pouring off them at about 60 feet," Williams said. "I don't know why, but it cleared up, and the car took off. I still can't believe it made it."

The final against Gainesville regional winner Kris Hool, who also was running steady 5.90s, ended early when Hool red-lighted with a -.042 reaction time. "I saw his car when the yellows came down and thought, 'Man, I just got Tree'd,' but then I saw my win-light on at the top end and knew he red-lighted," Williams said. "There was a pretty good crowd on hand, and I wanted to give them a good show, so I stayed in it."

           

TAD Rookie Hunter Right At Home in Denver-Bound Dragster

Courtesy of NVW Motorsports Promotion

MORRISON, Colo. – Top Alcohol Dragster rookie Greg Hunter enters just his second NHRA Lucas Oil Series regional event this weekend at Bandimere Speedway. The former Alcohol Funny Car pilot is adjusting quickly to his position as the driver of the ExactAir/Kenny Gilmour Motorsports Dragster.

“I feel right at home in the car. I absolutely love driving it; it’s a blast. It seems like we’re getting better and better at every race we run at, so hopefully this weekend will bring more positive results,” said Hunter.

The Wyoming resident is expecting to build on recent successful moments in his career, including his first round win at the Las Vegas national event. Crew chief and car owner Kenny Gilmour and his crew have been going over the car, finding any issue that would prevent them from running well.

“We had a couple parts failures in the ignition system at Mission. We also found a problem with the clutch that we thought was cleared up, but showed up again. Those issues were sorted out and the car is ready to qualify well and win rounds. This will be the first time at Bandimere Speedway for this team, but I don’t think it’s anything that they’re not going to be up for,” Hunter claimed.

Hunter and the ExactAir Compliance Systems team will be racing in front of friends and employees of their sponsors, so a solid finish couldn’t come at a better time.

Top Alcohol Dragster qualifying at the Thunder on the Mountain LODRS regional event starts at 4 pm on Friday, followed by two more sessions on Saturday. Pre-race ceremonies begin at 11:30 Sunday morning, with first round of eliminations starting right after.

ExactAir Compliance Systems is a company that supplies compliance, maintenance and control systems for the Natural Gas Compression industry. For more information on ExactAir’s state of the art technology, visit them on the web at: http://www.exactairsystems.com/

Greg Hunter and Kenny Gilmour Motorsports partner with some of the finest companies in their industries, including ExactAir Compliance Systems, Omega 2000 Cribbing, Goodyear Tire, NGK Spark Plugs, Lucas Oil, Dark Side Racing, Oasis Emission Consultants, Mopac Auto Supply, Rock Bit Industries, GRP Connecting Rods, Winberg Crankshafts, National Transmission, Paron Paint & Body, Mechanix Wear, Berube Custom Tanks, Peter Vaughn Custom Glass, Koolsville Golf Carts & Accessories, VP Fuels USA, and Top Gun Coatings.

For more information on Greg Hunter and the Kenny Gilmour Motorsports team, please visit http://www.kennygilmourmotorsports.com/

TAN Driver Blog - Greg Hunter - TAD

It has been an absolute great time driving the Kenny Gilmour Exactair Top Alcohol Dragster! We started out in Phoenix to crossover my TAFC license. Seemed like it should have been pretty straight forward but it did not go as planned. Wow, these cars can really make you scratch your head sometimes! We didn't get crossed over there so we headed over to Las Vegas for the NHRA Regional event, where we ran a 5.54 at 250 mph – my first five second run! It was really smooth and I couldn't believe it when they told me at the end of the run. I have to give all the credit to the crew of Kenny, Cal, Gary, John, Del, Darlene, and my wife Staci!

We then ran the NHRA national event in Vegas the following weekend. We had some clutch issues during qualifying and didn't get a good run in but there were only 15 cars so we ended up 14th and faced James Butler driving for Hugh Ridley first round. Cal and Kenny put a safe tune-up in it and it was just enough to take down James! My first NHRA round win! I didn't know I had won until the guy told me at the top end. I was so pumped I could hardly get my seat belts off! We stepped it up the next round but lost to Garrett Bateman, who made a really great run to put us on the trailer. All in all it was a great weekend aside from the broken pieces!

We just got back from the Mission Regional, where we had some clutch problems again from the clutch that we thought had been fixed. That is how it goes sometimes! We lost first round to our friends from Manitoba, Gord Gingles in the Cliff Baxx A-Fuel dragster. What is up with these A-Fuel Dragsters making their career best runs against me? Haha! We are now on to Denver for the regional race there. I am really looking forward to this race where we have a lot of friends and customers. I anticipate a good showing this weekend!

Greg Hunter is the driver of the ExactAir Compliance Systems/Kenny Gilmour Motorsports Top Alcohol Dragster.